Pubdate: Thu, 23 Apr 2015
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2015 Postmedia Network Inc.
Contact:  http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Jeff Lee
Page: A1
Cited: http://www.scribd.com/doc/262756357/Pot-Proposal#scribd

VANCOUVER MOVES TO DEFUSE POT DISPENSARY EXPLOSION

City could become the first in Canada to regulate the sale of marijuana

Vancouver is about to become the first city in Canada where the
business of selling marijuana will be regulated and permitted.

Although the drug is illegal in Canada and technically only available
to people by a mail-order, prescription system set up by the federal
government, the city will permit the operation of dispensaries under a
proposed framework that selects which businesses can open and imposes
rigid operating conditions.

The proposed regulatory framework, which will take months to implement
and still needs council approval, reflects a permissive view by the
Vision Vancouver majority that supports access to marijuana for
medicinal purposes.

Under Mayor Gregor Robertson's administration, the city has held off
enforcement as the number of unlicensed, unregulated and illegal pot
dispensaries skyrocketed during the past two years.

The plan will go to city council Tuesday and specifically ignores the
question of legalizing the sale and use of marijuana.

"We're not getting into that argument. We are simply regulating an
unregulated business, just as we would any other business," said Kerry
Jang, a city councillor.

As of mid-April, city officials counted more than 80 such shops, a
fourfold increase since 2012 when the federal government changed the
rules for how medical marijuana users can buy their medicine. In the
last four months alone, 20 new shops have opened.

It will not be cheap, however, for anyone to operate a shop. The city
will levy a $30,000 annual administration fee, followed by business
licences that will cost up to $5,000 per year, depending on square
footage. Each shop will also have to reapply annually under the city's
official development plan bylaws as a conditional use. The businesses
can't be owned by companies, only individuals, and they and their
employees will have to undergo annual criminal record checks.

The city will also control location; dispensaries can't be within 300
metres of schools, community centres and each other. And in an effort
to rid certain neighbourhoods of established shops, the city will ban
them from side streets.

They also won't be permitted in the Granville entertainment district
or in the Downtown Eastside other than along Main and Hastings streets.

In a concession to health officials worried about food safety and
youth accessing drug-laced cookies, the city will not allow the sale
of edible products and oils. Many of the shops open now sell these
products. But Jang said people could still buy their drugs and take
them home to make into foods and oils.

The restrictions are likely to knock out as many as 25 per cent of the
existing shops, Jang said.

The city's plan is sure to enrage the federal government, which in
recent years has sought to more strictly control the flow of medicinal
marijuana. Neither the federal government nor the province were
consulted about the city's plans.

A spokesman for Health Minister Rona Ambrose responded initially with
an election-targeted attack on Liberal leader Justin Trudeau,
suggesting a new government would make marijuana use even more
permissive. But he also said the Stephen Harper government isn't about
to bend to Vancouver's plans.

"Storefronts selling marijuana are illegal and will remain illegal,"
said Michael Bokenius, a spokesman for Ambrose.

B.C. Justice Minister Suzanne Anton said Wednesday the province will
analyze the implications of the city's proposed scheme, including
whether the city has the authority to license the establishments.

"I don't have a reaction at the moment," she said. "It's obviously an
interesting inter-jurisdictional play. The legalization of marijuana,
if yes or no to that question, lies with the federal
government."

Jang, the Vision Vancouver council's specialist on medical and mental
health issues, said the city was forced into regulating dispensaries
because of what he called Ottawa's "prohibitionist approach."

"It is because the federal medical marijuana laws are absolutely
unworkable. Here is a case in which you had people who used to grow
their own and do their own thing, and we had no complaints and only a
few shops in Vancouver," Jang said.

"All of a sudden we're told to destroy their plants, they've got to
buy it by mail, they have to smoke it and not eat it. So quite
frankly, the federal government's own laws, this prohibitionist
approach, has created the vacuum these medical pot shops are filling."

The surge in shops has caused headaches for both police and city
regulators. The Vancouver Police Department issued an edict last year
that it would not enforce the federal government's drug laws as they
relate to the shops unless they posed either a risk to youth or were
engaged in or operated by organized crime.

City manager Penny Ballem, a licensed physician, said the federal
government had created "greyness and confusion" because of its new
rules restricting how people who need medical marijuana access it. She
noted that the city's elected officials have adopted a view there are
health benefits for some people to use marijuana as a medicant.

"The federal government is the jurisdiction to regulate the sale of
marijuana. We do not have any authority in that area," she said. "And
in the greyness and the confusion and the sort of gap we are in, in
terms of the federal approach, the city has decided we have to step
in."

When asked what was grey about the law, she said the fact that the
government's new position on medical marijuana is being appealed in
the courts has created uncertainty and allowed pot shops to spring
up.

Ballem said the city looked at both Washington state and Denver, where
the sale of pot is legal and the proposed framework brings Vancouver
into similar standards. However, she said Vancouver's regulations
would allow substantially more shops than Seattle, where state
regulations are based on per capita allowances. In Seattle, for
example, only three or four stores would be permitted. Denver allows
15 shops per 100,000 population, a range similar to what Vancouver is
considering, Ballem said.

As part of the framework, the city is proposing to amend its zoning
and development bylaws and official development plans in the Downtown,
and Downtown Eastside Oppenheimer districts. If council accepts the
plan, a public hearing will be held.
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MAP posted-by: Matt