CALGARY—As Canada marks the first year of legal recreational cannabis, Alberta is the country’s reigning retail pot capital.

No other province comes anywhere close to the 306 cannabis stores that have been given the green light in the province since legalization day on Oct. 17, 2018. British Columbia has 85, according to the province’s licensing website, and Ontario, Canada’s most populous province, still has fewer than 30 stores.

On the first day that cannabis stores legally opened their doors last year, Calgary had just two locations and Edmonton started off with six. But Calgary has since surpassed the capital city with 65 licensed retail stores — by far the most of any city in Canada. Edmonton isn’t far behind, with 48 licensed stores.

Beltline Cannabis Calgary owner Karen Barry was among the first group of businesses to be licensed by Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis (AGLC), and she opened her store in the city’s core at the end of October 2018. “It’s been a bumpy ride,” she said.

Though things have become more stable, she said the budding industry is still finding its footing.

“With the aggressiveness of the expansion, there were challenges — and still are challenges — in terms of understanding inventory churn,” Barry said, adding she’s seeing customers’ needs change as people bring more education and questions about specific products into her store.

Read more: Legal edibles explained: Here’s what you need to know about Canada’s second wave of cannabis legalization

Matt Zabloski, a City of Calgary business strategist who helped lead the city’s approach to cannabis legalization, said he has seen a smoother transition than in some other cities.

“The resources that we put into it, we probably could have more storefronts open if it was just up to the municipality,” he said. In total, Calgary has issued 220 development permits that give the green light for a cannabis business, but only 65 of those have jumped through all the additional municipal and provincial hoops to be able to open their doors.

Zabloski added that some people looking to start businesses may have stopped partway through the process because of a licensing moratorium from the AGLC in response to supply shortages. The temporary suspension started the month after legalization and wasn’t lifted until May.

Daniel Nguyen was fresh out of university when he spent everything he had to open Numo Cannabis in north Edmonton. The store got final approval in September 2018, and his team was still putting in cabinets and furnishings the day before they opened.

On the first two days of legalization, they were hit with consistent four-hour lineups until all the product was gone. But then, they had to close for two weeks because licensed producers were behind on the cannabis they’d committed to shipping out.

The AGLC’s online ordering system meant store owners were up all night waiting for new product to come available, and whoever was lucky enough to grab it would have something to put on their shelf.

“We caught wind of product one night at 4 a.m. and that was the biggest purchase we were able to make that month,” Nguyen said. His store was open for just 10 frustrating days in November while he kept paying overhead costs.

It wasn’t until April that Nguyen said things started to turn around. Licensed producers started ramping up to the point where his shelves could be regularly stocked with a growing assortment of products.

Since then, things have been running smoothly — so much so that he’s opening a second Numo location in Chinatown next month.

“It was a huge risk,” Nguyen said. “It was a lot of doubt, because it was the first time that any of this ever happened. I couldn’t be more grateful for how it turned out.”

Despite Alberta’s cannabis supply problems, University of Calgary assistant professor Rebecca Haines-Saah, who studies cannabis and public health policy, said the province started from a better position than many other parts of Canada.

In Ontario, after a new provincial government took over in 2018, Premier Doug Ford changed course from a government-run store model to privately run cannabis retail just months before legalization day, leaving officials to start planning from square one. And cities like Toronto and Vancouver also had to contend with a broad market of unlicensed dispensaries while they set up their legal retail system.

Albertans also report consuming cannabis in greater numbers, according to Statistics Canada’s National Cannabis Survey. Slightly more than 20 per cent of Albertans older than 15 reported using cannabis in the first half of 2019, surpassing the national average.

Haines-Saah said part of Alberta’s cannabis boom comes down to a waiting market that met an effective approach to regulation.

“It was thoughtful, it was evidence-based, and it was balanced. To me, this is a natural experiment to see across the country what models are going to succeed. We just happened to be very organized and very driven to get stores up and running to get money flowing,” she said.

“Being in the public health world and sometimes hearing from the business side, I think, for better or for worse, that spirit of capitalism and entrepreneurship and ‘take a risk’ ... I think that really facilitated a lot.”

Alison McMahon, CEO and founder of Cannabis At Work, said people are still flocking to the industry as employees and entrepreneurs. But some businesses are finding out the legal weed game is harder than they expected.

“I think what we’re seeing is a lot of settling in around that reality, where there are still a lot of organizations that are growing fairly rapidly and adding head count,” McMahon said. “But in some cases, we’re also seeing companies do some downsizing or some layoffs, because companies are now in a position to assess what their revenue really is and what kind of operating costs they can carry.”

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Haines-Saah said that while Alberta is well ahead of the pack with retail stores now, she expects to see other provinces catch up as legalization wears on. Cities are still monitoring the impact of cannabis legalization, which notably includes different approaches to public consumption. In Calgary, using cannabis in any form in a public space isn’t allowed. Edmonton took a more relaxed approach, but mandates that people smoking cannabis or tobacco in public have to be at least 10 metres away from a door, window, patio or bus stop. You also can’t smoke in parks that have children’s amenities.

But just a year in, it will take much longer to see the full picture of what cannabis legalization means for Alberta.

“If you want to do something evidence-, data-driven, we still need to go forward at least five years to see the impacts,” Haines-Saah said. “But so far, so good.”

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Alberta’s one-year cannabis anniversary, by the numbers

Calgary

65 provincially licensed cannabis stores

3 cannabis growing or processing facilities

9 festivals granted permits for cannabis consumption areas

24 tickets issued by bylaw and Calgary transit officers for violating cannabis consumption bylaws (as of the end of August 2019)

122 tickets issued by Calgary police for keeping cannabis in an open package in a car or “within easy access” of a driver or occupant (as of the end of August 2019)

18 tickets issued by Calgary police for using cannabis in a car (as of the end of August 2019)

35 complaints to 311 about “cannabis concerns” (up until the beginning of October 2019)

Edmonton

48 provincially licensed cannabis stores

3 cannabis growing or processing facilities

6 festivals granted permits for cannabis consumption areas

21 tickets issued by bylaw and Edmonton transit officers for violating cannabis consumption bylaws (as of Sept. 26, 2019)

259 tickets issued by Edmonton police for keeping cannabis in an open package in a car or “within easy access” of a driver or occupant (as of the end of August 2019)

71 tickets issued by Edmonton police for using cannabis in a car (as of the end of August 2019)

Correction - Oct. 17, 2019: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly referred to Calgary police under the list on number of tickets issued by Edmonton police.

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