Mayor wants weed stores restricted to ‘proper’ areas

Mayor Jim Watson on Friday was waiting to learn what the city’s role will be in locating government-run weed shops, but says he already knows they shouldn’t be situated in “inappropriate” areas.

“My overriding concern is to ensure that they’re located in the proper locations,” Watson said Friday after the province announced its plan to have stand-alone weed stores run by the LCBO.

“The last thing we want to see is a marijuana shop open next to a high school, for instance.”

Watson hadn’t been briefed yet about the province’s plan, since he was attending the annual firefighters memorial outside Ottawa City Hall over the noon hour.

However, he liked what he had heard so far about the LCBO running the weed stores.

“I think with the LCBO they have a very good reputation in terms of making sure underage customers are not buying a product from liquor stores, so I hope they take the same philosophy with pot shops,” Watson said.

“I don’t know if it’s a zoning issue or whether the province will enact a similar policy that they have with LCBO stores. For instance, you don’t have an LCBO store next to a school or a daycare or something like that. “At this point I don’t know.” Watson says he’s especially eager to see rogue pot shops to disappear. There are about 19 illegal marijuana dispensaries operating across Ottawa, with another recently opening in the Hintonburg area.

Many of those pot shops set up after the federal Liberals were elected on a promise to legalize marijuana — which is now on track to happen by next July — but the province’s plan to have LCBO weed shops as the sole sales outlet makes it clear that private shops will be outlawed.

“That’s the other benefit of bringing some semblance of order to the debate,” Watson said.

“You’ve got these pot shops popping up everywhere and they’re getting robbed and they’re becoming magnets for a lot of unwanted activity and sometimes illegal activity.

“My hope is that, when the structure is in place, we actually start enforcing the law and shutting some of these places down, because they are clearly not authorized at any level of government.” jwilling@postmedia.com twitter.com/JonathanWilling