Cannabis community is not impressed with OrganiGram CEO’s latest comments

Emma Spears - thegrowthop.com Posted 5 years ago
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Greg Engel, CEO of licensed producer OrganiGram Holdings Inc., has infuriated the cannabis community with comments published earlier this week on Yahoo! Finance Canada in which he called on the federal government to take action to eradicate the illicit cannabis market.

“Our understanding is that for those illicit sources, business has never been better,” he told Yahoo. “We continue to hear stories about online or same-day delivery people in major cities in Canada going around and giving out free product with their website address and phone number. They are doing things that we would never do.”

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Reports estimate that the illegal market will control 71 percent of sales in 2019.

Engel expressed the belief that the de-stigmatization of cannabis has left Canadians feeling content with buying their weed from illicit suppliers.

“They just see cannabis as legal,” he said, expressing his disappointment in what he believes to be a lack of action by the federal government.

“One of the things that is disappointing to OrganiGram, and the industry in general, is the lack of enforcement we’ve seen against illicit supply. In particular, the kind of online and retails stores that are operating in an unlicensed fashion,” said Engel. “Occasionally you will see a story in the newspaper that there was a store closed. But you can go on your computer right now and find 50 sites that will ship you products overnight.”

The reaction from the cannabis community on Twitter was swift and largely unfavourable.

“FFS. A company with ‘Organi’ in its name despite not being organic calls on enforcement to win market share. Hey Greg. Make a competitive product. Try pre-rolls without seeds. Stop whining and do some QC. Enforcement never worked. It won’t now,” tweeted Travis Lane in reaction to the article.

“What’s sad @OrganiGreg about your comments is that your company’s share price is at its high and you posted a fabulous last quarter. Why is it necessary for others to lose in order for you to get-further-ahead? Just say thank you to the “black market”, for creating your industry,” Patrick Brauckmann added further down the thread.

“It’s challenging to trust a brand who has a class action law suit based on tainted unapproved pesticides found in their cannabis,” said Unity Marguerite, with a link to a CBC story also posted by Dana Larsen about the pending class-action lawsuit against the New Brunswick LP for allegedly supplying patients with pesticide-tainted cannabis.

The legal market has so far been plagued with supply shortages, and demand has been filled by the illicit market, which also has the advantage of offering lower prices per gram for the drug.

According to StatsCan, during the fourth quarter, Canadian households spent $5.9 billion on cannabis; $4.7 billion is estimated to have been purchased through the illicit market.

 

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