VANCOUVER—Two StarMetro reporters have been offered free cannabis by representatives of online dispensary services in recent days, which industry experts say is a sure sign of an illicit market rebound post-legalization.

Dana Larsen, director of the Vancouver Dispensary Society and Sensible B.C., said online dispensaries are likely making a bid for a customer base that will be left in the lurch come Oct. 17, when they discover their experience of cannabis purchasing has been radically altered by the governmental takeover of the formerly illicit market.

“We’re going to see more of (this type of cannabis giveaway) after legalization,” Larsen said, adding companies who undertake such campaigns are “probably making a lot of people happy giving away free cannabis, and I really don’t think anyone should be shocked or upset.”

StarMetro reporter Alex McKeen was relaxing with friends on Third Beach in Vancouver on Monday when a woman from TopLeaf online dispensary knelt down to offer her group a free joint “from TopLeaf.” McKeen, 24, was not asked her age.

After McKeen declined the offer, she witnessed the woman offering cannabis to a nearby group of people who accepted. The TopLeaf representative provided a lighter so they could smoke the joint right away.

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TopLeaf’s media director, who gave his name as Nathan W., said the giveaway is meant to raise awareness of TopLeaf’s online service and a particular brand of pre-rolled joints with which TopLeaf has partnered.

“The campaign we had going on during Pride is an ongoing endeavour,” Nathan W. said in an email. TopLeaf representatives attend events all over the country, he continued, showcasing brands and referring interested parties to TopLeaf’s online shopping resource for cannabis products and accessories.

Nathan did not respond to further questions about the legality of the practice or whether this business model was a response to concerns about the future viability of the brick-and-mortar dispensary model.

A “frequently asked questions” page on TopLeaf’s website states the company is “not operating under the federally approved medical marijuana system,” noting that law enforcement generally allows such businesses to exist so long as there are no sales to minors and no affiliation with organized crime.

Vancouver Police Department Sgt. Jason Robillard said the practice of businesses giving away free cannabis in public is currently illegal in the City of Vancouver.

Melanie Green, another StarMetro reporter, has been approached numerous times with similar offers in East Vancouver’s Commercial Drive area, with several online dispensary representatives providing business cards and a promise to deliver to any customer’s doorstep.

Ehren Richardson, vice-president of the non-profit Sunrise Wellness Foundation dispensary, pointed out that medical dispensaries have always operated in a grey zone. Not one of them purchases cannabis from Canada’s licensed producers, which are federally licensed to provide medical cannabis to Canadians authorized by their health-care practitioner to possess the substance. In fact they couldn’t, he said, since storefront cannabis sales technically remain illegal at this time, and to supply such an operation with cannabis would violate a licensed producer’s licensing agreement.

Instead, Richardson said, Metro Vancouver’s brick-and-mortar dispensaries have always been supplied by illicit growers, many of whom have honed their growing expertise over decades. He argued that the outstanding international reputation “B.C. bud” has garnered over the years is entirely thanks to the precision of these “black market” growers.

Richardson was alarmed that neither B.C.’s provincial nor municipal governments have provided any concrete pathway to legality for the province’s medical dispensaries.

“I have lots of concerns, first and foremost is for the health and well-being of the most vulnerable people in our society who unfortunately have not been looked after in this legalization effort by the government,” Richardson said in an interview.

People with serious medical conditions have spent years developing relationships with knowledgeable staff at their local dispensaries, he said. And with the provincial government set to take over wholesale control of cannabis distribution, those folks will now be left without a pathway to the personalized, familiar consumer services they’ve relied on for their medicinal cannabis needs.

B.C.’s Minister of Public Safety Mike Farnworth announced in June that cities in the province will determine how many privately run dispensaries will be allowed to operate within their boundaries and where those dispensaries will be located. But some municipalities, like the City of Richmond, have remained dead-set against privately owned dispensaries from setting up shop on their streets.

With a little over two months before legalization on Oct. 17, Richardson says there has been total silence from both the province and its cities on whether a path to legality for dispensaries will be provided at all — a situation he says raises the spectre that privately owned dispensaries will simply have no place in the legal cannabis market.

Larsen said Richardson’s concerns reflect a larger pattern of governmental oversight that will leave many customers longing for the days when they could walk to the corner and purchase cannabis from a familiar small-business outlet. Consumer culture-shock, he said, is an inevitable consequence of excluding long-time, small-scale cannabis producers and distributors from a legal market and is sure to provide online distributors like TopLeaf with a wide-open window of opportunity post-legalization.

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Why, he asked, would cannabis consumers willingly move to a government-controlled cannabis supplier that provides an eroded, liquor-store-style customer experience, fewer product choices and increased costs due to taxation?

Meanwhile, Larsen said, consumers’ post-legalization appetite for pre-legalization cannabis and service will do little to incentivize those growers and distributors who have been excluded from the legal market to fight for inclusion.

“I guarantee you,” he said, “that TopLeaf and the dozens and dozens of online dispensaries out there are going to continue to operate openly and freely for years.”

With files from David P. Ball

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