Edmonton store rolls out red carpet on first day of legal cannabis sales
Dozens of people lined up Wednesday morning outside Nova Cannabis, just south of Whyte Avenue, on the first day of legal cannabis sales.
The store rolled out a red carpet for the event and placed a bouncer at the door.
"This is a really iconic time in Canadian history," said Marinke Lerous, one of the people in line. "I'm really excited to be a part of history."
Lerous said she's a medical user of marijuana and wants to see what the store has to offer, and perhaps try something new.
The store is one of six in Edmonton expected to open at 10 a.m. Wednesday.
Online sales site inundated
Alberta's only legal, non-medical online cannabis store, operated through the Alberta Gaming & Liquor Commission, opened at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday.
The site was inundated and forced to shuffle people into a queue, or "waiting room," said Kaleigh Miller, spokesperson with AGLC.
At one point there were 11,000 people in the queue, but the system worked fairly well for the volume it was dealing with, Miller said Wednesday.
"After five minutes or so, it was processing 200 orders every five minutes," Miller said.
As of 8:30 a.m. there had been more than 40,000 visits to the site and several items, from dried flowers to oils, had sold out in a matter of hours.
"The AGLC will continue to work with licensed producers to get stock replenished, she said.
