Page 19 - Magazine Spring 2019

Our friend, the Ontario’s entrepreneur Ron Ciata runs a small professional business with revenues under CAD$500,000 per year. Business goes up and down, but the last couple of years have been particularly rough. Ron is looking for new revenue streams.
Canada’s Cannabis Act came into force on October 17, 2018. The Act made recreational marihuana (cannabis) legal and opened up an unknown and vast territory for Canada’s economy. Under strict limitations, cannabis for medical purposes was already available in Canada since 2001.
Cannabis use for both medical and recreational purposes gravitate around strict regulatory frameworks, through which federal, provincial and territorial governments control the production, distribution, sale and possession of cannabis in Canada, which is the second country in the world to legalize cannabis after Uruguay did it in 2013.
With this legalization, it is expected that the Canadian cannabis industry will add CAD$8 billion to the economy, according to TD. The bank warns the public that this prediction may only be in accounting records; instead, the bank may expect a much lower impact, considering that some of the cannabis-related trade already existed, but it was not captured in the books. South of the border, in the US, cannabis consumers are expected to spend US$23 billion by 2022.
Whether it is less than CAD$8 billion or over US$23 billion, the cannabis industry is already creating many new opportunities along a wide and long line of production, distribution and retail, both as direct (plant-touching) and ancillary businesses.
For Ron Ciata this means that he could assess his current services and design a cannabis-specific endeveour, providing one or a few of his services tailored for the cannabis industry, within regulations of course.
From hoodies to dabbing, the list of cannabis and paraphernalia products seems endless. The core of the industry is evidently growing seeds into plants, which then become dried flowers sold between $7.50 and $13.25 per gram in Ontario. But licensed stores sell more than dried flowers. They have oils, hemp, sprays, rolling papers, vaporizers and glass cleaners. What about a half-gram pre-rolled joint starting at $10.35?
THE BEST MAGAZINE SPRING 2019
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