The City of Vancouver worries about restaurant menus.
It frets about pets being sold in stores.
It agonizes over patio culture.
It shuts the doors late on Granville Street bars while letting people drink inside.
It contemplates a war on paper cups.
It cracks down on natural gas.
It is eager to grab tax from empty homes.
But when it comes to dealing intelligently with illegal marijuana dispensaries, it is chill to the point of irresponsibility.
The Vision Vancouver administration has cultivated through policies of indifference and negligence about 100 dispensaries in the city, the vast majority of them in violation of the belated and pretentious licensing process that has been a cruel joke from its inception.
Last week it became even clearer that the illegal producers and distributors have had their way. In the illegal establishments, only 14% of the more than $1 million in meagre fines has been paid – about $140,000, or some 19 out of more than 400 tickets.
More than a year into the official business licensing of the dispensaries, not one illegal operation has been shut. Only a handful of the several dozen have been even authorized.
Court injunctions are impeded by backlogs and delays, but even with that threat, the dispensaries have just played through because the municipal police force clearly does not want to start expensive and controversial raids.
The city is either being played for fools or malignantly playing us for them. The results are dangerous to the public, expensive to the taxpayer and lucrative to the criminal.
This isn’t about the morality of ingesting cannabis or even legalizing it in time. It’s about the morality of condoning illegal business.
The prime minister is clear: they should close. The premier said the same thing in the election campaign.
The mayor has been clear, too, only in another way: this isn’t a priority (read: this isn’t a vote-getter).
It took years to get a licensing framework, and it is taking years to implement even the simplest rules. Even though many dispensaries are close to schools and community centres, even though more are sprouting monthly, and even though their products are not scientifically tested or their vendors professionally screened, the city pronounces this issue as one big shrug.
It is ridiculous to claim, as one councillor did last week, that the city has done all it could. It could have easily directed the police to raid the illegal operations years ago, dating back before the last municipal election.
Naturally, the activists and advocates argue that what will soon be a legal product should not somehow be subjected to scrutiny at this late stage. In its tactics and strategy, though, the city has played into the wrong hands and will make the transition to a legal landscape more difficult.
The dispensaries might well perpetuate the black market even after cannabis is legalized. A properly produced supply of marijuana will not be available when the federal government sanctions cannabis, so the dispensaries are bound to abound.
Dispensary proprietors could not have asked for a more inept, chaotic environment in which to be bandits: a federal government rushing to legalize before its next election, a provincial government in paralysis on every issue including this one and a municipal government that does not want to alienate its base before its next election by playing the role of the stern parent. Combine those problems with infrastructural need and it is clear we are far too many steps away to elegantly introduce legalization on the date most expect, next July 1, the so-called O Cannabis Day.
That being said, that day is coming, a legitimate industry is looming, and the criminals need to be taken out of the way now.
What it appears we can expect locally, though, is that anyone can walk in – and I have seen high-schoolers do so – for an illegal product from a business that does not pay a licence fee, abide by the municipal rules or worry about the consequences. We could do better than to be this laughingstock.
Kirk LaPointe is Business in Vancouver’s vice-president of audience and business development.
