Vancouver Plan To Regulate Medical-Marijuana Dispensaries Earns Ire Of Fed Govt

The city government of Vancouver is under the radar of the federal government after it announced plans of regulating medical-marijuana dispensaries in its jurisdiction. Ottawa said the plan will effectively legitimise the use of pot in the country, which the city government has no power to do so.

Gregor Robertson, Vancouver City Mayor, said on Wednesday the local government will regulate the medical-marijuana dispensaries in the city, which has grown from just less than a dozen to 80 in the past couple of years. Robertson said the proposal came about because of the public complaints the government has received which basically noted that the medical-marijuana dispensaries were being set up in locations nears the schools.

But federal Health Minister Rona Ambrose blasted the proposal, warning the Vancouver City government such a scheme will effectively "legitimise and normalise” the use and sale of marijuana. “This can only lead to one effect: increasing marijuana use and addiction," Ambrose said in her letter to Robertson.

Moreover, Ambrose stressed that marijuana remains an unapproved drug or medicine. Even “Health Canada does not endorse its use.”

Among the supposed plan of the Vancouver City government to regulate its booming medical pot industry include imposing a $30,000 licensing fee. Business owners will likewise be instructed to set up shops no less than 300 metres away from schools, community centres and other dispensaries. “This is to help address that problem, as well as [move them] away from community centres and each other so you don’t have the clustering,” City Councillor Kerry Jang told the Courier. The city government added it took the initiative of regulating the industry because of a "lack of a clear and transparent regulatory framework from the federal government."

But Ambrose reminded Vancouver City that dispensaries operate outside the law and that only Health Canada-licensed producers and patients are approved to grow it legally. “Storefronts and dispensaries do not operate within a ‘grey zone’ and the law is clear: they are illegal,” she told Robertson.

The city government in a statement said what it intends to do is to regulate businesses. It admitted it has no jurisdiction to regulate the sale of marijuana.

Jonathan Baker, a municipal lawyer and a former Vancouver councillor, told Vancouver Sun the city government wants to regulate businesses that are clearly illegal. This clearly contravenes criminal law, he said. “You don’t simply break the law by taking money for a business that is prohibited federally.”

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