Pubdate: Sat, 07 May 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: A16

TORONTO OVERTAKES VANCOUVER AS COUNTRY'S CANNABIS CAPITAL

Toronto has unseated Vancouver as Canada's de facto cannabis capital
due to an ongoing explosion in illegal dispensaries, while officials
begin shutting down dozens of shops in the West Coast city to enforce
a landmark new bylaw.

The owner of a cannabis consulting firm who has been tracking the
rapid growth of the illicit sector following last fall's election win
by the federal Liberals, who have promised to legalize the drug, says
Toronto's wide-open market is now supporting more than 100 pot shops.

This expansion comes as Vancouver has shut down 22 dispensaries out of
its roughly 100 locations in the past week, and city staff say they
will continue their crackdown over the coming weeks. About two dozen
are expected to remain open while they clear regulatory hurdles to
obtain a coveted new class of business licence.

Harrison Jordan, a second-year student at Toronto's Osgoode Hall Law
School and owner of The Big Toke, said he has mapped 114 dispensaries
now operating - or opening very soon - across a region where only a
handful of tucked-away businesses were operating a year ago.

Newer, more brazen, storefronts are increasingly branching out into
quiet residential neighbourhoods, but most, he said, are clustered
into four main areas: The Danforth, The Junction, Queen Street West
and their original hub of Kensington Market. (He has included eight
locations in the suburban areas of Etobicoke, Mississauga, Richmond
Hill, Scarborough and Vaughan.)

"In the next month or two, we might have as many dispensaries as Pizza
Pizzas in Toronto," said Mr. Jordan, who built his database by
cross-referencing the dispensaries' own websites with various social
media platforms and several online listing services. This is the most
comprehensive tally to date of Toronto's shops, which, like all
dispensaries, procure and sell their products outside of the federal
government's mail-order medical marijuana system.

Adam Blender, director at the Vancouver-based SWED Society chain of
dispensaries, said his first Toronto franchise opened in February
after neighbours reacted positively to the prospect of a dispensary
moving in.

"We were excited for the potential market in Toronto ever since we
opened our Vancouver location last year," he said in an e-mail.

SWED, which stands for Smoke Weed Every Day, now has six other
Toronto-area stores open or coming soon.

When Vancouver's boom hit 100 dispensaries early last year, an alarmed
city council passed a bylaw designed to both regulate them and reduce
their overall numbers. Staff announced that 22 had shut down before
bylaw officers canvassed the city last weekend and 46 shops had been
ordered to close while they appeal their licence rejections.

Such regulation is unlikely to happen any time soon further
east.

Toronto Mayor John Tory expressed exasperation last month at the
ongoing boom, but said he is awaiting direction from Ottawa on how to
proceed before federal legislation is introduced next spring
legalizing marijuana. (Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has advocated
for government-owned liquor stores to handle the eventual face-to-face
sale of legal pot.)

"The one thing you can't afford to have happen is a broad-scale
mockery of the laws," Mr. Tory said at a news conference on April 20 -
the day marijuana enthusiasts around the world celebrate the drug.

The city's top medical officer is due to report back to the Toronto
Board of Health at the end of this month with details on how other
jurisdictions regulate dispensaries.

Despite the large expansion in shops, the Prosecution Service of
Canada, which handles all federal drug cases, recently told The Globe
and Mail that only three dispensaries have been busted in Toronto in
the past two years.

In Vancouver, police have said it takes the equivalent of three
months' work by one investigator to execute a warrant on a pot shop.
After most of the force's 11 recent raids, the dispensaries reopened
the next day.

Like their counterparts in Vancouver, officers in Toronto are
especially concerned with reports of selling to minors, Toronto Police
service spokesman Mark Pugash said. He added that an experienced drug
squad investigator recently returned from studying Vancouver's
approach to policing the use and sale of marijuana and other illicit
street drugs.

About a third of Toronto's dispensaries are chains from British
Columbia, according to Mr. Jordan's research.

"If your livelihood depends on selling marijuana and you don't know if
you're going to be able to sell marijuana, then you'll do so in a
space that's less hostile and more stable," Mr. Jordan said of the
shift east.
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MAP posted-by: Matt