Toronto pot shop raids: Huge success or costly attack?

Depending on who you talk to, Toronto’s law-and-order approach has been either a qualified success and victory for safe neighbourhoods, or a hypocritical, costly attack on pot pioneers to enable a corporate takeover of their lucrative industry.

About all they can agree on is that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau setting a framework for legalization, to be implemented and administered by provincial and territorial governments, will not end private pot shops in Toronto any time soon.

“It’s not that easy for us to effectively shut them down,” says Mark Sraga, the city’s director of investigation services.

“Ultimately we don’t have the authority to padlock the doors shut. We’re bound by the legal process . . . and we will get there. But it takes time.”

A Superior Court judge just rejected a city bid to speed up injunction proceedings to close seven dispensaries of B.C.-based Canna Clinics, instead setting a date in late September.

Since May, 162 dispensaries opened their doors in Toronto and 110 have been shut down. A year ago there were 82 or 83, and the number dipped as low as 38. Sraga believes the city and police have done a good job in an “exercise that’s been worth it.”

Jodie Emery’s voice sounds strained. Half of Canada’s “first couple of cannabis,” she is in Toronto on bail for trafficking and other charges, and out of the B.C.-based Cannabis Culture chain she was trying to build with Marc, her husband who spent five years in a U.S. jail for selling marijuana seeds.

“This is clearly a corporate government takeover by people who have profited from prohibition and want to continue profiting by maintaining the status quo — banning pioneers and literally sweeping away the people who set up this industry and struggled for it,” she said. She noted that Trudeau’s pot point man is ex-“narc” and Toronto police chief Bill Blair, and those involved with government-approved licensed producers include one of Blair’s former deputies, former politicians and Bay St. investors.

“The dispensaries might continue if they stay low-key, but if you’re willing to take a stand, you will be attacked by the oppressor,” Jodie Emery said.

“These raids aren’t necessarily meant to convict someone. They’re meant to scare them, intimidate them, bully them out of business . . . criminalize the competition and clear the way for the profiteers,” of a nondeadly drug widely agreed to be beneficial to many.

Today’s odd reefer reality was apparent one recent afternoon on Queen St. W. near Bathurst St.

Tong-wielding staff gently tugged buds from glass jars for customers at Eden Medicinal, a boutique with exposed brick wall, potted plants and electronic background music that reopened almost immediately after it was raided last year.

About a block away, a sign announced the closure, “with sadness,” of Open Dispensary after a recent raid and four arrests.

“Our stores were able to show the public and politicians alike how well the dispensary model will work,” the sign states. “It is our hope that when legalization finally comes to Canada, this will be the model that will be adopted.”

After reading the notice, Igor Kolpak, who works in advertising, said he is impressed with the fact the dispensaries have established a retail model that works, though he’d like to see more quality control. He has applied for a licence to produce marijuana.

“It shows we can go outside a Shoppers Drug Mart, or LCBO type model,” he said.

Not so quick. Sraga, from the city, says it is clear tightly controlled distribution is coming. Illegal sales will disappear, he predicts, once weed is “readily available” through “provincially controlled mechanisms.”

“If that meets the demand of the public, they won’t need to go to the black market,” but raids will continue if they do, he says.

While the city prosecutes store owners on bylaw charges, many clerks charged criminally saw their charges dropped in return for a peace bond dictating that they stay out of trouble — and pot shops — for two years. Trafficking charges against a handful of shop owners remain.

Alan Young, a law professor and vocal drug law critic, expects to help launch a constitutional challenge against those charges.

“The million-dollar question is: What happens to these dispensaries? Will they actually go away?” he says.

“Legalization, the way the Liberals have unfolded it, is only a partial legalization, because they’ve taken the position that if you don’t fit within the program they’re going to propose, you fall back into criminal law.”

Young calls that “myopic and wrong.”

“There will be a huge sector of the cannabis community which will not buy into the government’s program and will continue to do what they’ve done for decades,” he said.

“The issue is, are we really wanting to criminalize that conduct because all we’ve effectively done with legalization is reduce the criminal population from a couple of million to a couple of hundred thousand. And I don’t think that’s really a celebrated victory for the federal government.”

Vancouver, meanwhile, continues down a different path. It looked to regulation, rather than raids, licensing pot shops within strict location criteria — $30,000 for recreational use and $1,000 for medicinal outlets that also offer therapeutic services such as massage — and heavily fining those deemed too close to schools and community centres.

Kerry Jang, a Vancouver city councillor, says: “Using inspection staff has been much more effective and much, much cheaper than using police raids.”

As for the fate of shops that fall outside government legalization rules, he adds: “There will likely be storefronts, and we still expect to be able to say how many and regulate where they will go. We simply have to adjust our bylaws to match the provincial rules.”