Former Ontario Provincial Police commissioner Julian Fantino and former RCMP deputy commissioner Raf Souccar are leaving Aleafia, the cannabis company they founded. In an April 27 press release, Fantino, the current chairman of the board, and Souccar, a director, announced their intention to resign as of May 15, 2020.

“On behalf of the Aleafia Health team, the company wishes to thank Mr. Fantino and Mr. Souccar for their service … and in particular for their directorships and their roles as chairman and past CEO to the company, respectively,” wrote a company spokesperson in an email.

While the reasoning behind the departures has not been given, the company — alongside its recreational cannabis retail partners — was plagued by bad public relations with regard to its founders. Fantino, who once compared cannabis legalization to murder, and Souccar were infamously referred to as two of Canada’s “biggest weed hypocrites” in a list published by VICE.

More recently, controversy has preceded the opening of One Plant in Toronto. The recreational cannabis store, backed by Aleafia, opened in the Kensington Market neighbourhood on April 3. It had previously come under fire from anti-gentrification activists who objected to a corporate cannabis presence in the bohemian neighbourhood. (Disclosure: Postmedia employee Jason Krulicki is a partner at One Plant.)

“Our job is to provide legal cannabis and good service and we’re going to keep trying to do that,” Krulicki said. “But it’s going to reduce friction in the community and we’re really happy about that.”

As recently as 2015, Fantino told the Toronto Sun that he was against the legalization of cannabis: “I see legalizing it or putting it in shops as trying to normalize narcotics, when the truth is there is nothing normal about it. It’s a mind-altering drug that causes impairments and like cigarettes is not healthy.”

When challenged to explain why he founded a medical cannabis company in 2017, he told CBC, “You have to separate out the whole issue of legalization from what I’m involved in right now. I’m involved in the medical aspect that helps people greatly through the dispensing of medically prescribed marijuana cannabis.”

Just down the street from One Plant in Kensington, recreational weed competitor Friendly Stranger is adding a weed retail store beside the former Hot Box cannabis lounge, which the company also acquired. Both brands existed before legalization as a headshop and lounge, respectively.

In February, longtime activist Erin Goodwin — whose now-shuttered illegal dispensary was raided by police in 2016 — announced she had been hired to help manage a Friendly Stranger store in Dundas, Ont. President James Jesty said it’s partly those ties to the “legacy market,” as cannabis advocates call it, that lend credibility to the growing retail chain.

“We would be pretty hypocritical if we had people who were able to get past our background check, able to get their retail cannabis licence and then say oh, but you were busted years ago, we’re not going to hire you. We actually sponsor and do a lot of work around breaking the stigma around cannabis, it’s one of our key pillars.”