Pubdate: Sat, 21 Oct 2017
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2017 The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Jeff Gray
Page: M1

HOLES EMERGE IN CITY'S CRACKDOWN ON MARIJUANA

For 17 months, Toronto police and bylaw officers have been cracking
down on illegal pot dispensaries, raiding more than 200 locations,
laying hundreds of criminal charges and issuing thousands of dollars
in fines. Their attack has been relentless, yet the city still has an
estimated 65 shops open for business at any given time.

The campaign, code-named Project Claudia, began with a
headline-grabbing first round of raids in May, 2016, and has now cost
millions of dollars in police, staff and court time.

Some storefronts simply reopen within weeks or even days of a raid.
Some move - or simply move their business online. One Toronto
neighbourhood was blanketed this week with slick pamphlets for a
marijuana service modelled on the city's food-delivery companies.

Many of the criminal charges laid in the initial raids have been
dropped or stayed. Some of the accused agreed to peace bonds that
place restrictions on them, including shutting down their operations,
to avoid facing charges. Other dispensary owners have launched
concerted legal battles, including a constitutional challenge that got
under way in a Toronto courtroom on Thursday.

But with a chain of provincially controlled pot stores modelled on the
LCBO monopoly to start opening next summer, when recreational use of
the drug is expected to be legalized across Canada, the game of
whack-a-mole being played with illegal storefront dispensaries is
expected to intensify, prompting questions about whether it can or
should be won - and who should pay for it.

"It's been frustrating," Mayor John Tory said. He supported the
crackdown - which is the most aggressive in the country and runs
counter to approaches taken by police forces in the West - as a
necessary move in the face of complaints about the rapid spread of
dispensaries across town. "The question you have to ask yourself is:
Is it important, as a matter of principle, that you should enforce the
laws so that people don't just think they can go out and flagrantly
break the law as it presently exists?"

In a recent meeting with other Greater Toronto Area mayors and Premier
Kathleen Wynne, Mr. Tory says he made it clear that he wants the
province to pick up the tab for the enforcement campaign, which is
currently being paid for by the city.

While police could not provide a cost estimate for their raids, the
city's head of investigations, Mark Sraga, estimates his
bylaw-enforcement department alone has spent at least $1-million on
the enforcement campaign.

Six officers have worked full-time to lay 812 charges for zoning
violations or other bylaw infractions.

Mr. Sraga said city and provincial officials are talking about whether
the province should take over enforcement, either through the Ontario
Provincial Police or a new agency. "That remains to be seen on who's
going to do enforcement on the illegal storefronts on a go-forward
basis," he said. "Will it be the municipalities? Or will it be the
provincial level? Those decisions have not been made yet."

The mayor said no such talk had come up at the political level and
that enforcement was still expected to be left in the hands of local
police and bylaw officials.

Ontario Attorney-General Yasir Naqvi was unavailable for an interview.
His office released a statement on Thursday amid meetings this week on
cannabis laws with law enforcement, public-health officials, federal
representatives and First Nations leaders. He did not promise to
reimburse municipalities or take over efforts to wipe out illegal
dispensaries. But the statement does say the government hopes to
determine what support it can provide "where gaps may exist" in
enforcement.

"We remain committed to working with our partners to ensure that
illegal cannabis retail stores, such as dispensaries, are shut down as
quickly as possible," it said.

Some critics say that, given the market conditions, it is unrealistic
to expect the campaign to wipe out Toronto's dispensaries. Just 40 of
Ontario's legal pot outlets are expected to be open across the
province by next summer. Online distribution will also be available at
that time. By 2020, Ontario expects to have 150 stand-alone stores,
spread across the province. Many say this means a large number of
dispensaries will keep operating in the near future.

"In order to shut down the burgeoning dispensary industry in Toronto
or anywhere else, you would have to resort to sort of police-state
tactics that I don't think Canadians would accept," said Kirk Tousaw,
a Vancouver-based lawyer who acts for dispensary owners there and in
Toronto.

While Toronto's illegal dispensaries have attracted a large customer
base and have shown surprising resilience in the face of heavy legal
pressure, the economic landscape will change once legalization takes
hold. Much like the end of Prohibition marked the beginning of the end
of moonshine runners and speakeasies in the United States, consumers
will eventually switch to legal options once they are cheaper and more
accessible. However, that could take years, according to Rosalie
Wyonch, a policy analyst at the C.D. Howe Institute.

"Unless the city and province can completely undercut the dispensaries
with price, there will be an ongoing enforcement cost for the city and
province for years," she said. With Ontario considering pricing
recreational marijuana at $10 a gram, she said it's unlikely the
government-run stores will undercut dispensaries on price alone.

"Dispensaries exist now and they'll continue to exist for a few years
until the legal provincial option can cover market demand, be as easy
to access and have comparable prices. But it's a matter of time until
the province gets to that point," Ms. Wyonch said.

In the short term, there will be reasons for consumers to seek out one
of the few government-run stores expected in the first years of
legalization. Among them will be health hazards, as concerns have
risen about the presence of banned pesticides and heavy metals in
marijuana sold in dispensaries. Also, is it worth the risk of arrest
that comes with being in an illegal dispensary when a safe, legal
option exists?

Rick Vrecic's West End medical marijuana dispensary, True Compassion,
was raided in May. He shut it down. His lawyer was able to get the
charges dropped, and Mr. Vrecic now works as a consultant in the
marijuana business. He says he doesn't want to risk another arrest by
reopening his storefront operation, but he is planning to start an
online delivery service.

The current government plans to allow for recreational pot, he says,
but not the legal sale of edible cannabis products, which could leave
many patients who depend on them out in the cold. And he fears another
wave of Project Claudia-style enforcement will see many other Toronto
dispensaries give up and shut their doors as well.

"To open up a dispensary in the city of Toronto [since the raids] … is
not very smart," he said. "But I support those people 100 per cent.
What they are doing is very brave."

Toronto officials did score one legal win this week, with an Ontario
Superior Court judge siding with city lawyers and granting an interim
injunction against a chain of defiant dispensaries called Canna
Clinic, demanding that they be shut down. A hearing on whether to
grant a permanent injunction is scheduled for December, 2018. Mr.
Sraga says the ruling reinforces the city's authority to enforce its
own zoning bylaw, which does not allow storefront pot
dispensaries.

But on Thursday, in a courtroom packed with supporters and medical
marijuana users, a lawyer for another dispensary owner was mounting a
new constitutional challenge, arguing that Canada's law against
possessing pot for the purposes of trafficking was actually invalid
during the Project Claudia sweep.

Prominent Osgoode Hall professor Alan Young, who is arguing the case,
says a win could mean that all marijuana charges laid between
February, 2016 - when a Federal Court judge declared Ottawa's
medical-marijuana regime unconstitutional - and October of the same
year - when new federal rules were brought in - would be tossed out.

To make his case, Mr. Young is relying on a ruling from the Ontario
Court of Appeal in 2000, which he says links the constitutionality of
the criminal law on pot to the question of whether Ottawa had put in
place an acceptable regime to exempt patients who need medical marijuana.

Crown lawyers argue that the February, 2016, ruling on access to
medical pot, known as R v. Allard, did not invalidate the country's
criminal sanctions for possession of marijuana for the purposes of
trafficking during that time.

The dispensary owner at the centre of this latest case, Marek (Mark)
Stupak, has run his SoCo Medical marijuana operation since 1996. He
says he runs a co-op with more than 2,000 members who need medical
marijuana and does not sell the drug for recreational purposes. SoCo
has its own grow-op, a dispensary, a smoking lounge and seed shop,
plus what he calls an "intake office" to screen new members.

Mr. Stupak, who uses medical marijuana himself to deal with
mental-health issues, is no stranger to litigation. He says he has
been arrested 10 times over the years, but each time, he fought the
drug charges in court and they were dropped.

A small number of medical dispensaries such as his have operated for
years, he says, and it was only when new storefronts, many of them
transplants from Vancouver, popped up all over Toronto last year to
take advantage of imminent legalization that the crackdown began. He
hopes operations such as his can stay alive, even in the face of a new
provincial monopoly and future crackdowns.

"You don't get to say, in one sentence, it is so legal that everybody
gets to consume this substance, and on the other hand say it is so
dangerous that only the government can handle it, sell it - it is
confusing," Mr. Stupak said. "Alcohol? I get it. Plenty of studies
point us to negative effects. And yet, it's in supermarkets."
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MAP posted-by: Matt