VANCOUVER -- In the latest salvo in Vancouver’s simmering pot wars, the B.C. Pharmacy Association is demanding that the city prevent marijuana shops from calling themselves dispensaries.

“These are not businesses selling medical marijuana as defined by Canada’s laws and they are certainly not dispensaries,” wrote Geraldine Vance, chief executive officer of the B.C. Pharmacy Association, in a letter to Mayor Gregor Robertson.

The letter, which was copied to city councillors, the city manager, the police chief and The Vancouver Sun, said the line between pharmacies, staffed with trained and licensed pharmacists, and random retailers selling street drugs has become blurred.

“It puts the public at risk by providing them with a false sense of security that they are buying a ‘medical’ product at a ‘dispensary.’”

Coun. Kerry Jang, who led the charge to regulate pot shops in Vancouver, said he will take up the issue with city staff, but added he wished the association had raised this concern during public hearings on a new city bylaw aimed at applying restrictions on the burgeoning pot trade.

He also isn’t sure whether the city can take legal action against a pot shop that calls itself a dispensary. That will depend, he added, on whether dispensary is a proprietary term applying only to pharmacies.

“Whereas pharmacy does have a distinct meaning under the law, dispensary may not,” said Jang.

Jang said it makes no difference to him whether the term dispensary is used in pot shop labelling, but he added, “Personally, I am fine with not allowing it if that’s possible.”

However, a provincial government spokesman said the provincial Pharmacy Operations and Drug Scheduling Act uses the term pharmacy, not dispensary.

Under Section 7 (3), the act does not include dispensary in a list of terms prohibited for use by non-pharmacies. This list includes apothecary, pharmacy, medicines, drugs, drugstore and drug department, as well as “other words of similar meaning that imply licensing.”

The association is also demanding that pot shops using a variation of the term pharmacy, like “farmacy,” for example, should be required by the city to remove such terms from their legal names and signage.

The pharmacy association was prompted to write the letter after an article appeared in the Aug. 18 edition of The Vancouver Sun with the headline “Hells Angels guard dispensary turf.”

The article reported on court documents indicating that pot shop kingpin Donald Briere had a long criminal record, that his shops had been selling to minors and that he told police he had been threatened by the Hells Angels over plans to set up a pot shop on East Hastings.

The city’s hundred odd pot shops are illegal because federal law permits the sale of medical marijuana, but only by mail through licensed, registered producers.

However, the city has argued it is required to act to regulate pot shops to keep marijuana away from children and sensitive areas of the city while allowing, in accordance with Supreme Court rulings, reasonable access to legitimate medical users.

Pot shop owners have until Aug. 31 to apply to the city for a licence to operate. If they are too close to schools or community centres or too close to each other, they could be forced to shut down.

Jang has said the city’s bylaws will likely close or move two-thirds of the pot shops and provide tools to control the number of such shops and their location, and tools to inspect, regulate and enforce medical use.

yzacharias@vancouversun.com

Twitter:@yzacharias

===

Click here to report a typo or visit vancouversun.com/typo.

Is there more to this story? We'd like to hear from you about this or any other stories you think we should know about. CLICK HERE or go to vancouversun.com/moretothestory