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Small Screen: Bud Empire aims to remove pot-selling stigma

TORONTO — Bob Kay feels a twinge of fear every day as he runs his business in Kelowna, but he charges forward knowing he’s helping people ease their pain.
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Bob Kay: Life in legal limbo.

TORONTO — Bob Kay feels a twinge of fear every day as he runs his business in Kelowna, but he charges forward knowing he’s helping people ease their pain.

For the past 10 years, Kay has been operating a medical marijuana dispensary “in a legal limbo,” running the risk of a police raid as the country prepares for the legalization of recreational pot this summer.

Be Kind is a “compassion club,” he says, helping those with chronic pain and providing cannabis in various forms to those who are prescribed it through a health practitioner.

Viewers can go inside the operation as it’s featured in the new docu-series Bud Empire, premièring tonight on History.

“I want to show the world that we are a culture that is responsible and that when people look at cannabis, that it’s not evil — it’s not the fearmongering reefer madness that we were grown up to believe it was,” the married father of four said in a phone interview.

“Cannabis is going to do some amazing things and I want people to see that, I want them to have access.”

Kay said he sources the cannabis he dispenses from those who have held the proper medical marijuana growing licences for no less than five years.

In the first episode, an elderly woman seeks relief for chronic pain in her foot. She isn’t looking for a strong high or anything obtrusive, so Kay gives her a topical cream and lollipop infused with cannabis.

The show also profiles Kay’s family and his employees.

“People need to see what’s really going on behind the curtain, like the Wizard of Oz,” Kay said.

“It’s not a boogeyman — it’s real people working in this industry who have lives, children, families.”

Trish Dolman, the show’s producer and director, called Bud Empire “groundbreaking.”

“I don’t think there is a TV series like this, a documentary series, certainly not in Canada,” she said.

Calling himself a “cannaisseur,” Kay said he looks for certain qualities in the cannabis he dispenses, including texture, density, consistency, colour and how it burns and tastes.

“The ash has to be a grey ash, it can’t be black. It has to be smooth, it can’t burn your throat,” he said.

“Certain strains, like a Purple Kush, has a defining smell that you know the instant you smell it.”