So far it looks like Alberta will be the go-to province for marijuana entrepreneurs lining up to get in on the action when selling pot becomes legal next summer.

Unlike Ontario and Quebec, Alberta has taken a free market approach. Recreational marijuana will be sold in privately owned retail stores and there could be a lot of them because at this point there is no limit on the number.

No drab stores run by liquor control boards for Alberta. And there will surely be way more stores than the 15 Quebec has designated for the entire province (Ontario is planning 40) in the first year of legalization.

Online sales in Alberta, however, will be a government-run, union-staffed enterprise. And the government will be the exclusive marijuana wholesaler.

Alberta is taking its cues from Colorado, where marijuana has been legal since 2014 and is sold in privately owned retail outlets where the ambience ranges from homey hippie to upscale minimalism.

Could Alberta become the head office capital of the marijuana industry in Canada?

Alison McMahon, CEO and founder of Cannabis at Work thinks so.

“From a business opportunity perspective, I think there is going to be a lot of attention given to Alberta from licensed producers and the cannabis market because we are seeing a lot of demand from this province,” she told CBC. Her head hunting company helps both employers and prospective employees find each other.

There are several reasons for this business optimism. Firstly, Alberta is right next to B.C., which has long been known for its quality, although usually remote, marijuana fields.

Also, Alberta has the second highest number of medical marijuana users of all the provinces. Ontario is first but Alberta is a close second despite having a third of Ontario’s population.

According to Health Canada, about 200,000 clients were registered to receive medical marijuana in the first quarter of this year. About 86,000 were in Ontario, 74,000 were in Alberta. That would seem to indicate Alberta has more medical marijuana users per capita than anywhere else in Canada.

If Colorado’s experience is anything to go by, many of those medical marijuana users will switch to outlets selling recreational dope.

And if conversations with friends and acquaintances are anything to go by all sorts of people are using medical marijuana to treat achy backs, insomnia, or migraine headaches. Not surprisingly, it sometimes also gets used for recreational purposes, especially if it is being vaped.

It’s not just young people who are into marijuana these days. A lot of baby boomers are still toking or looking forward to having access to safe supplies.

The Alberta and Canadian marijuana markets are considered such a gold mine that top law enforcement officials who used to be in charge of the war on drugs are now offering their expertise to this burgeoning industry.

None other than Alberta’s former Justice Minister, Jonathan Denis, and Calgary’s former police chief Rick Hanson have joined the Calgary-based Canadian Cannabis Chamber, which promotes the legal recreational marijuana industry and provides legal, lobbying and security advice.

Even Denis admits that when as justice minister he was trying to snuff out marijuana grow-ops he never could have imagined that one day he would be promoting them.

The Alberta government insists that it is not expecting to collect a lot of revenue from the weed business. It wants to keep prices competitive and taxes low (no sales tax in Alberta) so the black marketers will be pushed out of business.

But it also wants more of the tax revenue than Ottawa is proposing.

The proposed federal framework calls for marijuana to be taxed at a $1 a gram or 10 per cent of the retail price, whichever is higher, with revenues evenly split between the federal government and the provinces and territories.

“I am not sure what the federal government is smoking but I can tell you that is not going to work for Alberta,” Alberta Finance Minister Joe Ceci told reporters in October.

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Since the provinces will be responsible for implementation, regulation, and enforcement they should get most of the tax revenue, Ceci added.

Unlike other tax squabbles this one is likely to spark quite a few giggles.

Gillian Steward is a Calgary writer and former managing editor of the Calgary Herald. Her column appears every other week. gsteward@telus.net

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