April is always a big month for marijuana enthusiasts.

It’s, of course, the month where pot smokers and “potificators” (my word) assemble by the hundreds on the fourth month of the year on the 20th day to smoke a joint or three.

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Yep, it’s almost 4-20, folks.

This year, it will be at Sunset Beach.

You probably heard that park board chairperson Sarah Kirby-Yung wasn’t exactly happy with Mayor Gregor Robertson and city staff for giving organizers the (oh, the puns) green light.

Anyway, that’s old news.

I’m more interested in what’s going to happen on 4-29, as in April 29.

That’s the deadline the city gave to operators of illegal marijuana dispensaries to shut down their pot shops. That deadline doesn’t include those operators working their way through city channels to get a coveted business licence.

It’s not clear to me — even after speaking to Andreea Toma, the city’s chief licensing inspector — how many shops will be targeted after April 29. That’s no fault of Toma, or my math skills, it’s just that this dispensary licence thing is complicated.

Here’s why…

So far, the city has granted development permits to a grand total of six shops out of 176 applications. That permit allows an operator to apply for a business licence. When I checked last week, only two operators had applied and it could be another month or so before the city grants the first licence.

Another 11 operators have applied for a development permit and the city continues to review the applications. Then there are those 62 operators who were initially rejected by the city and have taken their case to the Board of Variance; so far eight have had their appeals rejected.

Still with me?

Add another 20 or so whose shops were considered to be too close to each other and are awaiting the city’s decision to see if they will be among the six or seven allowed to proceed to the next step.

Then consider the 38 or 39 who didn’t bother to appeal and continue to operate a pot shop — but may or may not have applied for a different location, which would keep their application active, but the city hasn’t cross-referenced the addresses to see if that’s the case — and you can see why Toma couldn’t even give me a ballpark number on which shops the city plans to shut down.

“It’s difficult to say,” she said.

And by shut down, Toma means enforcement action. And by enforcement action, she means ticketing, prosecution and possibly getting city council to approve injunction applications to go before the B.C. Supreme Court.

None of that will likely happen to Sunny Bhayana and his partner’s Herb Co. Society on Main Street because they are one of the six dispensaries given a development permit.

When I spoke to Bhayana Monday, he said staff was getting criminal record checks and he was working with the city on a security plan. He’ll then apply for a business licence.

But he, too, is wondering how the city will deal with all those pot shops that refuse to shut down April 29. That’s a real concern, he said, because a business licence will cost him $30,000 a year.

“I’ve talked to a lot of the main dispensaries… and every single one has said, ‘Nope, we’re not shutting down, we’re fighting this,’” he said. “Obviously, for us, we want people to close down because that’s how we’re going to generate more business.”

May, it seems, will also be a big month for marijuana enthusiasts.

mhowell@vancourier.com

@Howellings