7 Things to know

Dispensaries still illegal, Tories warn

How marijuana dispensaries operate in Canada:

1 Canada has well over 100 stores. The Canadian Association of Medical Cannabis Dispensaries says B.C. alone has 95 dispensaries. Two stores operate in Alberta, one in Manitoba, 13 in Ontario and four in Quebec.

2 At least 60 dispensaries operate around Vancouver, with relatively little interference from law enforcement. “There has been no big outcry,” says Dana Larsen, the vice-president of the Canadian Association of Medical Cannabis Dispensaries, who opened a store on Vancouver’s east side in 2008. “If people were protesting our dispensaries and complaining and demanding something be done, maybe [the police would intervene]. But dispensaries get very few complaints and raids against dispensaries get a lot of complaints.”

3 Rather than shutting dispensaries down, Vancouver is investigating how the city can regulate the industry. Vancouver Coun. Kerry Jang recently asked municipal staff to determine whether dispensaries can be zoned as pharmacies, which would give the city the ability to directly oversee such operations and control their growth. “If we did that, we would be actually starting to regulate the number of dispensaries per street, their location, the same way we do with a regular pharmacy,” says Mr. Jang, who teaches psychiatry at the University of British Columbia’s medical school. “The concerns are the same, especially for pharmacies that dispense methadone.”

4 Some police agencies are enforcing the law. Halifax police raided the city’s only dispensary last year, shutting it down. Local RCMP officials in Grand Forks and Parksville, B.C., recently warned prospective dispensaries they would be shut down if they open. Mounties raided a dispensary in Kelowna last month, though two others in the city remain open.

5 RCMP spokeswoman Sgt. Laurie White couldn’t say whether the force has a broad policy for marijuana dispensaries. “We will take enforcement action if there are any indications of contraventions to the [Controlled Drugs and Substances Act],” she says. “It depends on what the information is, what the source is, and that would then drive our investigation.”

6 The dispensaries all operate outside the federally regulated system, which the government overhauled last year to switch production from home grow-ops to large-scale commercial operations. Dispensaries were illegal under the old system and that didn’t change last year. Supporters of dispensaries argue the new federal system doesn’t meet patients’ needs, either because the legal marijuana is too expensive, supply is low or commercial producers don’t offer an adequate variety of strains. The commercial system also doesn’t produce edible products or oils, but dispensaries do.

7 Paul Calandra, parliamentary secretary to the prime minister, says the government has no plans to formally legalize dispensaries. “They were illegal before, they remain illegal today and as long as we’re in government they will continue to be illegal,” Mr. Calandra says. “That is the law of the land, and we would hope our municipal and provincial partners would enforce the law as it stands today.”