Owen Smith is a director of the non profit Victoria Cannabis Buyers Club ("VCBC"), one of the oldest compassion clubs in Canada, with over 8000 active members, which helps members who have documented, serious medical conditions, by providing them with medicinal cannabis and cannabis based products.

Owen is a cannabis subject-matter expert, possessing a wide range of cannabis industry knowledge based on two decades of working with patients, advocates, dispensaries, non-profits, producers and processors as well as one of the worlds largest cannabis corporations.

In 2009, Owen was arrested for baking cannabis and making extracts, edibles and oils for members of the VCBC, and consequently raised a constitutional challenge that the Supreme Court of Canada decided 7-0 in his favour in 2015. R v Smith is the most successful cannabis case in Canadian history, which legalized the process of cannabis extraction so that people and companies could make extracts, edibles and oils for medicinal use.

Owen is also a storyteller, multi-media artist, videographer, writer, juggler and musician.

During our interview, Owen's audio became garbled due to a streaming issue, so we salvaged some of the recording and then moved to a different recording platform. It's around the 20-minute mark.

Thanks to Byron Wong for his help with correcting the audio problem! I think it actually made for a better interview. 

Have a listen and enjoy!

Thank you to Jeremy Benning, our co-producer and sound editor.

And thank you to Albert Wong, who created and performed our beautiful music.

For more insightful conversations related to cannabis law, listen to our other episodes at https://podcast.cannabislawonearth.com/

If you're looking for a good text book on Canada's federal cannabis law and regulations with helpful related case law, read Canada's Cannabis Act.

And if you need a cannabis lawyer, ask Russell for more information at https://cannabislaw.ca