THUNDER BAY - A medical marijuana clinic with roots in the Fort Frances area has grown to Thunder Bay and may eventually branch out to several other centres.
Angela and Brad Olson opened the Rainy River Cannabis Collective exactly one year ago Tuesday.
They recently set up a second location in Thunder Bay's south core, and plan to move to a larger facility next door in the coming months.
Angela Olson says the May Street business is not a dispensary, and strictly provides support for patients needing pain relief. "Please don't break in, you're not gonna find anything," she said in an interview at her office.
Patients provide the clinic with documentation about their medical problem before getting an appointment with the clinic's doctor to discuss what they want to treat and what they want to accomplish.
"Then we bring Brad into the conversation and we talk about whether you want to grow your own medicine or do you need to be taught how to grow medicine," she said.
The Olsons provide recipes for cannabis products they have developed such as gummy bears and caramels. "Any recipe we have, we teach you," Olson said.
Although she noted that in Canada, patients with a prescription can go to a licensed producer and order cannabis online, Olson said "You can grow your own medicine, which is what we always encourage our patients to do. Because nobody's gonna care as much about your medicine as you do."
The Thunder Bay clinic currently has close to 120 patients.
"Our vision is that in about a month we're going to open up next door in a full, proper clinic with hydroponic equipment for people to help them grow. We want to head next to Kenora, Dryden, and possibly Winnipeg," Olson said.
Farther into the future, she and her husband hope to start a licensed production facility in Thunder Bay, which she said would create as many as 100 new jobs.
It would be, Olson said, "100 per cent medical, zero recreational sales" of marijuana.
