Pubdate: Thu, 26 Jan 2017
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2017 The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Mike Hager
Page: S1

A TALE OF TWO CITIES POLICING POT

Toronto and Vancouver have taken different approaches to dispensaries
selling ahead of legalization

David Malmo-Levine has had numerous run-ins with Vancouver police in
more than two decades fighting for the legalization of marijuana, the
most intense being the time he says he was dragged by handcuffs while
attempting to block a raid of a downtown cannabis seed store in the
mid-1990s.

So, he said he was pleasantly surprised in May, 2015, when police
returned several thousand dollars worth of bongs and cannabis products
that had been stolen by a man who smashed a stolen minivan through the
storefront of his illegal East Vancouver dispensary.

"It was the best they had ever treated me in my entire life of pot
activism - in fact, they returned the pot and all the edibles, the
hashish and everything [that was stolen]," said Mr. Malmo-Levine, who
spent time in prison after losing a Supreme Court of Canada case
stemming from being charged for running an underground cannabis vapour
lounge more than 20 years ago.

"They returned them no questions asked.

"That's what we want the police to do all the time: to treat us as if
we were selling other soft drugs like coffee beans."

Vancouver's approach to regulating - not raiding - its 95 dispensaries
stands in stark contrast to Toronto, Canada's other largest market for
these illegal stores, where police and politicians say an ongoing
crackdown has become more urgent as these pot shops have become a
magnet for violent thieves.

Earlier this week, Toronto police announced there had been 13 armed
robberies of dispensaries in the past eight months - six of which were
not reported by employees or owners of the businesses. Investigators
said they believe additional robberies have gone unreported and that
employees and operators of some of the targeted dispensaries have
refused to answer questions or to hand over surveillance footage.

On Wednesday, police spokesman Mark Pugash said Toronto police will
continue to raid the city's 44 remaining dispensaries and officers
will keep seizing products and arresting staff when called to
investigate robberies of these pot shops.

He said the owners of the illegal stores are desperate to convince the
people there is a grey area when the only way to legally purchase
cannabis in Canada is to get a prescription and order it through the
regulated mail-order medical system."There are people here who want to
defy the law, but not pay the price and you can't have it both ways,"
Mr. Pugash said. "There is what strikes me as just a massively
developed sense of entitlement [among dispensary owners].

"Undoubtedly the [federal] government is committed to changing the
law, but we don't enforce the law on the basis of what it might be
next year or the year after."

Mr. Pugash said you cannot compare the approach of Toronto police with
their Vancouver counterparts because citizens in the two cities have
very different attitudes toward the popular drug. Toronto Mayor John
Tory said earlier this week that he supports taking a hard line on
these shops until Ottawa follows through with its promise to pass
legislation this spring that will legalize the cannabis and lay out
where it can be sold. Since that initial robbery, Mr. Malmo-Levine's
Stressed and Depressed Association dispensary, which is now licensed
under the city's landmark pot-shop bylaw, has been robbed another two
times. Vancouver police have since said that they do not return any
cannabis products stolen from these stores. The force also says it
typically will not arrest dispensary employees or owners for
trafficking if they report a store robbery because it wants to
encourage people to come forward and report violent crimes.

The department typically only targets dispensaries caught selling to
minors or doing business with organized crime because, it has said, it
takes the equivalent of three months' work by one investigator to
execute a single warrant on a pot shop. After most of the force's
raids, the dispensaries reopened the next day. Instead, the bylaw
officers have been issuing more than 1,000 violation tickets to more
than 50 stores that refuse to close despite being shut out of the
city's licensing regime. Another 43 stores have either been issued
business licences or are going through the application process for a
regulatory system that city staff say can be modified to accommodate
any eventual federal laws legalizing the drug.
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