Mayor Shawn Pankow of Smith Falls welcomed the Tweed marijuana factory as he would any pharmaceutical company.
“If Pfizer or Abbot or some pharmaceutical company wanted
to come into town and open up something, of course, we would be totally
supportive of that,” he tells Christian Borys in episode two of the compelling documentary “The Cannabis Complex.” Borys has put together a historical, first-draft document detailing the rise of the legal cannabis industry in Canada.
“It’s given us a global spotlight on our community,” Pankow
continues, telling Borys how the Canopy Growth subsidiary became the
centerpiece of Smith Falls’ revitalization.
The cannabis-industrial-complex is a cross-section of stock
quotes and political battles, with the occasional fight for social
justice thrown into the mix. But as Borys reminds viewers with his
riveting documentary, whole swaths of Canadians have a part to play in
this story as well as a dog in this fight.
Smith Falls grew up around a Hershey Chocolate plant, and,
as many such towns do, when the plant closed, despair and desperation
set upon the residents.
“This whole new industry comes in and just says we're going
to set up shop here,” Borys told PotNetwork News recently, speaking
over the phone. “We're going to infuse a whole bunch of cash.
We're
going to create jobs and everything and like from what I understand and
what I saw it brought life back [to the] place.”
For American readers, Borys compared what’s happening in
Canda to President Trump’s continued promises to bring back the coal
industry in the U.S. — except in Canada the cannabis industry is
delivering on its promises.
What that means, more than a growing cannabis industry is a
stabilized sense of community.
As Borys told PotNetwork News, residents
of Smith Falls and towns like it are no longer forced to find refuge in
cities like Toronto. There’s no need to move on to search for work, as
cannabis has become the New Deal for The Great Recession.
“If you were on a really deep downward trajectory or just
been downtrodden for a while and the cannabis companies are coming in
and basically, like — maybe bringing it back to life is a little too
dramatic. But like they're giving people a chance,” Borys said.
“China owns half the world patents on cannabis...”
Borys started his career at Shopify before becoming a
world-class journalist in his own right, traveling across the globe to
cover stories in Ukraine, Venezuela, Poland, and more. His work has been
featured on the BBC, CBC, The Guardian, Washington Post, and Al
Jazeera, to name a few.
At one point, he was the Executive Producer of
an English program at a Ukrainian media startup that ended up becoming
its own national channel called Hromadske.
Now, he owns his own press company, where he does commercials, branded documentaries, and the like.
When it comes to weed his story is rather typical in many
ways. A smoker at 16 years old, his Eastern European parents caught him
one time and, in his own words, it was like the end of the world.
“It was akin to being their kid, like shooting heroin
thinking that it was like the worst thing imaginable for them,” he told
PotNetwork News.
But legal cannabis really caught Borys’ eye, and it became the impetus for “The Cannabis Complex,”
a small idea now which he’s hoping to turn into a pitch for something
more substantial, something in which Netflix or Amazon may find some
interest.
“China owns half the world patents on cannabis,” said
Borys. “I’d like dive into what that means for a 20 or 40-minute episode
[that] would be incredible.”
“The Cannabis Complex” is more than just random stories and
facts about the industry, however.
It’s an opportunity for Borys to
document the rise of the legal cannabis space, or, as he put it, the end
of prohibition. A connoisseur of the medium, he immediately talked up
the Ken Burns documentary “Prohibition,” the tale of America’s misguided
attempt to force its citizens to become teetotalers.
Burns, of course, is the gold standard when it comes to
documentary filmmaking. But for Borys, telling the story of the final
days of cannabis prohibition has the added bonus of immediacy.
Whereas
Burns film came 100 years after-the-fact, Borys documentary can be
filmed as it happens.
“That's kind of the whole point of that is just to put out
content that helps people understand how legalization is growing around
the world,” he said. “I think that there's a lot of people doing
interesting things around the world.”
“...that it’s illegal is just ridiculous.”
About halfway through episode one of “The Cannabis Complex,”
Christian Borys' failed attempts to secure medical marijuana through
legal channels sends him to a black market shop in Canada.
Without a
proper script from a Licensed Producer in the country, he still manages
to secure himself some product quickly.
“Although black market businesses are popular because they
offer the easiest access point for cannabis, they’re frustrating for
entrepreneurs who’ve invested to become part of the legal industry,” he
narrates at the midway point of episode one.
According to Borys though, now that recreational cannabis
is legal in Canada, he’s confident that things will change for the
better. After all, this is an experiment, and it’s early days. As he
told PotNetwork News, Canada has government-regulated alcohol, but
consumers would be hard-pressed to find underground moonshine stores
across the provinces.
“I'm sure that the black market will always exist to an
extent, but I think that as more options or more good options become
available to consumers, they'll go to government-run or
government-regulated stores and websites, and that's where they're going
to get their product from,” he stated. “But it's just like, the
infrastructure still being developed.”
“It's going to take some time,” he continued.
But make no mistake about it, Borys said, the dominoes are
falling. And the documentary-maker in him noted that the reason those
dominoes began to fall so fast was that both Prime Minister Justin
Trudeau and the people of Canada realized one simple thing — that
cannabis wasn’t going anywhere.
As the conversation turned to Canada specifically, and the
country’s quick rise to the top of the cannabis food chain, Borys
concluded that legalization became possible the citizenry smartly
realized that cannabis was going nowhere — rather than fight the drug,
it was time to embrace it.
“Trudeau made the decision and Canadians made the decision
that [cannabis] existed,” Borys said, continuing the conversation over
the phone. “We’re fine with having cannabis on the streets, being a
legal thing like alcohol and cigarettes.”
He paused. “But it existed completely underground, and the
government had no part in it, right? They obviously have no tax revenue
coming in for that.”
And this is the story that “The Cannabis Complex” aims to
tell, a first-hand account of when Canada chose to say cannabis exists
and if the penalties for fighting against it aren't keeping anybody from
doing it then just legalize it. Because those stories are so much more
than the daily fluctuations in the share price of a given Licensed
Producer or the next fight over a piece of legislation.
“It already exists in the black market, people can already
get it,” Borys said, reflecting on the old way of thinking. “They always
have been able to get it, that it’s illegal is just ridiculous.”
He continued: “I think that Canada making that move and
saying hey we're going to build an actual commercial industry that meant
that money just flooded into the market and that's why you have massive
companies like super well-capitalized companies that are able to do
incredible things…
Canadian companies are everywhere now, and it's
amazing how companies like Canopy and Aurora are opening places like
Poland, which is where my parents are from, is now selling medical
marijuana, and I never in my lifetime doubt that that was going to be
possible because it's the future of this country.”
Borys paused for a moment again. “But people are opening their eyes and seeing that, hey there is therapeutic value to this.”
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