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Chatting with MLA Craig Coolahan about the Alberta Heritage Fund this week, a more burning topic of public debate sparked up.

Should the Alberta government run its own pot stores?

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The NDP MLA for Calgary-Klein said the topic keeps resurfacing, particularly as the deadline for public feedback on Alberta’s new marijuana framework wraps up Friday.

“I’ve been talking about cannabis all week,” said Coolahan, who serves as chair of the legislative committee on the Alberta Heritage Savings Trust Fund.

“Everybody wants to talk to about it.”

As the federal government moves to legalize marijuana across the country by July 1, much of the talk in the province has focused on the prickly question of where Albertans should be able to buy cannabis.

In some ways, it’s a re-litigation of the battle over privatizing Alberta’s liquor stores, which occurred in 1993.

Groups like the Alberta Federation of Labour and Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE) want the NDP government to set up government pot stores, as Ontario intends to do.