Girl Guide, 9, sells out of cookies in an hour after setting up shop outside Canadian cannabis store
Elina Childs finds queue of customers on first day of legal sales in country
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Your support makes all the difference.A Canadian Girl Guide sold out of cookies in under an hour after setting up shop outside a cannabis store on the first day of legal sales.
Elina Childs, 9, offloaded 30 boxes of cookies at $5 (£3.83) each outside a licensed shop in Edmonton, Alberta, on Wednesday, the same day Canada became the second country to legalise the possession and use of recreational marijuana.
Smoking cannabis is known to trigger uncontrollable urges to eat sugary snacks, commonly known as “the munchies”.
Elina's father, Sean Childs, said they headed for the unnamed cannabis store after his daughter struggled to sell enough cookies in their own neighbourhood.
“We came up with the idea that we’re going to have this great big line up out there (outside the cannabis store) – why don’t we go and sell some cookies?” Mr Childs told CTV News.
“It went around the block, there were so many people,” he said, adding they “sold out completely” within 45 minutes of arriving.
Mr Childs said he used the experience to teach Elina, who has cystic fibrosis, about legalisation and the dangers of smoking.
“We talked about ... what it was and what it means for people who want to use it and people who don’t want to use it,” he said.
Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau made cannabis legalisation a key campaign pledge ahead of his 2015 election victory, arguing it would reduce the billions in profits pouring into the country’s black market.
The new law allows the drug to be purchased from officially recognised shops, though it will still be illegal for someone to sell the drug to their friends, even in small amounts, if they do not have a licence.
Uruguay became the first country to legalise the sale of recreational cannabis in 2013, and a number of US states have voted to end prohibition in the past few years.
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