Pubdate: Fri, 22 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: 36

LEGALIZATION COULD RUIN POT DISPENSARIES

Owners who paid for new class of business licence may lose sales of
cannabis to liquor stores

Marijuana dispensaries that have gone through a rigorous vetting
process to get a coveted licence from the City of Vancouver could find
themselves out of business anyway when the federal government
legalizes the drug.

Earlier this week, provincial Health Minister Terry Lake said he would
prefer to see liquor stores - not cannabis shops - sell recreational
pot once it's legalized. That prompted Councillor Kerry Jang, Vision
Vancouver's lead on the marijuana file, to say Thursday that the city
would owe nothing to those owners who went through the lengthy process
of getting the new class of business licence to sell the illegal
substance within city limits.

"That's the shifting nature of this business - they asked us to
regulate," he said in an interview. "That's a business decision they
made and a risk that they take, like any other businessman."

City council passed the bylaw last June to curtail and control the
more than 100 illegal stores. At the time, Mr. Jang's colleague
Councillor Geoff Meggs said it was a "wake-up call" to a federal
Conservative government pushing a law-and-order approach to shutting
them down, a position Vancouver police deemed a waste of resources and
time.

Up to two or three dozen dispensaries are expected to receive licences
once they start rolling out this spring.

"What [the licensing plan did] was really force the issue in a number
of ways and certainly it brought the federal government in to talk
about the issue, because it was something the city was facing all by
itself," Mr. Jang said Thursday.

Since then, dispensaries have cropped up throughout the province and
Toronto is seeing a boom that could bring up to 100 shops in the
coming months.

Federal Health Minister Jane Philpott was non-committal when asked
whether liquor stores, pharmacies or dispensaries would be the best
outlet for legalized marijuana.

"This is an important question and one I hope to have a good answer
for you in the coming months, but it would be premature for me to give
you an answer on that at this point," she said Thursday after a
meeting in Vancouver with her provincial and territorial
counterparts.

The federal Liberal government has remained mum on the surge in shops,
noting it is just starting the process of moving toward legalizing the
drug. Mr. Jang said the city is hoping to see a public health approach
to both medical and recreational storefront sales of cannabis.

That means that some of Vancouver's oldest dispensaries - non-profit
compassion clubs with strict membership rules for medicinal patients -
could still have a public-health role. Mr. Jang suggested they could
transition to become places where patients go to get cannabis advice
and services rather than products.

Jamie Shaw, president of the Canadian Association of Medical Cannabis
Dispensaries, said her trade organization is not opposed to different
models of distribution as long as interests of patients aren't
overshadowed.

"We've been asking for dispensaries to be regulated for 20 years,"
said Ms. Shaw, who also works at the 18-year-old B.C. Compassion Club
Society.

She added that liquor stores may not be the best outlet for
marijuana.

"Cannabis and alcohol do heighten each other's effects," she said. "So
a lot of people that usually use one or the other, if they can pick
them up in the same place, you're encouraging more mixed use."

Despite the dispensaries still being illegal, Rona Ambrose, interim
leader of the federal Conservatives, called on Ottawa this week to
speed up the regulation of these pot shops. Less than a year earlier,
as the former health minister, Ms. Ambrose said she was "deeply
disappointed" when Vancouver passed the controversial dispensaries
bylaw.

Mr. Jang called her statements this week "quite a stunning reversal"
and said they showed the Conservatives' "lack of leadership, or lack
of thought, around that file."
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MAP posted-by: Matt