VIANARCHRIS
Well-Known Member
As marijuana dispensaries crop up across Toronto faster than artisanal bakeries, a majority of residents welcome their prolific growth.
Fifty-seven per cent of respondents in a recent Forum Research survey said yes when asked “should marijuana dispensaries be allowed to operate in Toronto?,” versus 30 per cent who disagreed and 13 per cent who had no opinion.
(AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)In this Feb. 10, 2016 photo, marijuana sits on a scale next to one-gram containers designed to look like shotgun shells, at Smokin Gun Apothecary, the new marijuana dispensary, in Glendale, Colo.
They key word in that question is actually one that’s missing: medical. And given that the budding business of marijuana dispensaries in Toronto is well outside the prescribed Health Canada, it suggests many in the city are simply shrugging over those concerns.
After years of operating with impunity in Vancouver, ambiguously legal “medical” marijuana stores have been popping up across Toronto for months, some offering appointments to get prescriptions for $50 and others taking painkiller prescriptions in lieu of a medical marijuana card or even accepting proof of a certain kind of ailment, be it back pain or anxiety, as enough to sanction a toke.
Amid the legal and regulatory haze, Toronto Police say they are only going after any of the vape lounges, pot shops and other green-tinged businesses on a complaints basis. And, if the Forum poll is any indication, most Torontonians, are totally cool with it.
“Toronto police is dealing with marijuana on a complaint basis at the moment,” said Victor Kwong, media relations officer with the Toronto Police Service. He said it’s a “different story” if someone is moving a truckload of pot but police are, generally, not going after this green rush “because everything right now is ambiguous.”
Those who do hold doctor-prescribed medical pot licences can grow their own weed — for now at least after a court ruling struck down those prohibitions. But the only way to legally buy weed in Canada remains to hold that prescription and order it from one of the half dozen or so Health Canada approved companies.
And yet the industry keeps growing, like, well a weed.
Jonathan Hayward / The Canadian PressMarijuana is weighed at a medical marijuana dispensary, in Vancouver, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2015.
There are dozens of dispensaries in Toronto operating in various states of legality — as many as 50 by some counts. The Forum Survey of 908 residents found as many as 10 per cent say they live near a dispensary, 36 per cent openly admit to having pot and as many as one in 25 holds a medical pot card. (Two per cent said they did and two per cent refused to answer, which prompted the polling firm to surmise the upper limit).
Downtown residents are more likely to hold a card and to approve of the dispensaries, where most of these new pot shops are located.
At one location in Toronto’s downtown core, the clientele range on a sunny Sunday range from nervous-looking university-aged students with backpacks to dreadlocked guys in droopy hats to a man in a business suit to an older woman with the kind of patchy hair most early-stage chemo patients sport. They sell edibles that include the clichéd brownie and a more innovative caramel corn. Strains of pot line the wall and a rotating menu displays prices that are comparable, even cheaper, than better-quality pot bough on the street: between $9 and $12 a gram.
It all has an air of legitimacy and one that’s been boosted by the federal Liberals’ pledge to legalize marijuana.
“It appears this is a case of social acceptance leading political and official acceptance of what used to be considered illegal behaviour,” said Forum Research President Lorne Bozinoff. “The thought that stores would openly be selling herb in family neighbourhoods in Toronto would have been laughable as recently as a year ago.”
Attitudes might be rapidly evolving but the Criminal Code has not.
“None of that (speculation about legalization) allows you go and buy from your neighbourhood dispensary. We’re not there yet,” said Boris Bytensky, a criminal lawyer with Adler, Bytensky, Prutschi, Shikhman in Toronto.
“The people selling this are breaking the law,” he said, adding that for many it’s likely a “calculated business risk” that would quite possibly only result in a fine if they were prosecuted.
Just because police aren’t currently prosecuting doesn’t mean they can’t. It also doesn’t mean they will.
“We have all sorts of laws on our books we don’t prosecute all the time,” Bytensky said, whether it’s a provincial law like a speed limit or Criminal Code provisions struck down by the courts but not parliament.
The poll was conducted March 22 and is considered accurate within a margin of error of plus or minus three per cent, 19 times out of 20.
Fifty-seven per cent of respondents in a recent Forum Research survey said yes when asked “should marijuana dispensaries be allowed to operate in Toronto?,” versus 30 per cent who disagreed and 13 per cent who had no opinion.
(AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)In this Feb. 10, 2016 photo, marijuana sits on a scale next to one-gram containers designed to look like shotgun shells, at Smokin Gun Apothecary, the new marijuana dispensary, in Glendale, Colo.
They key word in that question is actually one that’s missing: medical. And given that the budding business of marijuana dispensaries in Toronto is well outside the prescribed Health Canada, it suggests many in the city are simply shrugging over those concerns.
After years of operating with impunity in Vancouver, ambiguously legal “medical” marijuana stores have been popping up across Toronto for months, some offering appointments to get prescriptions for $50 and others taking painkiller prescriptions in lieu of a medical marijuana card or even accepting proof of a certain kind of ailment, be it back pain or anxiety, as enough to sanction a toke.
Amid the legal and regulatory haze, Toronto Police say they are only going after any of the vape lounges, pot shops and other green-tinged businesses on a complaints basis. And, if the Forum poll is any indication, most Torontonians, are totally cool with it.
“Toronto police is dealing with marijuana on a complaint basis at the moment,” said Victor Kwong, media relations officer with the Toronto Police Service. He said it’s a “different story” if someone is moving a truckload of pot but police are, generally, not going after this green rush “because everything right now is ambiguous.”
Those who do hold doctor-prescribed medical pot licences can grow their own weed — for now at least after a court ruling struck down those prohibitions. But the only way to legally buy weed in Canada remains to hold that prescription and order it from one of the half dozen or so Health Canada approved companies.
And yet the industry keeps growing, like, well a weed.
Jonathan Hayward / The Canadian PressMarijuana is weighed at a medical marijuana dispensary, in Vancouver, Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2015.
There are dozens of dispensaries in Toronto operating in various states of legality — as many as 50 by some counts. The Forum Survey of 908 residents found as many as 10 per cent say they live near a dispensary, 36 per cent openly admit to having pot and as many as one in 25 holds a medical pot card. (Two per cent said they did and two per cent refused to answer, which prompted the polling firm to surmise the upper limit).
Downtown residents are more likely to hold a card and to approve of the dispensaries, where most of these new pot shops are located.
At one location in Toronto’s downtown core, the clientele range on a sunny Sunday range from nervous-looking university-aged students with backpacks to dreadlocked guys in droopy hats to a man in a business suit to an older woman with the kind of patchy hair most early-stage chemo patients sport. They sell edibles that include the clichéd brownie and a more innovative caramel corn. Strains of pot line the wall and a rotating menu displays prices that are comparable, even cheaper, than better-quality pot bough on the street: between $9 and $12 a gram.
It all has an air of legitimacy and one that’s been boosted by the federal Liberals’ pledge to legalize marijuana.
“It appears this is a case of social acceptance leading political and official acceptance of what used to be considered illegal behaviour,” said Forum Research President Lorne Bozinoff. “The thought that stores would openly be selling herb in family neighbourhoods in Toronto would have been laughable as recently as a year ago.”
Attitudes might be rapidly evolving but the Criminal Code has not.
“None of that (speculation about legalization) allows you go and buy from your neighbourhood dispensary. We’re not there yet,” said Boris Bytensky, a criminal lawyer with Adler, Bytensky, Prutschi, Shikhman in Toronto.
“The people selling this are breaking the law,” he said, adding that for many it’s likely a “calculated business risk” that would quite possibly only result in a fine if they were prosecuted.
Just because police aren’t currently prosecuting doesn’t mean they can’t. It also doesn’t mean they will.
“We have all sorts of laws on our books we don’t prosecute all the time,” Bytensky said, whether it’s a provincial law like a speed limit or Criminal Code provisions struck down by the courts but not parliament.
The poll was conducted March 22 and is considered accurate within a margin of error of plus or minus three per cent, 19 times out of 20.
