Puff N Ponder #3

Puff n Ponder

With Papa Jefe

October 17th 2018, Cannabis changed in Canada. That was the day it became legalized. Some black market people got scared and others laughed. What was this going to mean for the culture and industry of the old ways?

Well we were told it would bring jobs, income into the communities and more tax dollars for the provinces. In the beginning it was true, there was a green rush of trying to get to market while jumping through all the hoops set up from Health Canada and each province's governing bodies.  Big jobs and massive hiring brought good things to fight against the stigma of big bad cannabis.

The flower was basic with thc percent hitting eighteen percent, packing small dry nugs and hoping someone will buy it. No one knew what they were doing.

Medical grows were botching recreational cannabis and no one could understand how.

These were our legal pioneers, spending massive amounts of money on what they thought was state of the art equipment, renovation of older farms and growing facilities, training and seeds.

"Anyone can grow weed, but its hard to grow good weed." - pretty much any pothead.

It was a race, instead of well planned and well thought out. The cannabis industry was just chaos, but it survived its first year. Things should be better right? Wrong.

With terrible marketing available it was quite the hassle to try and get your name out there. With most products being pretty bad by today's standards, and pretty pricey the market wasn't looking so hot.

Covid hitting drove companies to down size while consumption increased.

This is also where my mother told me that legalization of cannabis was bringing on the apocalypse , glad I didn't tell her where I was working at the time.

Let's skip ahead a bit to the mergers, bankruptcy and bailouts. Remember those promises of helping communities and bringing jobs?

Now we face massive layoffs, closures and best of all corporate growth in other sectors that gobbled up the weak and dying.

I'm not trying to be cheeky, it's business. This stuff happens all the time or it did before we had MEGA CORPORATIONS. The one with the most toys wins.

Were these folks the pioneers of legal cannabis, I sure think so. They bought, traded, sold, learned, ignored and everything in-between what people were saying, and begging for. Yes they did forge a path to where we are now on the backs of many hopeful people that just wanted to be in cannabis. The Jerry Springer show ain't got nothin on Canadian Cannabis.

So in a way I thank every company that's gone bankrupt, every rebranding to cover up mistakes, every merger and last of all every CEO that made a ton of money and got fired. We have learned alot from the mistakes made and that are continuously made, So seriously thank you for being the blunders Pioneers of cannabis history.

Now let's hope that our future generations can make this better.

As always,

Peace, love and pre-rolls

-Papa Jefe 

These views are mine and mine alone and not of Cannaviews.ca