A Delta, B.C., florist says media reports about a drug bust on her street have confused customers into shunning her flower shop.
Kris Sanderson, owner of Delta Flowers, says that several news sources were too vague when they reported on a doda raid at Jojo Flower Shop -- and her business has paid the price.
"It's destroyed me," she said. "It's not fair because I'm an innocent. I didn't have anything to do with that drug."
Last month, police reported seizing six kilograms of doda powder and 3,600 opium poppy pods from a business in the 9400-block of Scott Road.
Some media outlets reported that the drugs were seized from a "Delta flower shop," but did not specify the name.
Sanderson says her business hasn't been the same since. She started getting phone calls from drug users, and even had walk-ins ask to buy doda and doda supplies.
"I'm getting very unlikely characters coming in the door asking me for 2,000 poppy pods, asking me if I have doda power, and when I tell them no they just look perplexed," she said.
And if that wasn't bad enough, Sanderson says she was accosted when she and her daughter, Jennifer Wendell, went to donate flowers to Burnsview Secondary School following the murder of local teen Laura Szendrei.
A woman confronted them in the parking lot to tell them no one wants flowers from a doda peddler.
"It's a horrible thing to be accused of, especially when neither me nor my mother has ever touched any form of substance at all, let alone doda," Wendell said.
Sanderson says revenue is down 80 per cent, but she's reluctant to change the name of her store because so many orders come from internet search engines.
Instead, she wants to clear her family-run flower shop's name so she and her daughter can get back to the business they love.
"I'd like to see my customers come back and know that this shop was never involved in any such thing and never could be," she said.
With a report from CTV British Columbia's Brent Shearer
