Pubdate: Thu, 08 May 2014
Source: Province, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2014 Postmedia Network Inc.
Contact: http://www2.canada.com/theprovince/letters.html
Website: http://www.theprovince.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/476
Author: Frank Luba
Page: A10

TRADE SHOW POT'S COMING OUT PARTY

Once-Forbidden Plant Now Mainstream

There was a certain buzz in the air Wednesday at the Vancouver 
Convention Centre.

A business that used to be run clandestinely came of age at the 
Green-Rush Financial Conference, which mixed a long list of speakers 
talking about marijuana and hemp with a trade show full of products 
and services in an industry poised to boom.

Mining company executive Harry Barr of Next Gen Metals was behind the 
conference and was pleased with the turnout, which attracted several 
hundred participants and was the first of what he hopes will be a 
series of similar events.

"It's just the beginning, it's just starting," said Barr. "This is 
(going to be) a huge industry." As for the turnout, Barr said he was 
"ecstatic."

Attendees weren't stoners in jeans. Suits abounded and business, not 
smoke, was in the air.

"This industry is old but it's brand new," said Barr of what's 
happening nationally with medicinal use of marijuana, as opposed to 
the whole underground, illegal trade in so called 'B.C. Bud'.

"It's an industry that needs new financial people in it, too," he said.

Like any startup industry, the marijuana industry requires proper 
financing and management. But the show wasn't about just pot. Forever 
Green is busy growing hemp in Vanderhoof but stockpiling the product 
while trying to attract interest to get a processing plant built in B.C.

While hemp is a marijuana plant, it doesn't come with the active 
medicinal or recreational ingredients that make pot so problematic.

Cheryl Burns was manning a booth for Forever Green, promoting green 
BED pet bedding, which the company has to import from Europe for lack 
of a processor.

"It's a matter of getting the interest," said Burns, whose booth also 
included hemp based products like hemp-crete, a concrete-like product 
she said was "great insulation."

Jodie Emery, wife of soon-to-be released Prince of Pot Marc Emery, 
was an enthusiastic booster of the marijuana industry in her speech 
at the conference.

"I believe in capitalism," she said. "I believe in making money. 
Marijuana is a good way to make money, particularly when it's 
legalized - and not under the control of gangs who don't pay taxes."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom