VANCOUVER — The City of North Vancouver heard from nearly thirty cannabis advocates Monday night during a council meeting on how the city should approach regulating the drug.

The majority of those speakers used their platform to oppose the city’s current injunction against dispensaries.

Confusion amongst councillors about regulation options resulted in their vote being delayed until a later date, leaving dispensary owners and cannabis users without answers about when North Vancouver’s pot prohibition would end.

But Coun. Don Bell told StarMetro the current injunction against marijuana sales was temporary, and was not intended to stop the sale of cannabis for good.

“I’m prepared to seriously consider the way that legal, recreational marijuana can be made available,” Bell said. “But it’s got to be done on a regulatory framework that we’re comfortable with.”

Bell said his opposition to the pot shops currently operating in the city is that they had been doing so illegally, without business licenses.

City council denied licenses to dispensaries including Weeds dispensary and Lotusland Cannabis Club last May, when both applied to sell cannabis for medicinal and recreational use in the city.

Michael Wuest, owner of Weeds, told StarMetro he made the decision to use his retail foothold — originally licensed to sell paraphernalia like rolling papers and pipes — to sell cannabis once legalization was squarely on the federal horizon.

Wuest said he is serving many residents who use marijuana to treat pain, and that even a temporary ban on cannabis sales would leave those people in the lurch. With legalization coming, shutting Weeds down now made little sense, he added.

“At the end of the day, this is going to be a legally available product that’s helped so many people,” Wuest said. “Why are you wanting to make this difficult?”

But Coun. Craig Keating said his concern is illegal dispensaries were allowed to set up shop without oversight, while other businesses have to go through a process of inspection, regulation and licensing.

“That just doesn’t seem fair to me,” Keating said.

Jamie Shaw, government regulations director for MMJ Canada and founder of the Compassion Club Society, warned that prohibition inevitably pushes buyers into the black market, or brings the black market out into the open.

“What we saw here in Vancouver was as soon as they started restricting dispensaries a little bit, we started seeing pop-up markets, specifically around edibles that dispensaries were no longer allowed to carry,” Shaw said. “There’s a demand for it, the product’s there, so if you try to shut off one avenue it’s still going to find its way out.”

And Courtland Sandover-Sly, president of the B.C. Independent Cannabis Association, echoed Shaw’s message, saying the consequences of shutting dispensaries down was clear: people would just purchase their cannabis on the street.

“And unfortunately, street-level drug dealers aren’t known for checking I. D.s,” Sandover-Sly said.

Keating, however, said he’s heard those arguments, and remains unconvinced.

“I’m all ears about why this (current system) is safer,” Keating said. “I don’t know where the substance is coming from … I don’t know anything about the people who do not have a business license to operate who are operating these entities.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

“None of these questions are clear to me, so the argument that somehow this is safer is an assertion backed by zero evidence.”

Wuest understood Keating’s concern, but said he won’t back down, and would not shut his doors regardless of what he heard from council.

“Sometimes, unfortunately, without breaking some rules, you can’t make any progress,” Wuest said.

Read more about: