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Five people working inside Cannabis Culture when police and bailiff arrived today were released without charge, according to several of them interviewed outside the shop. pic.twitter.com/MkhXEJsFJM — Jacquie Miller (@JacquieAMiller) December 7, 2017

Five people working inside were released without charge, according to staff who gathered outside.

Gerry Shapiro, one of the landlords, said he and his business partner decided they had little choice, given an impending Ontario law aimed at ridding the province of illegal marijuana dispensaries. Ottawa police have also warned landlords that buildings housing illegal dispensaries may be seized.

Several other Ottawa dispensary landlords say they are seeking legal advice, or will evict tenants once the Ontario law is passed. The proposed law includes fines of as much as $1 million for corporate landlords, while individual landlords could be stung for $250,000 on a first offence, two years in jail, or both.

The law may end up being more effective than the squads of police who have marched into dispensaries across the city over the past year, seizing dried weed, cookies, candy, concentrates, vape pens and pop, and charging the people working inside with drug trafficking.

Many of those shops have simply restocked their shelves and re-opened. Police have said they don’t have the resources to investigate and raid, repeatedly, every shop. And they don’t have the power to close premises, simply to charge those inside.

That, too, will change under the cannabis act now before the Ontario legislature. It will allow police to close the store if they have reasonable grounds to believe there is illegal drug trafficking being conducted inside.