Pubdate: Mon, 02 May 2016
Source: Maclean's Magazine (Canada)
Copyright: 2016 Maclean Hunter Publishing Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.macleans.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/253
Author: Michael Friscolanti

Marijuana

THE DRUG DEALERS NEXT DOOR

The Liberal's promise to legalize weed has unleashed a flood of 
illegal storefront dispensaries. Buying pot has never been easier.

At the very least, nobody can accuse Canada Bliss Herbals of trying 
to conceal what it's selling. The sign outside the company's newest 
store (its third location, in the heart of Toronto's Junction 
neighbourhood) features a red Maple Leaf-with a green marijuana plant 
smack in the middle. "Living life in wellness," the slogan reads.

Walk through the door, and any lingering doubt about what's for sale 
goes up in smoke.

Much like a jewellery store, a glass display case features a wide 
selection of wares: freshly picked bud, divvied up by the gram and 
sealed in tiny plastic baggies. A black chalkboard lists every 
aromatic variety, from "Organic Love Potion" to "Redwood Kush" to 
"Rock Star Bubba." One of the latest additions to CBH's menu, "Opium 
Kush," comes highly recommended. "I just tried that last night," one 
employee, standing behind the display case, tells a customer. "I 
really enjoyed it."

Cannabis oils and edibles are also in stock. The toffee shortbread 
cookie, for "pain relief and relaxing," even lists the calorie count (121).

At first glance, there is nothing unique about this particular 
marijuana shop. Although it may come as a surprise to some, dozens of 
similar dispensaries have operated-in open defiance of the law-for 
many years, mostly in British Columbia's Lower Mainland, where early 
advocates of medicinal marijuana blazed the initial trail. Illegal 
cannabis dispensaries have become so commonplace in Vancouver (there 
are now close to 110, a higher tally than Tim Hortons outlets) that 
city council is attempting to bring them into the fold, choosing to 
license and regulate rather than raid and arrest.

But in the months since Justin Trudeau's Liberals won the October 
election-in part, on a platform to legalize weed after nearly a 
century of prohibition-other parts of the country, especially 
Toronto, have witnessed a surge in storefront dispensaries as 
so-called "ganja-preneurs" try to stake their claim in a 
soon-to-be-sanctioned racket worth billions of legitimate dollars. 
The Kensington Market district alone has 14. All told, Toronto boasts 
four dozen dispensaries and counting, each one cashing in on the 
legislative grey zone created by the Prime Minister's promise-yet to 
be implemented-of transforming the marijuana trade into a regulated, 
taxable industry. (Although there is no official count of Canadian 
dispensaries, the number is believed to be above 200, from 
Chilliwack, B.C. to Guelph, Ont., to Cole Harbour, N.S.)

"This 'in-between period' is a concerning period," says Toronto 
Councillor Joe Cressy, who chairs his city's drug strategy 
implementation panel. "You have a vacuum, and many entrepreneurs are 
seeking to fill that vacuum illegally without fear of reprisal." 
Simply put, Cressy says, everyone is waiting for Ottawa to unveil its 
master pot plan (a process that still hasn't been assigned a 
definitive timeline) while pretending the Criminal Code doesn't 
exist. "There is very little we can do," he says. "Until we have a 
new federal piece of legislation, we're in this position."

Some of the new stores, which claim to be medicinal, are barely even 
pretending to cater to "patients." British Columbia's long-standing 
medical dispensaries are no more legal than the latest batch, but 
they at least require somewhat concrete evidence of a person's 
ailment, whether it's an actual prescription or a letter of diagnosis 
from a doctor. Many of the newcomers are not nearly as strict. At 
some stores, an empty pill bottle is confirmation enough of a 
sickness. At others, a sworn statement from the customer will do, as 
long as it is signed by a notary public (who has no real idea if the 
person is telling the truth).

At Canada Bliss Herbals, a Maclean's reporter paid $50 for a "doctor 
consultation," which turned out to be a meeting, via Skype, with a 
licensed practical nurse in Surrey, B.C. When the reporter explained 
that he suffered from severe lower back pain, the nurse said he could 
become a member of CBH, and immediately purchase any product, on the 
grounds that "you're self-medicating and you're doing it under your 
own guidance." No prescription required. No actual proof.

A few minutes later, the reporter walked out of the shop with two 
grams of marijuana; one was $9, the other $14. Minus the credit-card 
machine-and the warning label stuck to the baggie: "Keep out of reach 
of children"-it was a fairly typical drug deal.

With legalization looming, does it really matter that some 
dispensaries already appear to be selling recreational weed to any 
adult who wants it? And can you blame them, considering the obvious 
legal void that now exists? "The genie is out of the bottle," says 
Kirk Tousaw, a Vancouver Island lawyer who has spent his career 
challenging the constitutionality of Canada's marijuana laws. "The 
reality on the streets, the reality on the ground, has outstripped 
where we are legislatively, and the government is playing catch-up."

And not nearly fast enough, says Benedikt Fischer, a senior 
researcher at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). 
Legalizing marijuana could prove to be one of the most dizzying 
social changes the country has ever seen, and it is critical that the 
government figure out, sooner rather than later, who will be allowed 
to sell it, how the market will be enforced, and what safeguards will 
be adopted to keep the drug away from teenagers. Equally important is 
a coherent strategy on how to fight the inevitable increase in 
cannabis-impaired driving.

"We've been in this weird transition for some time now, and quite 
frankly, it makes a mockery of good law and regulation," Fischer 
says. "It's why we really need to get to work and define where we're 
going and what the new reality is. We have to come out of this 
lawless kind of state where everyone does what they want and no one 
knows what the rules are."

Indeed, the rules have never been hazier. Officially, marijuana 
remains a controlled substance, which means it's still a crime to 
grow, sell or possess. But medicinal marijuana is legal, with an 
important caveat: a patient with a valid prescription must obtain the 
drug, via registered mail, from one of Health Canada's approved 
growers. At last count, more than 50,000 people do just that, 
receiving their doctor-approved weed from one of 30 licensed producers (LPs).

That distribution system is now bracing for a potential explosion, 
with Liberal MP and former Toronto police chief Bill Blair tapped to 
oversee a task force that will examine the best way to "legalize, 
strictly regulate and restrict access to marijuana in a careful and 
orderly way." The Prime Minister himself has said it's unfair that 
hundreds of thousands of Canadians carry criminal records because of 
simple cannabis possession, specifically pointing to the example of 
his late brother, Michel, who was charged with marijuana possession 
shortly before his 1998 death in an avalanche.

Exactly what the Liberals' weed plan will look like is anyone's guess 
at this point, as is the timeline. Blair has yet to announce the 
members of his task force, and no deadline has been assigned to their 
consultations. It will likely be at least a year, if not more, before 
any specific legislation is revealed. In the meantime, though, this 
much is certain: would-be players from all walks of industry are 
jockeying for position in a lucrative market believed to be worth $5 
billion, if not more.

Licensed producers insist they are best equipped to provide the legal 
recreational supply, citing their state-of-the-art facilities and 
strict growing regulations. (In January, the industry group that 
represents LPs called on Ottawa to crack down on the ever-expanding 
dispensaries, whose products come from "unknown sources with no 
quality control.") Major drug store chains have also entered the 
fray, arguing they should be the ones to handle retail sales. Others, 
including Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne, say it should be liquor 
stores doing the selling.

The dispensaries, as always, are pushing the issue-with action, not 
words. Forever on the fringe of the law, traditional dispensaries 
insist they provide crucial access to patients, and should remain in 
business as part of a legalized recreational framework. In February, 
a Federal Court judge seemed to bolster that claim, ruling that 
medicinal users should have the right to grow their own stash (or 
assign someone else to grow it for them.)

"I think there is a place for dispensaries whether they are in the 
Liberals' plan or not, because I don't think they're going away," 
says Tousaw, one of the lawyers on the case. "Absent some sort of 
massive, almost police-state tactics, it is going to be awfully hard 
to shut them all down as a practical matter."

Look no further than Vancouver. After tolerating dispensaries for two 
decades, the city has recently moved toward a regulatory regime that 
requires stores to pay a licensing fee ($1,000 for non-profit 
compassion clubs, $30,000 for everyone else). Though still illegal, 
businesses will be allowed to remain open if they meet certain 
criteria, including being 300 m from a school. In the meantime, the 
Vancouver Police Department says it will continue its policy of 
investigating only those dispensaries accused of selling to minors or 
posing a public safety threat. Since 2013, Vancouver police have 
executed just 11 dispensary-related search warrants.

"There is a misconception out there that the police have the 
authority to shut these businesses down," says Const. Brian Montague, 
a spokesman for the force. "That is not the case. The Criminal Code 
gives the police the authority to arrest people, detain people, to 
seize evidence, to bring someone to court, but it doesn't give us the 
ability to board up a business and shut it down. It is the city that 
regulates land usage."

Criminal investigations are also very costly and time-consuming, 
Montague says, and the department must always weigh how best to 
deploy finite resources. Last year, when a local anti-marijuana 
activist complained that the cops are "failing in their duty to 
maintain law and order" by not shuttering every dispensary in 
Vancouver, the force examined how long it actually takes to conduct a 
single dispensary investigation. The answer? 560 hours of police 
time, or the equivalent of one officer working full-time for three 
months. "We have to prioritize," Montague says.

Throw in the added uncertainty triggered by the Liberals' marijuana 
pledge, and the blurry line between legal and illegal is essentially 
non-existent.

"I've never experienced a situation like this where there are pending 
changes to the law coming, and even before the laws are changed 
people are stepping ahead of the new regulations," says Saskatoon 
police Chief Clive Weighill, who is also president of the Canadian 
Association of Chiefs of Police. "This is a real precedent-setter in Canada."

Weighill says police in most parts of the country are continuing to 
enforce the law as it stands; in recent months, dispensaries have 
been targeted in Halifax, Nanaimo, B.C., and his home city of 
Saskatoon. But his association has also publicly urged the Trudeau 
government to remind Canadians that marijuana remains illegal-and to 
release any details it can about the pending regulatory regime.

"If the citizens of our country are saying we want to move to a 
legalized framework, then let's do that," says Tom Stamatakis, 
president of the Canadian Police Association, which represents 
Canada's 41,000 frontline officers. "But let's create the rules and 
make sure everyone understands what they are. Now, it's inconsistent."

Just ask Dana Larsen. A vocal cannabis activist who operates a 
Vancouver dispensary (and who ran for B.C.'s NDP leadership in 2011), 
Larsen spent much of April on a cross-country tour, giving away 
hundreds of thousands of marijuana seeds to anyone willing to grow 
the plants in public. He was arrested only once: at a stop in 
Calgary. After a night in jail, Larsen was released on bail 
conditions, including one that prohibits him from possessing any drug 
without a prescription-unless he's on the job.

"I run a marijuana dispensary, so at work I'm allowed to possess and 
use and buy and sell illegal drugs, but not anywhere else," he says, 
highlighting the obvious irony. "All the dispensaries in Canada are 
illegal, as are all the seed banks and all the massive marijuana 
rallies. The marijuana movement is actually Canada's largest-ever 
civil disobedience campaign in terms of how many hundreds of 
businesses are openly defying the law and how many municipalities are 
allowing that to happen. These laws are still on the books, but you 
wouldn't know it."

Especially, for example, if you walk into the B.C. Pain Society in 
Vancouver-the first medicinal dispensary to sell its weed in a 
vending machine. "We are not technically illegal; we are 100 per cent 
illegal," says owner Chuck Varabioff. "I don't bulls-t anyone. What I 
am doing, according to the Criminal Code is illegal, but I am willing 
to take that chance, because I am helping people."

If this is the final stage of the disobedience campaign, it is driven 
as much by profit as ideology. Even if most dispensaries are shut out 
of the legalized world-in favour of liquor control boards, for 
example, or Shoppers Drug Mart-there is still plenty of green to be 
made in the interim.

"We want to be a national brand," says Don Briere, one of B.C.'s most 
recognized dispensary owners. The 64-year-old is most remembered for 
the headlines he garnered in 1999, when the RCMP busted up what was 
then the largest illegal grow-op in the province. Freed from prison 
long ago, Briere is now the driving force behind Weeds Glass and 
Gifts, a chain of dispensaries that has recently expanded to Toronto, 
Hamilton and Ottawa, with plans to open up storefront franchises in 
Montreal and Halifax.

Few have pushed the cannabis envelope further than Briere. In 
previous media interviews, he has said he would sell recreational 
marijuana at his supposedly medicinal dispensaries, essentially 
daring police to arrest him. But he insists to Maclean's that his 
stores are preparing for the eventual recreational market, not 
jumping ahead. "We would be happy to sell recreational but we're not 
doing it," he says. "We're trying to co-operate with everybody. We're 
trying to show that we're responsible people." (Weeds is one of the 
shops that requires only a pill bottle, and matching ID, before 
selling to a customer.)

Briere says he expects to sell upwards of $7 million worth of 
cannabis this year, with a profit margin of 16 per cent. "Business is 
very good," he says. "But the market in Vancouver is saturated."

Like Briere, Ryan Williams also sees dollars signs in Toronto, where 
the city has no dispensary by-laws in place, and where the police, 
like those in Vancouver, are operating on a "complaint-generated" 
basis. Williams, 31, launched his first Canada Bliss Herbals in 
Vancouver last April; his two Toronto locations opened earlier this 
year, with two more on the way in May. "We are still in that grey 
area on the verge of legalization," he says. "I wanted to be a little 
bit ahead of the curve."

At first, Williams insisted that every customer needs a letter of 
diagnosis from a doctor in order to become a member of his club. When 
Maclean's explained how that certainly wasn't the case when its 
reporter dropped by to sign up-that, in fact, it took nothing more 
than a verbal declaration that he was "self-medicating"-Williams 
remained adamant his store is in the medicinal marijuana business, 
not the recreational one.

"I know that we run a tighter ship than a lot of these other places," 
he says. "I know one particular chain of dispensaries, I'm not going 
to mention any names, if you just have a pill bottle with your name 
on it then they'll sell to you. There are ones where you can just 
walk in and they'll sell you a joint on the spot. That's not the case 
with us. We do our homework to make sure that somebody's got a 
diagnosis, that they're actually medicating for something."

Of course, that distinction makes no real difference. Medicinal or 
not, Canada Bliss Herbals is still illegal-like every other 
dispensary. The real question is: When marijuana does become legal, 
at some point, is this how the landscape should look?

"Even somebody who believes in legalization, like myself, doesn't 
believe for one second that it should be an entrepreneurial 
opportunity for corner stores across the city to sell pot," says 
Cressy, the Toronto councillor. "We have failed if we do that."

Not surprisingly, Kirk Tousaw disagrees. People concerned about the 
proliferation of illegal dispensaries need ask themselves one 
question, he says. "Does that same person become concerned every time 
they pass a liquor store or a bar or a place where tobacco is being 
sold?" he asks. "I doubt it. And yet cannabis is dramatically safer 
than alcohol as a social substance, dramatically safer than tobacco 
as something you smoke. So if you're concerned about cannabis but not 
those other substances, then I think you've got to take a look in the 
mirror and maybe understand that your concerns aren't based in reality."

As for the real intentions of certain dispensaries, some of the 
old-school operators are the first to say that not all are created 
equal. Dieter MacPherson, executive director of the Victoria Cannabis 
Buyers Club, one of the country's oldest dispensaries, says although 
full legalization "can't come soon enough," sellers who are clearly 
in the recreational market should not hide behind a medicinal veil. 
"If someone is interested in selling recreational marijuana, and 
they're willing to stand by their scruples and break a bad law," he 
says, "they should do it loudly and proudly."

Says Tousaw: "I think the time has come for these pioneers to say: 
'Look, we think cannabis is perfectly fine to sell and we're going to 
sell it to any adult that walks in our doors.' You know what? I would 
defend that in court in a heartbeat."

For now, court is the furthest thing from Ryan Williams's mind. He is 
focused on his expansion plans, including the half-dozen franchisees 
who have signed up to join him in the Greater Toronto Area. "I think 
it's in the public's best interest for the dispensaries to be the 
business model that [the government] rolls it out on," he says. "At 
the end of the day, though, I've come to accept the fact that: 'Who 
knows?' We could end up getting put out of business, or it could go 
in our favour and we're all going to be billionaires."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom