It’s official. It is now legal to smoke recreational marijuana.
We asked Tanya Turner, the City of Quesnel’s Director of Development Services, if the city was ready…
“I think we’re more ready than a lot of communities. There are a number of communities that haven’t passed any regulation yet with respect to cannabis. We’ve been considering it, we’ve decided on some policy in this area with respect to consumption of cannabis in public spaces.”
Turner says they are treating it like alcohol, in that it is prohibited in public.
She says that is a point they will be stressing, especially early on…
“We are having bylaw enforcement focus on this area, make sure we let people know, and we will be looking to fine people right away. We want to make sure there is a strong message that this is not something that we’re expecting people to take part in on city streets, where they can impact other people, in terms of smoking cannabis.”
Now that the legalization of recreational cannabis is here, the next question pot smokers in Quesnel may have is when will a legal facility open in the city ?
“That is a very difficult question for me to answer. I have met with provincial representatives and they have looked at Quesnel, so we are well underway in identifying locations where they might want to go into. So we are hoping we will be one of their next stores. The only store they have permitted right now is Kamloops, but we want to be one of the next stores, so we’re trying to make sure that we have policy in place so that a government store can come into town as quickly as possible.”
Turner says City Council has decided on just one government store to start, somewhere in the downtown area.
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