Daily BrewCanadian cities try different approaches to deal with marijuana dispensaries
[Strains of marijuana are on display in the U.S. as they might appear in a Canadian pot shop. FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images]
An Ottawa mother’s anger over a marijuana dispensary that opened near where her children take tutoring and martial arts classes highlights an issue Canadian cities are increasingly forced to deal with due to the proliferation of businesses that sell a product that is expected to soon be legal, but isn’t just yet.
The pot shop CannaGreen came to Ottawa’s Orleans neighbourhood on Sept. 11, 2016. It shares a building with a Kumon tutoring centre and a tae kwon do academy. All three businesses share the same parking lot.
“I don’t want to tell my eight-year-old boy there is drugs there,” said Nawal Zayat, a parent with children attending the nearby businesses, told the Ottawa Citizen. “We don’t want our kids exposed at this young age. They may want to try it.”
Ottawa has seen more than a dozen marijuana dispensaries pop up in recent months. And the problem isn’t isolated to Canada’s capital.
In June, Calgary introduced a bylaw requiring medical marijuana clinics, which legally prescribe medical marijuana but do not sell it directly, to apply for a development permit in an effort to avoid a clustering of clinics that may transform into dispensaries. The owner of marijuana storefronts in British Columbia and Ontario announced plans to open a Montreal location earlier this year.
Because the pot shops are operating without normal business licensing and regulations, there usually isn’t rules in place to control how many open in one area, or what they open beside. That leaves municipalities, which control land use and local business regulations, to decide how to handle them from a regulatory standpoint.
“We’re pretty easy-going in Vancouver, but then they started to go too far and started to get complaints from the general public about being too close to tons of schools and community centres and things like that,” explained Vancouver Coun. Kerry Jang, who led an effort to introduce regulations aimed at the storefronts themselves since the city doesn’t have jurisdiction over the products they sell.
More than 100 dispensaries have opened in Toronto and Vancouver over the past year or so, though some have since closed down as the cities have cracked down on laws or introduced new regulations.
“We had a sudden increase in pot shops around Vancouver,” said Jang. “We went from maybe three or four that had been around for a very long time to over 100 in about six months time.”
Toronto’s tough approach
It’s hard to say how many dispensaries are operating across Canada because according to federal regulations still in place, they aren’t operating legally. And although the federal government claims they are working towards marijuana legalization, it remains unclear what role, if any, dispensaries will have in that new system.
But as long as the pot shops continue to open, municipal governments and police forces have decisions to make about how to deal with them.
Toronto has taken a hardline approach, cracking down on dozens of the dispensaries operating in the city. In June, the city decided to push debate regarding what to do with dispensaries and medical marijuana back to October.
In Ottawa, there are now more than 15 dispensaries, none of which have a business licence because the city doesn’t have provisions to provide one for storefronts that sell a product that is still considered illegal.
Vancouver faced the same conundrum that cities such as Ottawa are now dealing with.
“There was a vacuum of any kind of legislation on the books,” Jang said. “What do you do?”
Vancouver maintains access
Vancouver’s municipal government took a different approach than Toronto’s crackdowns on pot shops, choosing to create provisions for their existence. In deciding what those would look like, the city has established model, according to Jang.
The city’s regulations require that marijuana dispensaries be located at least 300 metres from schools, community centres and other pot shops, which reduces the concentration of dispensaries without unduly isolating them while keeping them away from minors. Other city regulations for businesses, such as having transparent windows and complying with safety bylaws, also apply.
“It’s silent entirely on the product itself. All we’re regulating is the storefront,” Jang explained. “At the same time, it still allows reasonable access to people who legitimately need medical marijuana, and that was key.”
Since the changes, about 30 shops have closed, new ones haven’t been spouting up to replace them and those that remain have somewhat cleaned up their act, according to Jang. A handful of the shops sought out proper licensing, and the city is fining those that haven’t. Some are paying the fines and some are refusing to in protest, the councillor noted.
In Toronto, the choice to raid dispensaries didn’t solve the problem because many shops will simply reopen and the situation hasn’t changed substantively, Jang asserted.
“They didn’t gain anything with that approach,” he said. “We knew that was how it was going to go. That’s why we didn’t go there.”
Victoria has since taken an approach more like Vancouver’s by introducing regulations restricting advertising and requiring pot shops to be located at least 200 metres apart, among other stipulations.
And Vancouver’s approach won’t substantively change if marijuana is legalized as planned because such a distinction would still be under federal jurisdiction, and land use and business licensing would be a municipal responsibility, the councillor clarified.
“The issue for the federal government, in my opinion, has to do with ensuring that marijuana supply is actually of good quality and safe,” Jang said.
He accused the federal government of not doing their job earlier this month by not sharing test results that indicated there were toxins in marijuana sold at several Vancouver dispensaries, as the Globe and Mail reported.
It’s not enough to simply reiterate that the products are illegal and Vancouver should be thanked for finding a way to deal with the issue of pot dispensaries, Jang said.
“I’m just applying public health principles to a problem,” he insisted.
