What legal weed stores will look like: ‘Very chic, very modern, very clean-cut’
This is what the end of cannabis prohibition will look like in New Brunswick: An upscale showroom with black ceilings, grey walls and a once-illicit drug displayed in brightly lit glass cases.
“Think along the lines of a jewelry store. Very chic, very modern, very clean-cut lines,” New Brunswick Liquor Corp. spokesperson Mark Barbour says.
“That’s where the product will be kept, in locked glass cases, and from there the transaction will be made and proceed to a point-of-sale area.”
With less than seven months to go before recreational marijuana is legalized, provinces and territories are scrambling to come up with plans to sell cannabis.
But only scant details have emerged about what the retail experience of buying legal weed will be like.
Ottawa lawyer Trina Fraser predicts it won’t be much akin to buying a bottle of scotch.
“Think more like tobacco as opposed to alcohol,” she says. “It’s not going to be like you’ll walk in and there are samples.”
New Brunswick’s retail scheme — which appears to be the most advanced among the provinces — offers an early peek at how consumers will buy the drug.
The province has issued construction specs featuring a standalone brick store with a black awning featuring the CannabisNB logo.
But despite the upscale interior, the entrance will reflect governments’ cautious embrace of cannabis: Stern security guards will swipe identification cards to confirm customers are 19 and over before allowing them to step inside.
Beyond this forbidding first interaction, staff in a reception area with glossy white tables and bright green chairs will explain safe and responsible recreational cannabis use, harm reduction and the laws of the land. Formalities taken care of, customers are escorted into a gleaming 3,000 square-foot weed retail store.
The first customer will walk through the doors in July, more than a year after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau fulfilled a campaign pledge and introduced legislation to legalize the recreational use of marijuana.
In a single day, buying cannabis will go from a black-market purchase, steeped in surreptitious dealings and paranoid dealers, to a modern shopping experience. A drug long condemned as the stuff of street gangs, organized crime and outlaw motorcycle clubs will be branded, packaged and displayed in stores.
A once-clandestine act will become a government-sanctioned transaction, complete with a healthy excise tax and consumption taxes on top.
While it appears the distribution of wholesale cannabis and online sales will be largely government-controlled, provinces and territories have opted for one of three retail models for over-thecounter sales: Private, public or a hybrid of the two.
Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and P.E.I. have announced government-run stores, similar to the Crown-owned liquor stores in those provinces.
Alberta, Manitoba and Newfoundland and Labrador have said the private sector will operate cannabis retail outlets in those provinces, while British Columbia has decided on a hybrid retail model.
Saskatchewan has hinted at a private model, but has yet to confirm its retail plans. Yukon suggested it may initially limit sales to government outlets, but as with the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, the territory is still in public consultations.
Governments are also still hammering out exactly how much the product will cost, how much it will be taxed, the minimum age for buyers, where smoking pot will be legal and driving impairment rules.
“This is basically like the entire country turning 19 at the same time,” says Rosalie Wyonch, policy analyst with the C.D. Howe Institute in Toronto.
“Education is going to be a large part of the customer service of these retail stores. Chances are most consumers will not be particularly familiar with the product and could be completely nervous.”