Pubdate: Wed, 14 Dec 2016
Source: Vancouver 24hours (CN BC)
Copyright: 2016 Vancouver 24 hrs.
Contact: http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/letters
Website: http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3837
Authors: Gordon McIntyre, Rob Shaw, and Derrick Penner
Page: A2
Referenced: http://mapinc.org/url/spC7LQBu

RECOMMENDATIONS GETTING POSITIVE REVIEWS

Federal panel's suggestions on legalizing recreational marijuana
greeted cautiously in B.C.

Recommendations released Tuesday by the federal panel on legalizing
recreational marijuana were greeted positively, if cautiously, by B.C.
businesses with a stake in the issue.

The committee is recommending Canadians 18 years and older be allowed
to buy marijuana in stores or online, or grow their own with a limits
of four plants a person.

The committee, headed by former federal Liberal cabinet minister Anne
McLellan, says recreational marijuana should not be sold in the same
location as alcohol or tobacco, and there should be diversity of
production beyond the small number of existing, licensed medical
marijuana producers.

It recommends that commercial production should be monitored with a
"seed-to-sale tracking system" to prevent diversions to the black market.

For Vancouver's existing dispensaries operating under the city's
grey-zone licensing system, the recommendations appears to give them
an opening to keep operating under federal regulations as storefront
retail locations.

"We are very, very pleased, very, very happy," said Jessika Villano,
manager of the Buddha Barn, a non-profit compassion club dispensary at
2179 West 4th Ave. in Kitsilano. "It means there will continue to be a
very safe place for our customers to come to.

"We were concerned liquor stores might be allowed to distribute
cannabis. We're medicinal, not on the recreational side, and we would
have hated to see that happen."

Buddha Barn, which got its Vancouver business license in October, has
been in operation for three years. It is a non-profit dispensary,
meaning its license cost $1,000. For-profit dispensaries pay $30,000
for a business license.

Marijuana flowers on display at a medical marijuana dispensary in the
U.S. B.C.'s Supreme Court heard that WeeMedical Dispensary Society,
which has 23 marijuana dispensaries across Canada including 13 in
B.C., opened for business in Delta in April and applied for a business
licence in May but was refused. It applied for a reconsideration of
the decision by Delta council but was again refused.

Marijuana flowers on display at a medical marijuana
dispensary.

"And it's great it's not being packaged up with tobacco," Villano
said. "Cannabis has its own energy. You can't compare it to alcohol or
tobacco.

"We were nervous, scared, and now ultimately we'll see exactly where
goes in the provincial election. I feel like it's definitely a step in
the right direction."

The federal panel also recommended the sale of edible marijuana
products, as long as they are not packaged to target children.

One critic called the recommendations reckless.

"This is going to take out a generation," said Pamela McColl of Smart
Approaches to Marijuana, an advocacy group that opposes legalizing
cannabis for fear it will get into the hands of children. "We are
going to find a way to sue them."

She compared the potential harm to people under 25 to damage
thalidomide caused Canadian babies in the early 1960s.

"It's exactly the same, as far as case law. This is a disaster for the
country."

B.C. Solicitor General Mike Morris said the province is reviewing the
federal report and it is too soon to know how marijuana might be sold
here.
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MAP posted-by: Matt