Quesnel Mayor Bob Simpson says the Federal and Provincial Governments need to get their act together with respect to helping municipalities extinguish illegal marijuana dispensaries.
He says there are no legal means for retailing cannabis at this time and it’s municipalities that are bearing the brunt of having to use tools like a business license or bylaw enforcement to deal with it…
“The RCMP across the board, with the sanction of the Federal Government and the direction of the Provincial Government, should be going in and closing these operations down, putting chains on their doors and ending this.”
Simpson says that is not the route the senior governments are taking right now so municipalities are being forced to limp along to try to extinguish these businesses.
He says fines don’t seem to have much of an impact…
“Vancouver has been down this path, i think they were fining 10 thousand dollars a day and these companies can make enough money that they just turn a blind eye to that or challenge the cities to take them to court to collect the fines.”
Simpson says they have cancelled the business license of WeeMedical in Quesnel…
“Because the staff’s contention through a bylaw enforcement is that they are in breech of an agreed upon court order to restrict the selling of cannabis products out of that store. Initially when they applied for a business license they applied under a false pretext. It took a while to really understand what their intentions were. When it was clear their intention was to sell marijuana and related products, we refused to give them a business license and began fining them for operating without a license.”
Simpson says WeeMedical will ask Council to reconsider at it’s next meeting on Tuesday night.