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Ontario’s legal marijuana retailers are allowed to open brick-and-mortar pot shops as of this Monday, April 1. London has landed an unusually large number of the lottery-selected stores, but will they be ready to open when the smokers come knocking? Dale Carruthers reports:

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London defied the odds by landing three of Ontario’s first 25 cannabis stores.

The Forest City will have as many brick-and-mortar marijuana stores as Ottawa, a city with more than double its population, and just two fewer than Toronto, the seventh-largest city by population in North America.

The city’s three-store tally also matches that of both Montreal and Vancouver, considered to be Canada’s cannabis mecca, where the operations have been running for months.

Ontario will finally catch up to most other provinces Monday when cannabis retail stores that have cleared all the regulatory hurdles are allowed to open. Only one store in London is expected to be able to open for Day 1.