Marijuana media pioneer says Canada will lead the world on legalization.

Canada is still hammering out the final details for legalized recreational marijuana use, but it’s already being branded as the “world’s most important” cannabis exporter.

“It’s historic what’s been done here,” said Ricardo Baca, a veteran journalist known as the world’s first marijuana editor. “The groundwork that’s being laid will end up impacting cannabis business, cannabis research, the world over for decades to come.”

Marijuana journalism is just one of the expected offshoots of Canada’s impending legalization, and it is business-related stories about the burgeoning export and stock markets that media organizations should pay attention to as the cannabis industry shifts to a regulated system from the black market, Baca said in a wide-ranging interview in Toronto.

“It’s a huge business story, it’s a monumental cultural story,” he said.

Baca knows from experience how media coverage evolves in the days leading up to legalization and afterward. He was the first editor of The Cannabist, a stand-alone website The Denver Post launched days before Colorado legalized recreational marijuana use in 2014.

The Post decided to cover marijuana the same way it would cover airlines or energy, but on a separate site to detach it from media’s history of approaching marijuana from the “war-on-drugs” viewpoint, Baca said.

During his three-year tenure — he resigned at the end of 2016 to start a communications agency — The Cannabist grew to seven full-time staff as demand for content attracted views from around the world.

“It’s not just the guy living in his mom’s basement, and it never really was,” Baca said. “It’s always been high-powered attorneys and CEOs.”

The Cannabist, a stand-alone website, was launched by The Denver Post days before Colorado legalized recreational marijuana use in 2014.

The site offered cannabis product reviews, but also did months-long investigations into potency levels of edible products and pesticide usage, resulting in new regulations to clamp down on industry bad behaviour.

The site’s popularity attracted advertising dollars in a beleaguered newspaper industry and was successful enough that a documentary called Rolling Papers was made about the media venture.

The Cannabist didn’t always make a profit, but Baca said it was self-sustaining at times. He tried to buy it with a group of investors this spring after staff cuts — the site is no longer staffed and content is automatically populated — but he said the Post’s hedge fund owner Alden Global Capital LLC wasn’t receptive to his offer.

Still, Baca believes dedicated cannabis reporting is necessary to hold both regulators and the industry accountable. To that end, he plans to launch a journalism fellowship this fall using some of the money that was earmarked for his failed purchase of The Cannabist. His agency, Grasslands, will award a journalist US$2,500 every quarter to report on untold drug policy stories.

As for Canada, Baca thinks the big post-legalization stories will be closely followed by international lawmakers and cannabis proponents as well as by those at home.

“Canada is leading the world on this,” he said. “It’s endlessly fascinating, whether you’re talking about inflated valuations, joint ventures or mergers and acquisitions.”

He believes cannabis legalization is part of a larger conversation about drug policy, one that is evolving as more research emerges on drugs, public health and wellness.

“Legalization is just the first domino,” he said.