Pubdate: Sun, 20 Jul 2014
Source: Victoria Times-Colonist (CN BC)
Copyright: 2014 Times Colonist
Contact: http://www2.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/letters.html
Website: http://www.timescolonist.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/481
Author: Jack Knox
Page: A1

PORT ANGELES MERCHANTS GOING TO POT

Legal marijuana sales outlets are sprouting like weeds across
strait

Our neighbours on the Olympic Peninsula will get their first pot shop
next weekend.

Sea Change Cannabis will open in Discovery Bay, near Port Townsend.
Two other marijuana stores hope to be in business in Jefferson County
soon.

Straight across the strait from Victoria, the state liquor board has
allocated six more licences to Clallam County, where stores will
include Sparket and Mr. Buds in Port Angeles proper and the Hidden
Bush and Weed-R-Us on the highway into town.

Meanwhile, local narcotics cops say the legendary flow of B.C. Bud,
all those dope-stuffed hockey bags spirited across from Vancouver
Island in the moonlight, has become a bit passe. Why smuggle from
Canada when it's legal to grow - with a permit - in Washington?

Holy smokes! We thought it was B.C. that was supposed to have the
Harold Hedd stereotype. Yet suddenly the teeter-totter has tilted, to
the point that Toke Tourism could become a bit of a thing in
Washington, where voters OK'd the recreational use of marijuana in
2012 and the first of 334 licensed cannabis stores opened this month.
Passengers getting off the Clipper in Seattle can now hop on a bus
offering weed tours of the Emerald City.

Will Victorians pop over to Port Angeles to partake? The notion seems
unlikely. This city of 19,000, with its Back to the Future courthouse
clock tower and Reelect Judge Porter campaign signs, looks like
quintessential small-town 'Merica, not Amsterdam. Still=C2=85 "The
recreational tourist industry was definitely a factor in our decision
to open," says Wendy Buck-Benge. Drawn by Olympic National Park,
visitors from all over, including Canada, flood the area each summer.

Buck-Benge, 41, and husband Nick Benge, 42, plan to add a
recreational-marijuana store to the building that already houses their
Sparket medical-marijuana dispensary.

That's where they were this week, standing in front of shelves lined
with glass jars like those found in an old-style candy shop, except,
instead of candy, the jars contain dried marijuana with names like Ace
of Spades and Cannatonic. Above a case of edibles - muffins, peanut
butter crackers, cookies - was a sign promising 20 per cent off on
Sweet Tooth Saturday.

Benge, a one-time yachtmaster who sometimes races in Swiftsure, and
Buck-Benge, a former ER trauma nurse, firmly believe in medicinal pot.
("I'm not looking to create customers," she says. "I'm looking to
create wellness.")

Victorians can't shop there, though. Medical-marijuana stores - there
are half a dozen around Port Angeles, about the same as in Greater
Victoria - are for Washington residents only.

The recreational-pot stores, on the other hand, will be open to anyone
over the age of 21, regardless of where they're from.

Can't smoke on the premises, though, or on the street, or in a car.
Can't take it across the border, unless you're willing to go to jail
and become a bad man's boyfriend. Price could be a deterrent, too.
State and local taxes could drive the price of Sparket's recreational
pot to $20 to $25 US a gram, four or five times as much as it goes for
(albeit illegally) on Vancouver Island.

Still, Malik Atwater, 54, thinks his Mr. Buds store might attract
Canadians who have nothing against marijuana but don't want to buy it
at home because they don't want to break the law. When they come for
their legal pot, he plans to greet them with premises that look
enticing, just like his Colonel Hudson's restaurant next door. (It
already serves Canadian-friendly poutine and has a model of a Mountie
outside.) "I want to do something unique and spectacular," he says.
"It shouldn't look shady or creepy."

Mr. Buds will take a month or two to build, though. Likewise,
Sparket's goal of a Labour Day opening for its recreational store
might be optimistic. Washington's nascent pot shops are already faced
with a shortage of product. The 100 growers licensed by the liquor
board are so far having a hard time meeting demand. "Even if we were
ready to go, there's not enough stuff to sell," Atwater says.

Perhaps that's why the yet-to-open pot shops haven't created much of a
buzz (as it were) in the hospitality industry. At the Port Angeles
Chamber of Commerce, executive director Russ Veenema says it hasn't
been an issue one way or another for the tourism sector.

But up at the Quality Inn, general manager Liz Conrad grimaces
slightly at the prospect of toking tourists. It's already hard enough
to convince guests not to smoke tobacco in their rooms. And no, the
hotel won't permit pot in its designated smoking area. "We go by
federal law," she says. Federal law says marijuana is illegal.

This is the thing: While libertarian Washingtonians might see smoking
marijuana as a personal choice, that doesn't mean it's a choice they
would make themselves, or want wafting under their doors.

Even Atwater shuns the drug. "We don't smoke pot. I tell my kids not
to smoke pot."

He puts it in the same category as the booze that he sells in his
restaurant (or that takes up four aisles in the local Safeway): "I
would never say to someone: 'I think alcohol is great.' Same goes for
pot."

Somebody must think it's great, though, judging by all the B.C. Bud
heading south for the past couple of decades. The cross-border boom
appears to be waning, though, with B.C. wholesale prices reportedly
falling 30 per cent as Americans turn to domestic growers.

"Do I think smuggling has disappeared? Probably not," says Ron
Cameron, who heads the Olympic Peninsula Narcotics Enforcement Team.
"But it's certainly not seen to the degree it was in 2003, 2004."

The profit equation changed when the Canadian dollar, wallowing around
74 cents US in 2004, moved close to par. Groups that had been bringing
in B.C. Bud simply set up in Washington state, growing in leased
homes. "They took the smuggling element out of it."

The advent of medical marijuana in a score of states, plus the
legalization of recreational use in Washington and Colorado, meant
government-inspected American pot has taken part of the market.
Federal authorities may feel differently, but for Cameron's local
unit, marijuana isn't a focus.

Don't expect the flow to dry up entirely, though - not with taxes
pushing the price of government regulated pot so high.

"There may be a growing foundation of black market pot coming through,
just like in the bootlegging days."
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MAP posted-by: Matt