Bruce Linton shares his thoughts on destigmatizing Cannabis from a medical perspective: “I would suggest that the doctors of yesteryear, who were living with the product in their presence might have a more valid perspective on its potential usefulness than the people who have been governing medicine in the absence of cannabis, who don’t want to know. I find that they may be one of the last holdouts, but they’re going to be unsuccessful when the evidence presents them with an argument that says, “You’re wrong.”
Bruce Linton, thank you for having me here to Canopy Growth. You are all natted up in your tweed paraphernalia, aren't you?
Bruce Linton: Yeah, it's on brand today is tweed. The party says it started, and tweed is the party. So there's no ... tomorrow may be a Canopy Growth Day, the day after might be Spectrum Medical Research, but today is the Tweed Day.
Seth Adler: Ready, set, go rec, I think?
Bruce Linton: Yeah, aha. I've never heard that one. That's actually quite good.
Seth Adler: I think it's on your T-shirt?
Bruce Linton: Is it? I didn't see that. Is it on my back? Mine says tweed on the front. Ready, set, go rec. You know, we have people that are awesome at that stuff. Our IT department came up with one, and it says, and you know how we like the brand that's HI, H-I?
Seth Adler: Yes.
Bruce Linton: They call themselves hi.t. Hi-T, as if you're saying IT, Hi-T.
Seth Adler: Yeah, I gotcha. Yeah.
Bruce Linton: They thought they were hilarious. They gave everybody a shirt.
Seth Adler: You know, you have the sign, The HI, we get it, but then because we're so close to Quebec, you also have Bonjour right next to [crosstalk 00:01:56]-
Bruce Linton: Yes.
Seth Adler: But there's not the word play there, is there?
Bruce Linton: Some things get lost in translation, for sure. But you know what? This is a country where if you don't put it in both languages, you're going to piss somebody off.
Seth Adler: Absolutely.
Bruce Linton: So your choice is to be funny in two languages, not possible, or be in trouble in one.
Seth Adler: So why not make sure we're not in trouble.
Bruce Linton: Yeah, exactly.
Seth Adler: I don't think that you're in trouble, right? How are things going here, Bruce?
Bruce Linton: Things have been ... it's not really a day. It's been a little while since [Trudo 00:02:21] got elected, and it was a little while since Harper, our former leader, started this.
Seth Adler: Right.
Bruce Linton: It was a long time [crosstalk 00:02:28] MMAR-
Seth Adler: Yeah.
Bruce Linton: And then it was like ... so it was like kind of a 17 year drum roll.
Seth Adler: Sure, if you count everything. Absolutely.
Bruce Linton: Right. In a sense it's almost like you do want a canopy because it's like a relay race. What we had to run, the leg we ran, which was the last six years, is to raise and spend about a billion and a half dollars, create a substantial platform to supply the party, so that the party doesn't turn into a [inaudible 00:02:54] party.
Seth Adler: What do you mean by that?
Bruce Linton: We have a warehouse that has a lot of product in it. We didn't send it all out, because we didn't know who needed what, where, when. Now, we know everybody wants more now. So we will deal with that, but it's been sort of a build up to that.
Seth Adler: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Bruce Linton: Today was neat because today started at midnight.
Seth Adler: Yeah.
Bruce Linton: And where I was, on the east coast at midnight, I was paying attention to how the monitors were working, and as the receipt machine feeding, and all those nitty gritty bits, because you wanted the first transaction to go perfect.
Seth Adler: Right. And this is in St. John?
Bruce Linton: In St. John [inaudible 00:03:32]. But then when the room got energetic, there was a countdown, the sale herd had happened. Then a lot of people cried. I didn't think about the people crying. I didn't expect it. They cried because for a whole bunch of people who got there, this was like-
Seth Adler: Transformative.
Bruce Linton: It was taking a burden off their shoulders.
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