Legal pot success befuddles Ontarians
Could even threaten other idiocies
One of Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s more useful acts of legislative heresy was his early-days decision to scrap the previous government’s plans for state-run brickand-mortar cannabis shops, and instead punt retail into the private sector: The government (for no good reason) has a monopoly on wholesale and online sales, but beyond that, Ontario’s weed market is one of the most open in the country. And considering how maddeningly Presbyterian Ontario still is, almost a century after the Temperance Act was repealed, it wasn’t even all that controversial.
The opposition New Democrats and Liberals could only mount a halfhearted defence of government retail. “That’s stupid,” was pretty much all Ontario Public Service Employees Union president Smokey Thomas could say.
The system isn’t perfect. Retailers have various complaints. But those certainly haven’t stopped pot shops from proliferating. There are at least nine within 20 minutes’ walk of the National Post newsroom, ranging from a friendly no-frills operation right next door to the slick Tokyo Smoke outlet in high-rent Yorkville, which pitches itself to “the sophisticated and curious cannabis explorer … who embrace(s) high design and alternative states of mind.”
It’s incredibly convenient for consumers. It has created lots of relatively well-paying and pandemic-proof retail jobs. It clearly hasn’t eliminated the black market (last month the Ontario Provincial Police claimed to have seized 21,000 plants at an illegal grow-op in the Niagara region). But, according to the weed spot-pricing outfit Cannabis Benchmarks, legal options are significantly cheaper in Ontario than illegal ones.
As government initiatives go in this province, it’s something approaching a triumph. And many Torontonians can’t stand it.
“Worried pot shops have taken over Toronto streets?” a Toronto Star headline asked at the weekend. “You may be right — and it may be about to get worse.”
“You need to walk no more than 10 minutes down trendy Queen Street West between Gladstone and Ossington Avenues (about 700 metres) to see first-hand the effects of Ontario’s legal cannabis market,” the article intoned. “The north side of that block and a half stretch is home to seven pot shops.” One of them even had the temerity to replace “a hip, millennial bar.”
Under Ontario’s pot laws, municipalities had a chance to opt out of weed retail entirely; but if they opted in, they were prohibited from setting rules like how many shops per block. (Alberta, by contrast, won’t license any new retailer that would be within 100 metres of an existing one.) With so few restrictions on the number of such establishments, the Star warned, there are very serious “questions about … how Toronto’s main streets might look and feel in the future — and about whether all these new businesses can ultimately survive.”
If you’re failing to see a problem here, welcome aboard. Businesses fail all the time, and are replaced with new businesses. If Fred and Mabel’s Smoke Shack gets forced out by big-money players like Tokyo Smoke or Spiritleaf — which are owned by Nasdaq-listed cannabis producers Canopy Growth and Sundial Growers, respectively — that’s sad for Fred and Mabel, but hardly unique in modern retail.
Ontarians do have one legitimate beef: Under federal law, pot shops can’t display any cannabis or cannabis accessories in their windows. Many thus essentially wall themselves off from the street, like a saloon in the 1950s, which is definitely not good for a neighbourhood’s overall feel. The obvious solution is to lobby Ottawa to get rid of the rule.
Other than that, there is nothing bad happening here, and quite a lot of good. In principle I am all for municipalities having maximum control over their affairs. But Toronto is a municipality that actively intervenes to protect neighbourhoods from becoming too popular, successful and prosperous. In 2012, City Council slapped a moratorium on new bars, food-service establishments and other “places of amusement” in the west-end Parkdale neighbourhood because — as the local councillor explained — the “sidewalks are jammed every Friday night at 1 a.m.” That’s what counts as a crisis in this often-ridiculous town. Some grownup intervention is occasionally welcome, frankly.
Ontario’s pot experience might threaten other long-standing idiocies, as well. One of the reasons privatized weed retail wasn’t very controversial is likely because the previous Liberal government significantly expanded beer and wine retail to hundreds of supermarkets, and the world did not end. It also likely helped that The Beer Store, Ontario’s 100-per-cent foreign-owned, semi-monopolistic beer and bottle-refunds quango, has been closing stores hand over fist in protest over losing market share to those supermarkets (which have to buy their beer wholesale from The Beer Store!).
It has proved another important point as well. Ontario’s alcohol rules dictate that the same bottle costs the same price regardless of the retail environment in which it is purchased. Not so cannabis (or indeed any other product): Generally speaking, for obvious reasons, Tokyo Smoke charges more than Fred and Mabel’s. In a normal place that wouldn’t need proving. But Ontario is not a normal place. In a decade or three, Canada’s surprisingly enthusiastic embrace of legalized cannabis might just help make this province a little less weird, and a little more free.