Pubdate: Thu, 21 Jan 2016
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2016 The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Mike Hager
Page: 39

FOURTEEN VANCOUVER POT SHOPS ONE STEP CLOSER TO LEGITIMACY

Fourteen applicants are one step closer to running a licensed 
marijuana dispensary in Vancouver as the city attempts to impose some 
control on the illegal retail sale of cannabis.

The applicants include a current owner who acknowledges a past 
association with the Hells Angels, and the identity of those behind 
seven others remains unknown. Letters published on the city's 
development services website had names missing or redacted.

The city has received public feedback from those within a two-block 
radius of these prospective locations, which are now awaiting a 
development permit before being audited for a new business licence.

Provincial politicians are pushing for pot to be sold through liquor 
stores or pharmacies - not dispensaries - once recreational use is 
made legal, but Vancouver is continuing with its landmark regulation 
that could see these illegal storefronts winnowed down from more than 
100 to just several dozen this year.

Andreea Toma, the city's director of licensing, says regardless of 
what form legalization takes, the standards in place now will help 
Vancouver regulate face-to-face sales of the drug.

"We still maintain that what we're doing is within our jurisdiction, 
which is land use and business licensing - that is a municipal 
government's jurisdiction," Ms. Toma said. "We know that [the status 
of the drug] is going to change, it's just a matter of when and how 
and we'll gladly work with the federal government."

Ms. Toma said these pot shops cropped up and forced the city to 
regulate them because "it was clear that the system the federal 
government does currently have for accessing medical marijuana does not work."

Rocco Dipopolo, whose EVO Medi Society dispensary is one of the 14 in 
the next stage of licensing, said he is happy that Vancouver will 
eventually have the number of pot shops cut in half and praised the 
city "bending over backwards" to help applicants through the process.

If a development permit is issued, then a store's employees and 
owners must show that they don't have any drug convictions in the 
past five years, Ms. Toma said. After that, dispensary owners 
(for-profit shops) pay $30,000 and compassion clubs (which must offer 
therapeutic services on site) $1,000 to obtain a coveted new business licence.

Mr. Dipopolo was once a Hells Angels prospect as a youth in the early 
1990s and says he has long turned the corner on that life to become a 
successful businessman who also owns a tattoo parlour, a gym and a 
boxing clinic. He says he has no criminal record and nothing to hide.

Asked if his past associations should preclude him from running a 
dispensary, he said: "I don't know what to say to you, if someone 
wants to live in the past, they can go ahead and live in the past - 
it doesn't concern me no more.

"I wouldn't be moving forward with this [dispensary] if I thought 
that I was doing something wrong," he said, adding he refuses to sell 
to anyone under 25 years old and buys his products from growers 
licensed under the old medical-marijuana system.

The storefront sale of cannabis products is illegal because these 
dispensaries procure and sell their products outside Health Canada's 
licensed medical-marijuana system, which was overhauled in 2014 and 
now allows about 20 industrial-scale growers to mail their products 
directly to patients who have a doctor's prescription.

Provincial and territorial health ministers are meeting with their 
federal counterpart this week in Vancouver, with B.C.'s Terry Lake 
saying he is not in favour of the dispensary model of distribution, 
which began surging several years ago in Vancouver and now is taking 
hold in Toronto.

About 130 applications submitted for approval from the City of 
Vancouver were rejected for being within 300 metres of schools or 
community centres. Roughly half of those have applied to the board of 
variance to issue a special exemption to continue with the licensing 
process, Ms. Toma said.

Starting next month, the board will begin hearing the first of these 
appeals and continue to do so at a rate of five per meeting, Ms. Toma 
said. The meetings take place every two weeks.

Another six or seven stores will emerge from clusters of shops that 
are too close together and move on to the next stage, she added.

The first new business licence will be issued this spring and those 
dispensaries still not taking part in the application process must 
voluntarily close down come April 20, she said.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom