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Like a vignette of small-town life, a laid-back shopkeeper sits at a yellow table beside the unlocked bicycle leaning against the storefront, smiles, puts down his coffee mug and greets a customer by name.

“Hey Fred, how ya doing?” Jeremy Jacob said to his visitor Thursday, welcoming his old friend into the shop.

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Jacob and his wife Andrea Dobbs run a family business in Kitsilano, a bright airy space where a loud waterfall rushes outside, dozens of cannabis products line the shelves inside, and a Pomeranian named Lego lounges on the ground.

Jacob said it was “surreal” Thursday afternoon, to think that while we chatted at the shop, politicians gathered five minutes away were discussing the future of not only his family’s shop, but the whole industry of dispensaries, which, while illegal under federal law, have become the preferred place for many Canadians to shop and have proliferated across Canada, especially in Vancouver.