Municipal officials and marijuana dispensaries remain in the dark about what will happen when the federal government legalizes cannabis next year.
After the feds legalize pot — which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised will be before July 1, 2018 — it will fall to the provinces to determine the methods of distribution, legal age, maximum possession amounts and other issues around the sale and purchase of the product, as they do with alcohol. But enforcement and a host of other issues will come down to local governments and police forces.
Mayor Patricia Heintzman thinks Squamish may be a bit ahead of other municipalities because the council has already set out bylaws that regulate the sector, even though it remains technically illegal.
Ambiguities created by a number of Supreme Court decisions, as well as the federal government’s expressed plans to legalize, led the District to put bylaws in place a year ago, Heintzman says.
Squamish identified areas where dispensaries are not permitted (Cleveland Avenue), as well as distance from schools and other dispensaries.
“We thought, let’s bring in some regulations so we have some parameters that we can fit into whatever the federal government brings in,” she said. “We realize that we may have to tweak those bylaws once the feds and the province decide how they’re going to approach it.”
Mike Farnworth, B.C.’s minister of public safety, has announced that public consultations will take place on the subject.
“We haven’t had any direct – as far as I know – conversations with the provincial government yet,” the mayor says. “I think they’re really just starting to reach out like that.”
She hopes senior governments recognize two streams of marijuana consumption.
“There is a recreational stream and then there’s the medical stream,” she says. “And you don’t necessarily want people who are using marijuana for medical purposes going into a beer or wine store to get their treatment.”
Over-regulation is another worry she has.
“If there are too many regulations put in place, you are not going to achieve the major goal of reducing or getting rid of the black market side of the equation,” Heintzman says.
“If it’s still too regulated and you say no to people having some plants of their own, if you say no to smaller dispensaries, you are still going to create the imperative to have the criminal aspect in the industry and therefore are you really achieving the goals that you’re trying to achieve through legalization?”
She hopes the federal and provincial governments are looking at how things work in jurisdictions where legalization has already taken place, such as Washington, California, and Colorado.
In July, Canada’s premiers jointly asked the federal government to delay the legalization date until they could address public education, road safety, taxation issues and training for those involved in the distribution and sale of marijuana.
Coun. Doug Race shares the mayor’s concerns and adds to the list of issues that need addressing if the roll-out of legal marijuana is going to be successful.
“Does that mean anybody can just walk down the street smoking a joint?” he asks. “Can they smoke a joint in their car, assuming they’re not impaired? Or can they walk around with an open container [of marijuana]?”
The province of Ontario, which leads the country in terms of laying out plans for responding to the legalization, has said it will offer pot online and through a stand-alone network of retail outlets separate from, but similar to, the provincial liquor distribution branch.
“Are we going to go the Ontario way and just have it going through liquor stores?” Race asks.
“Or are we going to open up and license a whole bunch of dispensaries, more or less the same as we’ve done with alcohol? I think the province has to make decisions about all these things and it’s going to be a challenge.”
Race voted last year against zoning for marijuana dispensaries in Squamish, based on the fact that the product remains technically illegal, he says. But he has believed since he was in university that it should be legalized.
“It seems so inconsistent with the way we treat alcohol and tobacco,” he says. “I can tell you from practising law over the years, the most dangerous drug that we have right now is alcohol.”
He is concerned that the federal government’s plan to license a few dozen large-scale marijuana producers could have the effect of limiting supply which, in turn, would see the illegal black market continue.
Meanwhile, entrepreneurs who are already in the business are likewise uncertain about what legalization means for them.
Chad Jackett, who operates Grassroots Medicinal in Squamish and who is also president of Cannabis Growers of Canada, has a host of concerns and beefs.
He sees the looming federal plan as a big guy-versus-little guy scenario, in which small “craft” operators like him will be pushed aside by emerging industry giants. This is particularly galling to him because, he says, it is the constellation of small dispensaries across Canada that have been advocating for legal reform and he worries it will be big operators, who have not been part of this fight, who benefit the most.
He says members of his umbrella group use primarily organic cultivation techniques, while major growers use harmful pesticides.
He has some harsh words for the local government, too. A business license to operate a dispensary in Squamish is $5,000 a year, he says, but it offers no guarantee that police won’t move in and shut down what remains, despite the municipal approval, an illegal operation.
“It’s a protection racket without the protection,” he says.
