Hydrolife Canada February/March 2017

“Another challenge the
Trees team has run into is
law enforcement policy,
which does not yet accept
the validity of the business
or the medical need for it in
our communities.”
cal sales to doctors and Ashley had just
completed her nursing degree when they
started the storefront. Disillusioned by
mainstream healthcare, they opted to
start providing cannabis to anyone who
could benefit from it.
Former publisher Dadmehr Naimi, who
previously ran Hush Magazine out of
Vancouver, joined the team in 2014 when
he saw the promise of the Topfers' dispensary
model and invested in it so they
could expand. He brought a branding
and marketing focus into the mix of what
was then three separate storefronts, and
united them under the same banner as
“Trees Dispensary” later that year.
Brandon Wright, a serial entrepreneur
and dynamo who holds a business
degree from the University of Victoria, is
always looking towards the next trend
and identifying the best way of building
the business and providing for customers.
He saw the promise of the emergent
municipally-licensed cannabis industry
in 2015, and brought in his business
organizational skills to help turn their
dispensaries into a smoothly-functioning
business capable of serving all of
Vancouver Island. It was around this
time that they opened another Victoria
location on lower Yates Street and Naimi
then made a partnership arrangement
with Eden Medicinal Society to turn their
storefront near Mayfair Mall into Trees of
Eden Dispensary.
“We are always looking for interesting
and mutually beneficial partnerships
to expand to new jurisdictions
that want to take the leap toward
licensing cannabis dispensaries,”
says Robb, who adds that the retail
storefront cannabis industry in
Victoria continues to be a situation of
ongoing problem-solving and crisis
management. “How do you provide a
population with access to a medicine
that they need, but that remains illegal
and inaccessible to most of the
population that needs it? It was clear
that the federal government's ACMPR
program is not working, and many
people with terminal illness are left
in a lurch. Our biggest challenge has
always been education.”
Another challenge the Trees team
has run into is law enforcement policy,
which does not yet accept the validity
of the business or the medical need for
it in our communities.
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