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“Taking into consideration the required investments by a prospective private legal retailer, the government could not in good conscience issue an unlimited number of store authorizations to businesses in the face of such shortages and uncertainty in future supply,” Gray said. “Private retailers need certainty that there will be a reliable supply of cannabis to support their business and combat the illegal market.”

Gray said that “selling outside of Ontario’s authorized retail system will also remain illegal under federal law.”

Liedtke predicts that’s unlikely to influence the illicit market.

“People are getting product, and the province had one job — make it easy for people to access cannabis,” he said. “They decided not to.”

Local police departments will continue to play a “game of whack-a-mole” as illegal dispensaries are shut down and others open up. But most black market outlets, he adds, aren’t brick-and-motor stores but delivery services.

“It’s not surprising that this is where we’re at right now, with only 25 available throughout the entire province and with as many that were allocated directly to the city of Toronto itself and the GTA area,” said Liedtke.

He called Ontario’s lottery “a grab bag for everyone to try and get in and win that golden ticket,” but that it should have allowed for a better distribution based on geography and population.

Liedtke points to how private retail stores in Alberta were rolled out, with more than 100 opened within a month of weed being made legal.

“They don’t have the same issues that we’re seeing here, which is going to be large pockets of the population that will be unable to be serviced,” he said.

That said, Alberta had to temporarily stop issuing licences because it did not have enough supply from the licensed producers to meet consumer demand.

lcharlton@postmedia.com