Russell Bennett, B.Sc., LL.B. - biography

Russell Bennett became a lawyer in 1997 prior to establishing a career in film and theatre production. In 1998, Bennett produced and co-directed the documentary STONED: Hemp Nation on Trial, which followed the trial of Christopher Clay, owner of Hemp Nation, Canada’s first hemp store. STONED premiered on CBC and was nominated for Best Political Documentary at Hot Docs International Documentary Film Festival.

In 2004, Bennett co-wrote and performed The Reefer Man, a multi-character solo play that told the story of a lawyer who is arrested for growing award-winning cannabis in his basement but escapes to become an underground cannabis superhero. Bennett toured the award-winning play to fringe festivals and professional theatres across Canada. After the birth of the first of his three children, Bennett returned to the practice of insolvency and fraud recovery law.

On April 20, 2018, Bennett founded Cannabis Law, Barristers & Solicitors, a full-service cannabis law firm to help and protect small businesses and entrepreneurs as they grow. On behalf of litigants, Bennett regularly appears at the Superior Court, Provincial Court, Divisional Court and Court of Appeal of Ontario. A recent victory is Laska v. Wellington North, 2021 ONSC 8236 (CanLII), where Bennett and his co-counsel Tamar Friedman won an interim injunction for their clients, restraining the respondent from enforcing its two municipal by-laws against the clients' medical cannabis production facility.

To understand Canadian legalization and to help others understand the federal law, Bennett wrote the book, Canada's Cannabis Act: Annotation & Commentary, now in its fourth edition, 2022-2023.

Bennett posts on matters relating to cannabis and the law at cannabislaw.ca, and hosts the podcast Cannabis Law in Canada, which features long-form interviews with industry and legal experts.