Foot-dragging on the federal Liberals’ pledge to legalize pot is to blame for the spike in illegal dispensaries across Canada, causing chaos for cops and two-tiered policing like seen recently in London, opposition critics charge.

London police last week raided Tasty Budd’s, which opened in public defiance of the law, seizing its inventory and charging the owner and an employee with drug trafficking. Yet, two other marijuana dispensaries that have operated below radar in the city for years, remain open.

Wednesday, underlining the hazy terrain critics contend the Trudeau government has left with its vow to legalize marijuana, three representatives of Tasty Budd’s were at the busted store readying it to reopen this week.

Investigators wouldn’t say why the Wharncliffe Road dispensary, a franchise of an East Coast operation, was raided just six days after opening while the other two were left alone.

But New Democrat justice critic Murray Rankin says the Trudeau government’s unclear plan on marijuana reform leaves police forces in a bind.

“The message is, police are doing their best in the face of this chaos that the Liberals’ dithering has created,” the MP said from his riding in Victoria, B.C.

“And I think that the police are caught between a rock and a hard place. They realize activity is going on in their communities that’s contrary to the law, but they don’t feel they have the backing to proceed.”

Conservative justice critic Rob Nicholson echoed those concerns, blasting the Liberals for leaving cities to deal with dispensaries without guidance.

“They said it’s a local thing, but they’ve providing no resources, no guidance on this. It’s a disaster,” Nicholson said from his Oshawa riding.

With an estimated 350 dispensaries operating across the country, cities have taken different approaches to tackling the issue.

Toronto police have been raiding the dispensaries since May, seizing inventory and laying criminal charges. Police said they targeted businesses they’d received complaints about. Many of the raided dispensaries have reopened.

In Vancouver, city officials have licensed some dispensaries and fined others for operating without required permits.

“How can we live in a country where the same activity is treated so dramatically different?” Rankin, a former lawyer and law professor, asked.

Nicholson said he’s worried about public safety, saying marijuana sold at dispensaries may be contaminated or laced with other drugs.

“The minister of health has put no resources aside to inspect these dispensaries,” he said.

Dispensaries are illegal in Canada under a federal law that limits the sale of marijuana for medicinal use to a few dozen government-approved commercial producers. The former Conservative government switched to that system from an older one that allowed approved users to grow their own pot, after the number of Canadians doing just that ballooned.

Dispensary operators dispute they’re breaking the law, citing a 2014 federal court decision that said forcing patients to buy their prescription pot from government-approved producers violated their constitutional rights.

In response, Health Canada rolled out a new set of rules, which took effect Wednesday, allowing authorized patients to grow their own marijuana for personal use or to designate someone to grow for them.

Jordan Johnson, Tasty Budd’s regional manager, said the London location had registered 65 customers before the crackdown.

Police are welcome to visit the store and learn more about its services, said Johnson, who decried last week’s raid.

“It’s an open-door policy, not just for police but for the community,” he said.

Asked Wednesday about the store’s plan to reopen, Const. Michelle Kasper said London police will investigate and enforce the law as needed.

London’s remaining dispensaries call themselves compassion clubs. Operating as non-profit organizations, compassion clubs provide medical marijuana to registered patients, much like dispensaries, but they tend to keep a lower public profile.

One of them, The London Compassion Society, had a run-in with the law a decade ago, when police seized nearly 1,000 marijuana plants from its Richmond Street centre and arrested director Pete Young and employee Robert Newman.

Young pleaded guilty to three drug-related charges in 2007, while the charges against Newman were withdrawn.

Calls to the London Compassion Society weren’t returned Wednesday.

The Liberals have said they plan to introduce legislation next spring to legalize marijuana. The government recently established a task force to study how best to legalize and regulate recreational use of the drug, tapping former Toronto police chief Bill Blair, now an MP for Scarborough Southwest, to play a lead role in the process.

Repeated interview requests to Blair’s office were declined this week.

dcarruthers@postmedia.com

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