Ross Rebagliati, the Olympic gold medallist and bad boy of snowboarding, plans to open up a franchise of medical marijuana shops that trades on his fame.
Cheekily called Ross’s Gold, the company expects to set up a flagship store in Whistler this spring once the federal government privatizes the medical marijuana production industry.
And Rebagliati projects his business will be doing more than $50 million a year after the third year, once it opens satellite stores in Vancouver and Toronto.
On Tuesday Rebagliati began advertising his plans through Facebook, quickly attracting a cadre of followers. But his plans have been in the works for some time and are being coordinated through a Vancouver company based at Canada Place.
Rebagliati hasn’t responded to email requests for interviews, but he laid out the plans for Ross’s Gold in a report published on a website.
In it Rebagliati said the federal government’s decision to get out of the medical marijuana business is opening a tremendous business opportunity for Ross’s Gold, which also goes under the company name Rebagliati Gold Ltd.
“As the federal government gets out of the medical marijuana business, taxpayers will no longer be subsidizing its sale. Under the current program, the marijuana costs about $5 per gram. Under the proposed changes, that price will rise to about $8.80 a gram,” the company said in its statement.
And the sky is the limit should the Canadian government ever decriminalize pot, he said.
“When and if marijuana is decriminalized in Canada like it has been in the American states of Washington and
Colorado, the opportunity would also exist for the company to become a government licensed supplier to the
general public,” the company statement said.
Rebagliati shot to fame in 1998 when the International Olympic Committee tried to strip him of the men’s snowboarding gold medal at the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan. It was the first time the IOC had permitted snowboarding as an Olympic sport and it was just beginning a serious crackdown on drugs in sports. But Rebagliati maintained he hadn’t smoked dope before the race and tests subsequently showed the amount in his bloodstream was so low it likely came from second-hand smoke, as he maintained.
After considerable pressure the IOC relented and returned the gold medal to Rebagliati, but the affair soured the athlete.
There’s no shortage of people who Rebagliati thinks want Ross’s Gold. He noted that “66% of Canadians support decriminalization of marijuana as the United States moves toward taxation and regulation in Washington and Colorado.”
In the last decade the number of patients with authorized access to Canada’s Marijuana Medical Access Program has grown from 500 to more than 21,000, he said. But Health Canada the authorized by Canada to The medical marijuana industry in Canada has, up until now, been regulated by the Canadian Government. But Health Canada suggests that number will grow to more than 300,000 in the next decade. That, Rebagliati says, puts the potential value of medical marijuana in the range of $5 billion.
Rebagliati is getting some help in his business from Patrick Smyth, of Ocean Eclipse Venture Capital. Two advisers are Kathleen Orr of Starbucks Canada and Kenneth Lelek of World Fund Corp., according to Rebagliati Gold’s statement.
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