Recreational marijuana may as well be legal in the city of Vancouver, given how easy it is for an adult to buy from a fast-growing number of dispensaries openly selling cannabis to customers.

In 2010, there were five dispensaries in the city, according to police. In January last year, police counted a dozen. Most were concentrated in the city’s Downtown Eastside or along Kingsway.

Now city hall staff say there are 45 spread across Vancouver, with a handful in trendy neighbourhoods such as Yaletown and Kitsilano. Many have lounges where friends gather to learn about the pain relief brought by different edibles or the coolest new ways to smoke different strains of B.C.’s best bud.

Technically, it’s against the law for a person to buy marijuana without a federal certificate issued on the advice of a physician or nurse practitioner.

And there has never been a federal licensing system for dispensaries.

But, responding to complaints by patients about access to marijuana, dispensaries have formed their system of issuing membership cards based on easy-to-get documentation from any medical professional.

Some of the dozens of dispensaries in the city skirt the law by teaming up with health professionals other than doctors and nurse practitioners, like naturopaths and in one case a psychologist, who issue certificates that dispensaries then rely on to let patients become members. The dispensaries then willingly sell cannabis products to these members.

Presented with evidence from a Sun investigation, Kerry Jang, Vision Vancouver’s designated city councillor responsible for commenting on marijuana dispensaries vowed the city will crack down on those dispensaries rubber-stamping memberships on site to recreational users.

Over several days this month, a Sun reporter visited five separate dispensaries to see how easy it would be to get a certificate to join dispensaries and buy “edibles” (cookies, brownies, popcorn, chocolate, and smoothies and other drinks infused with cannabis).

He found the standard for obtaining a medical marijuana letter from a naturopath is extremely low. For fees ranging between $25 and $90, a registered naturopath will spend 10 to 30 minutes talking to a patient. A claim of insomnia is enough to procure a certificate, so long as the patient “has reported that his/her symptoms are helped by cannabis.”

The naturopaths who work with the dispensaries know they are technically in a legal grey area, so when they issue a note they also make patients sign a release form agreeing not to “make any claim or complaint or commence any proceedings against” them for applying to use marijuana through this grey market.

“I sign confirmations, as a naturopathic doctor I cannot prescribe cannabis,” one naturopath explained. “I can prescribe a sleeping pill for you, but not a plant.”

At all five dispensaries The Sun visited, becoming a member took a maximum of 40 minutes.

Stricter operations like the B.C. Compassion Club Society dissuade recreational tokers from joining by making them wait about two weeks for a 90-minute orientation session that explores their motives for seeking cannabis and tailors a consumption regime that fits those reasons.

The reporter got a free membership to two of the five dispensaries through an in-house registered naturopath who conducted a short interview and then wrote a medical note on the premises — for $60.

After a 30-minute consultation that cost $25, a registered psychologist at a third dispensary signed a form that immediately led to a free membership. Psychologists aren’t allowed to prescribe medications, according to the Canadian Mental Health Association, but this was just a note stating that the patient had said he benefited from marijuana use.

The two in-house naturopaths and one psychologist were eager to help the reporter get a note quickly to become a member. But each also gave earnest advice on how natural remedies could help him best battle a lingering chest cold and how changing his lifestyle may help him get more sleep.

At another dispensary that’s part of a large chain, the reporter was told he could purchase up to a gram of edible or combustible cannabis each day without a card. To buy more, he was referred to another of the chain’s locations in Kitsilano where he was told an in-house naturopath would do a quick consultation to green-light a membership.

But the manager at that location said that his naturopath had quit some time ago and that he would write the reporter a temporary membership card only good for his store.

Most of the roughly 16 dispensaries contacted by The Sun didn’t have a naturopath on site and several referred prospective members to the same downtown Vancouver “wellness centre.”

At that centre, a registered naturopath charged $90 for a 20-minute consultation that produced a note, which could be taken to any dispensary to receive a new membership.

Many dispensaries recognize the memberships of their competitors and will sell to anyone with a card. However, an attendant at one Chinatown dispensary said they wouldn’t honour memberships from the chain where the manager issued a Sun reporter a temporary card, because it has a reputation in the community for freely giving out memberships.

The head of B.C.’s College of Naturopathic Physicians said that the regulatory body hasn’t received a single complaint “concerning a naturopathic doctor’s recommendation or prescription of marijuana,” but that it would investigate further if it received such a tip.

“The college has made B.C.’s naturopathic doctors aware that they may face criminal or professional disciplinary proceedings if they recommend or prescribe marijuana to patients,” registrar and CEO Howard Greenstein said in an emailed statement. “The college primarily addresses issues of professional misconduct based upon complaints or information received from members of the public.”

Andrea Kowaz, registrar of the College of Psychologists of B.C., the profession’s regulatory body, said registered psychologists are not authorized to provide a “medical document” under the federal pot regulations.

She said that while it is not the college’s role to enforce the regulations, the college would investigate a complaint from the public alleging a named psychologist provided a medical document contrary to federal laws governing the sale of marijuana for medical purposes.

Like the two medical colleges, police say they only investigate a dispensary after they have received complaints because there are much higher-priority crimes to solve and harder drugs to monitor in Vancouver. Anyone selling marijuana outside the federally regulated medicinal system is doing so illegally, but that’s up to Health Canada to regulate, Vancouver police Sgt. Randy Fincham said.

He added that the VPD seldom receives complaints about dispensaries and in the past year has raided just two locations. The co-owner of one of them — Weeds Glass and Gifts on Kingsway — told The Georgia Straight that he was raided last month because he had broken one of the dispensary community’s “unwritten rules” of selling customers their own seedlings to grow.

Even so, the store was reopened within hours of the VPD confiscating the plants, the owner told The Straight.

Police are skeptical that all the dispensaries are selling marijuana only to people with health problems.

“There’s no way that you’d see these sprout up from very few to over 30 in the city of Vancouver in a fairly short time span because they want to look after people’s health,” Fincham said. “They’re definitely doing this for profit.”

City bylaw staff are monitoring these “pop-up” dispensaries that have opened in the past year to make sure they aren’t near schools or are selling or marketing to minors, according to Jang.

The City of Vancouver has tolerated the grey-market dispensaries, allowing them to operate without a business licences as long as they adhere to zoning and land-use bylaws, fire regulations and building codes.

City and police officials have justified the leniency on grounds that the dispensaries were selling only to patients with Health Canada permits.

Jang said it was unacceptable that two dispensaries sold cannabis to The Sun without even a medical note and that three other dispensaries gave The Sun a rubber-stamped membership after meeting an in-house naturopath or psychologist.

“That’s exactly what we don’t agree with — we’ll go after those ones when we know who they are,” Jang said, adding that this information would be forwarded to the police to investigate.

Still, he said it is unreasonable to shut down all the dispensaries in the city because the current federally-regulated system — in which 13 producers mail dried cannabis to licensed consumers — can’t supply all the patients in need.

“Everybody just buys their very expensive pot by mail? So what happens? They go to the street and we get a booming underground economy and nobody’s gained one thing,” Jang said. “In fact, it’s probably worse because then we’re going to have to do enforcement. This is the conundrum as a city we see.”

Compassion club activists have long argued that compassion clubs and dispensaries service the patients’ constitutional right to medicine.

And it’s likely that dispensaries will continue operating until a judge rules on whether the new federal mail-only system is unconstitutional. Opponents argue it makes medicinal marijuana too expensive and inaccessible to licensed consumers.

Dan Reist, a researcher with the University of Victoria’s Centre for Addictions Research of B.C., said most of the blame for dispensaries operating in a “de facto Wild West” lies squarely with the federal Conservative government, which has tried to “sweep it under the carpet.”

“(In) the current vacuum … marijuana is technically illegal, yet no one wants to really take action to enforce laws that largely have been discredited and nobody supports,” Diest said. “Now public pressure has reached the point where there’s not a lot they can do other than moving rather quickly to a regulated (decriminalized) market here.

“They have to regulate the entire market because currently the medicinal market is standing in, in a lot of cases, as a proxy to open up access to recreational use.”

The federal government should apply lessons learned through decades of alcohol and tobacco regulation to shape a new marijuana market “from the ground up,” Diest said.

Though the public may not complain about Vancouver’s increasingly-easier access to pot, it leads to more overall consumption, which he said “usually means easier access for the younger population.”

That is troubling given the potential harms the drug could have on young people, whom are at risk for having troubles regulating their pot use later in life when they use it heavily early on, according to Diest.

“It’s like if you go back 50 years to tobacco, and you realize how easy it was for kids to get tobacco,” Reist said. “Now we recognize ‘boy, that was a mistake we shouldn’t have done that.’”

Cigarettes aren’t the same as joints, but Diest said anybody advocating for more access to pot must “come into it with eyes wide open.”

With a file from Brian Morton

mhager@postmedia.com

Follow me: @MikePHager

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Getting to pot: Our reporter’s experience with a sampling of local dispensaries

Vancouver Pain Management Society

Commercial Drive and East 5th Avenue

After a 45 minute wait, I get my consultation with the in-house psychologist, Trula D. O’Haire, who was running late with other patients.

Smoke from a member in the booth behind envelops our meeting as the registered psychologist begins to ask about my insomnia symptoms. She chatted with me for about half an hour about a wide range of topics including:

her martial artist ex-husband, the wonders of arnica Montana gel for aches and pains, Tuesday hula hoop classes at the dispensary, how impossible it is to eat just half a pot cookie and how the owners of the dispensary are truly committed to great marijuana. All this was peppered with maybe five or six short questions about my inability to sleep.

I gave her my name, birthdate, address and phone number, paid $25 and then went and got my dispensary card and bought some cookies. Bonus: I also got a free medicinal gel cap as a new member’s gift.

Weeds Glass and Gifts

Burrard and Davie streets

A cheery guy in his 20s helps me peruse the large, bright dispensary for various strains and edibles. I settle on a $5 candy chocolate wrapped in tinfoil after telling him the $30 tincture bottle of concentrated “Phoenix Tears” may be too intense for a beginner like myself.

With ID, but no dispensary card, he initially says he can’t sell me anything. Then he says his store can sell a small edible or a gram or less of dried cannabis for those who want “medicine” but haven’t seen a proper doctor yet. He says that they will sell someone without a card up to a gram a day. He tells me if I want to see a naturopath and get certified today then I can cross Burrard Bridge to their sister location in Kitsilano.

Weeds Glass and Gifts

Burrard and West 2nd Avenue

The manager is apoplectic upon hearing their sister location has referred another client to his store in order to get a note from an in-house naturopath. He excuses himself to phone the West End location and berates them for again sending him customers without proper membership cards or naturopath’s notes.

Then calms down and says that his in-house naturopaths stopped working for him some weeks ago and may have branched out to do lucrative marijuana consultations on their own.

He begrudgingly gives me a temporary membership card only good for today and valid at his location.

As he rings me in for a $10 “Double Dose” peanut butter pot cookie, he chats about how naturopaths like the ones that ran out on him can make hundreds of dollars a day certifying people for $60 dispensary cards. He says the dispensaries are all popping up to cash in before an upcoming court ruling may shift the legal ground of the new federal system. However, dispensaries like his may only have six months of business left if a new less sympathetic mayor gets elected in Vancouver.

Outside in the lane beside the dispensary, an unmarked police car is parked as its officers visit the neighbouring Starbuck’s that is a popular hangout for officers in the district.

Buddha Barn

West Fourth Avenue and Yew Street

The bright white walls and wood grain bar make this second-floor dispensary resemble what I imagine a high-end salon must look like. A managerial-looking woman in a white pharmacist’s outfit hands me my forms and asks me to wait on one of the comfortable designer chairs, beside potted palms and a coffee table with the latest celebrity gossip rags. A Pomeranian named Remy, shaved to look like a miniature lion, wanders the salon as I fill out the paperwork.

A mild-mannered naturopath in his 30s, Jordan Atkinson, invites me up to an elevated bar in front of the large main window with its shades pulled down.

On a blank piece of paper he scribbles down notes as I tell him about my problems sleeping. He recommends using a journal to record my sleep experiences each night as well as taking calcium magnesium and instituting a one-hour moratorium on any sort of screen time before sleeping.

He stresses that marijuana is illegal and that he is not giving me a prescription. He pulls out a pre-signed note from a nearby stack, fills in my name and personal details then hands it to me.

We get up and he briskly walks to the front counter and discretely asks the manager to pay him his $60 fee for each of the four patients he has seen that day. She retrieves the cash from the till and hands it to him in a backroom before he takes off.

As I look at the edibles and six different strains of combustible pot on offer, a middle-aged woman asks for potent Jolly Rancher candies to help her 67-year-old mom deal with Stage 4 colon cancer. Her mom found hash oil was too mellow so they are trying candies, which she heard were very effective from a friend’s mother with MS.

They been in operation for four months and I am their 739th member.

Eden Medicinal Society

East Hastings Street and Princess Avenue

Two hipsters at the front counter welcome me into the bare-bones waiting room as they gossip idly. A 20-something member exits the members-only area and grabs the expensive road bike that he was too scared to leave outside.

A naturopath, Julia Christensen, enters the waiting room and brings me into a windowless backroom where she sits with her laptop at a small desk in front of an empty whiteboard.

She quizzes me on my lifestyle and diet and says self-medicating with marijuana is not a long-term solution for my insomnia. In the meantime, she says she recommends that on nights I don’t use cannabis I try a chewable all-natural tablet with melatonin called Tranquil Sleep.

She signs my note and leads me back to the front desk where one of the two young women processes my laminated membership card, the only one I’ve received so far with a photo. I’m then allowed into an apothecary-like room with high ceilings and several long glass display cases containing dozens of strains and edibles. A dishevelled young man in a white graphic T-shirt counsels me on the best edibles. He says the cookies I’m thinking of buying are very potent, as evidenced by the crazy bus ride he recently took out to the Fraser Valley to watch a motorcycle show. He doesn’t remember much of the show, but he definitely got very high.

As a new member my first purchase — a tiny bag of four root beer candies — is free.

Naturopath at Sinclair Wellness Centre

757 West Hastings St.

Brochures advertising the benefits of acupuncture, regular massage therapy as well as using different strains of cannabis are stocked beside a large fish tank in the classy waiting room of the downtown “wellness centre.” A thirtysomething naturopath with tattooed forearms, Aaron Van Gaver, greets me with a warm smile.

He can tell right away that I’m stuffed up from a serious head cold and launches into a sermon on the benefits of using a neti pot. Together with lots of water, vitamin C, eliminating dairy and sugary fruits like bananas and oranges, flushing my sinuses with the ancient Ayurvedic technique should get rid of my symptoms soon. As for my problem getting a good night sleep, he takes my word that eating a pot candy a few weeks ago helped me get my best rest in months.

During a friendly, free-flowing conversation he takes my blood pressure and asked about my history of cannabis use. He writes up a confirmation note stating that I have a working diagnosis of insomnia, that I have reported cannabis helps my symptoms and that I should have this re-evaluated in six months.

He declined to give me a $30 discount on his $90 fee that a dispensary employee who referred me here said I might be able to finagle.

He said he isn’t an employee of the dispensaries and that those in-house naturopaths are operating illegally and giving the profession a bad name.

“The naturopathic doctors that are in there are putting themselves at risk. Plus, I mean, wouldn’t you want to see a doctor in a doctor’s office?”

“I used to work in the dispensaries and people would get confused that I was the dispensary’s doctor and it got really sketchy for me because I don’t want to be associated with a dispensary,” he said. “I’m myself, I sign confirmations, as a naturopathic doctor I cannot prescribe cannabis. I can prescribe a sleeping pill for you but not a plant.”

On the way out of the 20-minute consultation he was courteous, but clearly interested in processing my transaction as fast as possible.