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With Southwestern Ontario facing the strong possibility of getting shut out of the first round of cannabis retailers, one industry expert says allowing marijuana growers to start selling from their production sites would ease the problem.

The rights to apply for the first 25 cannabis retail licences were awarded through a lottery system earlier this month, with just seven of those allocated for the region stretching from Windsor to Niagara.

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At least four of the seven winners plan to open in Hamilton, a cannabis consultant from that city told Postmedia, while the name of a fifth, the Niagara Herbalist, suggests it will open in the Niagara region.

That leaves just two more stores for the vast region, meaning some cities like London, Windsor, Chatham, Sarnia, Brantford and Kitchener-Waterloo will be left without a legal pot shop until at least next year.

A way around that problem would be to allow the province’s 81 licensed pot producers — more than a dozen of them operate in Southwestern Ontario — to open retail spaces at their facilities, said Michael Armstrong, a professor at Brock University’s Goodman School of Business who studies Canada’s cannabis industry.