Sixty-four landlords have now received warning letters about renting space to tenants selling marijuana in unlicensed storefront operations across Toronto.

Property owners are told they have three days to shut the businesses down or potentially face stiff fines for contravening zoning bylaws.

However, officials were cagey Friday on the timing of their next step if their warnings are ignored.

“If we laid charges, it would be a summons to court,” Tammy Robbinson, licensing and standards division spokeswoman, wrote in email. She would not say if any would be served over the long weekend.

This past week, licensing executive director Tracey Cook said the city’s goal “is not just to go out and hammer people,” but to ensure compliance with city bylaws.

Cook estimated there are at least 75 marijuana dispensaries currently operating in Toronto.

While Ottawa has promised to legalize recreational pot use, the city says the existing law, for now, limits distribution to federally licensed marijuana producers who grow pot exclusively for medical patients.

However, Osgoode Hall law professor Alan Young, who has successfully challenged the constitutional validity of the federal medical marijuana program, says the city is wrong to target legitimate pot dispensaries.

“In my opinion, dispensaries which restrict sales to documented medical patients are not illegal and protected by the Charter of Rights and Freedom.”

Robbinson wrote that the city’s position is unchanged.

“Medical marijuana dispensaries are not allowed under the city’s zoning by-law.”

On Friday, Mayor John Tory said that while he asked for a crackdown, he does not decide who receives the warning letters and had no comment on the constitutionality of the federal law.

And while he continues to support the legalization of pot, “in the interim period, until that law has passed, we cannot just have the wild west when it comes to dispensaries cropping up on every street corner.”

The mayor added he feels he has “substantial public support on this,” adding that many of the dispensaries that have popped up are “bogus.”

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“I’m not in any way trying to stand in the way of people who are legitimate sufferers who would otherwise be qualified for medical marijuana prescriptions,” Tory told a news conference at city hall.