Pot luck running out
Police chief warns shop owners they could be raided at any time
Regina’s police chief is warning that officers could move against marijuana dispensaries at any moment, potentially charging operators and confiscating their weed.
It’s Evan Bray’s most immediate threat yet against Regina’s 19 or so pot shops. He said the police will soon send official warnings to owners — but that’s just “a courtesy.” The law is “black and white,” he said Wednesday, and dispensaries are already breaking it.
“Enforcement ultimately could happen at any time,” he told reporters gathered at the police station. “We are not going to be giving a grace period.”
He said his investigators are “very good” at laying charges and seizing product.
Each situation will be different, he cautioned, but dispensaries that don’t comply with his warnings could face “all of that and more.”
When asked why he’s choosing to act now — just months before legalization — Bray said that police have long worked to “communicate” their expectations to dispensaries. “What we were told was going to be happening in the store isn’t what’s happening in the store,” he noted.
He also based the timing on comments by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has indicated support for enforcement before Ottawa changes the law. Trudeau was already making comments to that effect in 2016, however.
The chief did not explicitly say that customers without medical prescriptions would be safe. Possession is still illegal for a few more months. But he stressed that recreational users would not be the primary targets of any upcoming enforcement campaign.
“Our plan isn’t to go into a dispensary and arrest everybody that we find in there,” he said. “Our focus is on the dispensary, the owners and the operators.”
He did not say what would happen to employees. Police spokesperson Elizabeth Popowich later indicated that if the chief had intended to include them in the targeted group “he would have said so.”
Bray reiterated that there is no legal way to sell marijuana through a storefront, even to patients with a prescription. He said medical users can easily access cannabis through a licensed mail-order service.
Dispensary owners have called that point into question, pointing to alleged barriers for low income people. Pat Warnecke, owner of Best Buds Society, says that shutting him down will push his clients back to the black market.
But Bray seemed to draw no distinction between storefront operators and street dealers. Both, he stressed, operate outside of the law.
“We’re not sending them out of the daylight and into the darkness,” Bray said.
The chief added that his education campaign is already working. He’s heard from two or three dispensaries who have chosen to comply with his warnings. He said his goal is to shut them all down without any enforcement action.
Warnecke still says he will not make that easy. Even after Bray’s renewed warning, Best Buds has no plans to close even if police show up at his door. “Our reaction at that point would be to stand fast,” he said Wednesday afternoon.
Bray hinted that owners like Warnecke may be risking their chance of getting licences under the province’s legalization plan. Bray pointed to the “good character” provision announced by the government. If it were up to him, he said, ignoring police warnings wouldn’t fit the bill. “If you’re an owner of a dispensary who wants to own that dispensary after it’s legalized, I would assume you’re going to comply,” he said.