Joke’s on us

What started as a goofy joke turned out to be very revealing about our community. We are delighted, and a little surprised, by the show of community support for our (albeit fake) new venture into the business of cannabis.
Although not faithfully observed, there is a long-standing tradition at The Creemore Echo to print an April Fool’s story in the edition preceding April 1.
For those who missed it, this year’s headline announced that The Echo had skirted the rules and received special permission to open a recreational cannabis store.
The story fooled a lot of people. It was so convincing, because it turns out that people wanted it to be true. We received many, many comments from people who were thoroughly amused and a huge majority had an if-only-it-were-true attitude.
It has shown us that, we are on the right track with taking cannabis out of the criminal code and into retail stores.
People who may or may not partake of cannabis were a-ok with their local newspaper doubling as a pot shop.
As expected there was a lot of joshing, demands for some of the “inky fingers” strain and even a delivery of brownies (special ingredient not added). But there was an underlying level of genuine support that makes us realize the community will welcome a pot shop when the time comes. (So much so, we have decided to add it to our contingency plan for the newspaper – stop already, it’ll never work.)
So, we are sorry to disappoint our readers with the revelation that we have embraced “fake news” for one day only.
The whole thing serves to reinforce our responsibility as a trusted source of news and information in the community. We are very flattered that our readers trust what we print in these pages, and we will not make a habit of testing that trust.

P.S. Honourable mention goes to Stephens Fuels for giving us a taste of our own medicinal marijuana.