EDMONTON—An Alberta mountain resort town could have one of the most relaxed policies in Canada for pot retailers.

Jasper’s town council voted Tuesday to let cannabis retail stores open until midnight, put no limit on the number of stores and requested an exemption from the provincial requirement for a 100-metre buffer from schools and hospitals.

Contrast that to the neighbouring mountain town of Banff, located roughly 300 km to the south in Banff National Park, where councillors have set more conservative limits on the location of stores and smoking in public.

“One of the ironies is the province will use the post office as its distribution hub for online sales, and yet the post office is closer to our elementary school than any other business. It’s just ironic that that exemption didn’t apply to them,” Jasper Mayor Richard Ireland told StarMetro on Wednesday.

“So we thought, why would we arbitrarily impose a restriction on those few businesses in our community?”

Jasper, with one major main street and a population just shy of 5,000, is the main townsite in Jasper National Park. Together with Banff National Park, the area represents one of the biggest playgrounds in Western Canada, popular with locals and tourists alike for its hiking, camping and skiing.

But when marijuana legalization comes into force on Oct. 17, one more attraction will be on offer — and each municipality is taking a different tack.

Neither plan is set in stone yet.

Read more:

Opinion | Banff prepares to get even higher

Banff town council bans smoking and vaping cannabis in public places

Americans are expected to flock to Canada when cannabis becomes legal — but here’s how the U.S. border stands in the way

Banff council has also come up with a proposal that would ban weed shops with windows facing sidewalks and would see stores at least 100 metres apart from each other. They’ve already voted to forbid smoking or vaping in public. They’re taking those proposed retail restrictions to a public hearing on Monday.

Meanwhile, Jasper’s retail strategy still has to be approved by Parks Canada, which has jurisdiction over its land-use planning and development. Ireland said the council has a strong working relationship with Parks Canada, however, and he is not anticipating any setbacks.

Members of Parks Canada were on the town’s Cannabis Working Group that guided council’s decision. That group also included representatives from town administration, the local business community and RCMP.

It commissioned a community-wide survey that garnered about 430 responses in the town of 5,000, which Ireland said was more than any other town survey.

“There seems to be quite a bit of interest from people who want to open up cannabis retail shops,” Ireland said. “I can’t imagine that they’re all going to survive; the market will dictate that sort of success over the first few years.”

Neev Tapiero, who runs Toronto-based Canadian Kush Tours, said he could see Jasper’s chill retail approach being a big draw for tourists.

“It’s going to create a smorgasbord experience, where consumers are going to have all the choices in a small amount of space,” Tapiero said. “It should create a type of buzz that will draw more people to Jasper.”

Jasper’s council will discuss public smoking Tuesday but it does not expect to make a decision just yet.

If Jasper and Banff go in opposite directions, Tapiero said, that could determine where some tourists end up spending their vacations.

“If it’s difficult to get cannabis, or it’s far away, or there aren’t many choices, these are small things that chip away at the tourist experience,” he said.

“Cannabis is going to be a large component of Canadian tourism ... People are going to come to Canada primarily to smoke cannabis, and then see what else there is to do.”

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Tourism Jasper general manager James Jackson said it’s too early to speculate about whether the town’s policies will draw more people but he appreciates council’s decision to let the market regulate itself.

“We’re a busy tourism destination year-round, and I hope that the cannabis legislation will just add to the attractiveness of our community,” Jackson said.

Ireland, however, doubts pot will be a big draw. He noted it’s unlikely there will be an explosion of pot stores because Jasper’s commercial business area is already limited by federal legislation.

“We don’t have room in our community to expand our commercial district, so if we’re going to have new cannabis retail operations open, it will almost necessarily mean that something else closes,” he said.

“So in terms of overall economics for the community, I’m not anticipating any great change.”

In Aspen, Colo., a mountain resort town of about 7,000, pot shops pulled in more revenue than liquor stores for the first time last year since the state legalized it in 2014. Aspen has six cannabis stores, compared to five liquor stores.

The town’s mayor, Steven Skadron, said his council had a fierce debate about whether to cap the number of stores and decided on a hands-off approach similar to Jasper.

“Today we’re seeing that the marijuana shops are very much a non-issue,” Skadron said. “They fit in, they’ve been good community partners, they’re responsible, they adhere to all of the very strict regulations under which they are obligated to operate.”

He said the most significant impact for Aspen, which has limited commercial space like Jasper, is that shops are now competing against each other for square footage, which means there might be fewer T-shirt shops or coffee shops that could serve a broader demographic.

As far as drawing tourists, Skadron hasn’t seen pot become a lasting attraction.

“When it started three years ago it was kind of the rage, and marijuana tourism was kind of a big deal,” he said.

“I would say no, it doesn’t (bring tourists to Aspen). You don’t walk down the street and hear people saying, ‘I came here for the sole purpose of buying marijuana and then I’m going to go ski.’”

Pot has been big business for the state of Colorado, bringing about $1.5 billion in tax revenue in 2016. Skadron said Aspen only saw about $400,000 of that, but about $150,000 of that went toward parks and open spaces, $29,000 to schools and other funds to daycare, affordable housing and transportation.

Regardless of policy, it seems people are already toking in significant numbers in Alberta’s mountain resort towns.

According to a recent Statistics Canada report, Banff had Canada’s second highest rate of arrests for marijuana possession, trafficking, production and import/export offences of any RCMP municipal police force, behind only Lambton, Ont.

Lake Louise had the highest arrest rate for cannabis violations among rural RCMP detachments in Canada, with Jasper coming in third.

Read more about: