City may relax rules on pot shops near campuses, liquor stores
Some councillors are recommending the city relax proposed rules governing where cannabis stores can operate in Calgary.
A proposal by staff to restrict the proximity of cannabis stores to schools, child care centres, liquor stores, payday loan businesses and pawn shops was debated at a council committee Wednesday that attracted a sizable audience of industry representatives to council chambers.
Committee members elected to drop post-secondary institutions from a rule preventing cannabis stores from setting up shop within 150 metres of schools.
They also proposed relaxing a rule requiring a 30-metre buffer between liquor stores and cannabis stores to simply require that they not be adjacent to one another.
Committee also more narrowly voted to drop a guideline stipulating a 10-metre separation between cannabis stores and payday loan businesses and pawn shops.
Satisfying everyone, including sometimes competing community and business interests, is going to be difficult, if not impossible, Coun. Peter Demong said.
“I would like to see a little less restrictions simply based on the existing liquor store rules we have,” Demong said.
“The whole point is to take it out of the black market and move it to regular retail operation. If that’s what the law of the land says to do, let’s make it as easy and as simple as we can.”
The proposed rules, along with the relaxations suggested by councillors, will go to a final vote of council in April.
Coun. Jyoti Gondek, who sought to remove post-secondary institutions from a proposed list of sites with restricted proximities to cannabis retailers, said some of the restrictions seemed arbitrary or based on stigma.
“My question is, if we’re saying you can buy it if you’re over 18, why do we have to separate it from a university?” Gondek asked.
“We’re trying to reconcile our social feelings and our innermost thoughts about cannabis with how we’re going to offer that retail market. And that’s the thing we’ve got to be careful about, (we) cannot be alarmist in our views, we must look at the research that’s out there.”
A spokesman for Alberta Health Services told the committee part of the problem is that there hasn’t been sufficient research completed on the long-term impact of cannabis use on growing brains.
AHS has issued its own significantly more stringent guidelines, urging the municipal government not to allow cannabis sales within 300 metres of all schools, child care and community centres or within 100 metres of liquor and tobacco retailers.
But some industry representatives who attended the meeting Wednesday argued that too much restriction only benefits the black market while making it more difficult for licensed retailers to operate.
“Every time you add a restriction you benefit a drug dealer,” one industry spokesman said. “They have no problem going within a metre of a school.”
One of the more contentious aspects of the debate surrounded how cannabis retailers will fit into existing neighbourhoods.
City administration told the committee there have been problems in the past in some neighbourhoods with the clustering of certain types of uses, including liquor stores, payday loan and pawn shops. At Wednesday’s meeting, councillors Druh Farrell and Gian-Carlo Carra both voted against dropping restrictions on the proximity of cannabis to payday loan and pawn shops.
“International Avenue has been asking council for many years to try and claw back some uses that are seen as detrimental to the neighbourhood,” Farrell said. “Pawn shops, payday loans and liquor stores all concentrated in one area can give a negative message about a particular type of community.
“You can’t put that genie back in the bottle. I am excited at the potential for new business and legalization of (cannabis). However, I think we should be proceeding cautiously, and I’m a little bit concerned we’re leaping into this without having full awareness of the impacts.”