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“We are very, very pleased, very, very happy,” said Jessika Villano, manager of the Buddha Barn, a non-profit compassion club dispensary at 2179 West 4th Ave. in Kitsilano. “It means there will continue to be a very safe place for our customers to come to.

“We were concerned liquor stores might be allowed to distribute cannabis. We’re medicinal, not on the recreational side, and we would have hated to see that happen.”

Buddha Barn, which got its Vancouver business license in October, has been in operation for three years. It is a non-profit dispensary, meaning its license cost $1,000.

For-profit dispensaries pay $30,000 for a business license.

Photo by Gosia Wozniacka / AP Files

“And it’s great it’s not being packaged up with tobacco,” Villano said. “Cannabis has its own energy. You can’t compare it to alcohol or tobacco.

“We were nervous, scared, and now ultimately we’ll see exactly where goes in the provincial election. I feel like it’s definitely a step in the right direction.”

Kerry Jang, a Vancouver city councillor, called the federal recommendations “mostly positive” and said he appreciated that it upheld the city’s right to distance pot shops from schools, community centres and other shops,

But Jang took fault with a recommendation that recreational pot could be grown at home, noting that would be under the regulation or control of the local government.

“They don’t say how we’re going to pay for that,” Jang said. “All we see in the report so far is they’ll work on ‘capacity building,’ but we don’t know what that means. We’re going to be very aware of any downloading of … the policing costs or enforcement costs from the new legislation.”