SpotlightJanuary2018

By David MacDonald M ax, I know the readers would love to hear about you and how Emblem Cannabis came to be in a marketplace with a notorious amount of red and yellow tape which likely hampered your every move. MZ: Well, cannabis is something that has been a part of my life since my late teens, late high school, early university and I knew the medical benefits back then. I saw how it helped people, how people who consumed cannabis socially were better off than people who were drinking socially. I’ve always been familiar with it on that level and I’ve never seen it as a social ill, I’ve never been quite able to understand the stigma attached to it. After university I was practising law, but I’ve always been very entrepreneurial. I founded a law firm with a partner about a year after practising – I still have the law firm, it’s at Avenue Road & Eglington in Midtown Toronto. We were dealing in real estate and condo development and a friend of mine came to me one day and told me that Health Canada was changing the rules in respect to how medical cannabis is going to be cultivated and distributed. That obviously piqued my interest. I knew what the market demand for cannabis was and hearing how profitable it was in certain jurisdictions in the United States and around the world and I couldn’t resist the opportunity. Having my own practice – we had grown to 10 lawyers and over 30 employ- ees at that point – I was able to step back and start focusing on getting a license, which is a very difficult road. That took a number of years. It was a journey that started back in 2012 and I was able to submit the application in early 2013. Here we are in 2017 and it’s still a journey. Was your background in real estate law helpful when you were looking for a home for Emblem Cannabis? MZ: For sure. The first transaction for the facility we’re in today was done through my law firm. I had a lot of familiarity with zoning and things like that. I knew I wanted to be in a municipality where zoning would be easy to acquire where the bureaucracy of land planning wouldn’t be too cumber- some.

When you think legal cannabis, you should think Max Zavet. He’s a lawyer and he’s the founder of Emblem Cannabis in Paris, Ontario. To say that Emblem’s approach to medical cannabis is holistic, in every sense of the word, would only begin to pay compliment to Max’s business acumen. As Canada moves closer to becoming the first G7 nation to legalize recreational cannabis – a multi-billion dollar marketplace Max is well-prepared for – questions about its medicinal efficacy and its social cost continue to rankle a conversation that’s long been wrapped- up in the minds of so many. There are more than 200,000 registered medical cannabis users in Canada and 80 licensed producers, or growers, coast-to- coast. But there are few better qualified to represent the medical cannabis industry – and cannabis as a whole – moving forward than Max. He sifts through dogma and political rhetoric with a precision you’d expect from a clerk of the court and he does it all from a perspective that needs to be a part of a conversation where the i’s need to be dotted and the t’s crossed before Canada Day 2018. And One of Emblem’s mantras “Cultivated with love” is the perfect opening salvo to that conversation. Each of Emblem’s 18 strains of dried flower, and their four cannabis oil products range in potency on two different and important scales: THC and CBD. THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, is the principal psychoactive constituent of cannabis – the kick, as it were. CBD, or cannabidiol, is the other major cannabinoid found in the cannabis plant and is typically used to treat inflammation, epilepsy, and pain associated with diseases like multiple sclerosis. Emblem’s Aqua Flora: Shark Shock CBD has a CBD yield of 9.2 percent by weight with a much lower THC reading of 4.1. Artemis Maximus: Quantum Kush, on the other hand, has a THC yield of 22.6 and a CBD reading of 0.1. Both strains and every strain in between are grown and sold with a plethora of patients in mind. Max recommends that patients “track their symptoms and dosages daily” using Strainprint, a third-party personalized app for medical cannabis patients. Strainprint is just one example of Emblem’s holistic approach to medical cannabis. When Max and Emblem’s marketing manager Jordan Rodness spoke with Spotlight on Business in November all was revealed.

My past experience also really helped with Health Canada.

Navigating through the levels of government officials was something I knew how to deal with. If there are problems with the applications oftentimes it’s just a matter of interpretation and my legal background definitely helped with those sorts of issues.

We were at one point stuck on a particular issue. Our first

13

JANUARY 2018 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE

Made with FlippingBook flipbook maker