‘Budtenders’ left waiting to exhale
As Ottawa pot shops proliferate, criminal charges loom over clerks
The number of illegal pot shops in the city is on the upswing, even as the first wave of dispensary employees charged with drug trafficking make their way through the courts.
There are now at least 17 dispensaries selling marijuana over the counter, about the same number that were in town eight months ago when police began raiding them.
The stores are pushing the boundaries as the clock ticks down to July 2018, the date the federal government has promised to make recreational pot legal.
A few of the dispensaries cater only to medical patients. But many sell to anyone over 19, offering a wide variety of weed, cannabis concentrates, vape pens as well as candy, cookies and pop.
They are in discreet offices in suburban industrial parks; boutique-like stores on Bank Street; shabby storefronts on Rideau Street and Montreal Road; and private rooms hidden from public view in head shops.
What they have in common is their popularity.
“A significant number of otherwise law-abiding citizens” are shopping at dispensaries, noted an Ottawa judge Wednesday as he sentenced two young employees who were working at a pot shop on Bank Street when it was raided by police in January.
The “budtenders,” ages 20 and 22, pleaded guilty to drug trafficking. They received conditional discharges, which means they are registered as guilty but will not have criminal records.
In April, two other Ottawa budtenders who pleaded guilty received criminal convictions from another judge who said they had engaged in “blatant drug dealing.”
It’s an indication of the varying approaches as courts, police and prosecutors wrestle with what to do about the illegal shops and the people who own and work in them.
A case in point is the differences between Ottawa and Toronto, which have both seen a proliferation of dispensaries.
Police and city bylaw officers in Toronto launched a major offensive after nearly 80 shops popped up almost overnight in the city in the spring of 2016.
In one of the largest drug raids in the city’s history, dubbed Project Claudia, they swooped down on 43 shops in one day in May. As sporadic raids continued in the whack-amole fight against the dispensaries, the number of shops dipped as low as 38, according to Mark Sraga, a spokesman for the city’s Licensing & Standards division.
This spring, the number inched back up to about 60 shops. In the past month, police have cracked down yet again, arresting dozens of people in raids on the CannaClinic chain.
One shop was raided three times after it kept reopening.
The current toll after 14 months of police raids in Canada’s largest city?
A total of 312 people have faced criminal charges, according to the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, the agency responsible for prosecuting drug crimes.
Selena Holder was struggling to pay her rent with part-time jobs when a friend told her about a pot shop on Rideau Street.
When she dropped by the WeeMedical Dispensary Society in September 2016 and the manager offered her a job, Holder didn’t ask too many questions.
“(The manager) said ‘It’s a grey area, and we haven’t had any problems with the cops. And if we do, we have really good lawyers for you.’ ”
Other marijuana dispensaries had opened on Bank Street, Preston Street and Montreal Road.
“They are on major streets and the cops haven’t done anything,” Holder thought. “Maybe it’s OK.”
The job didn’t pay much — $12 an hour — but was full-time.
“I wanted to see if I could get myself out of debt for the first time in a long time and buy myself things,” explains the soft-spoken Holder. She’s been on her own since leaving home at 16 and has struggled with mental health problems.
Holder, 21, worked at the dispensary for six weeks before police came through the door, charging her with drug trafficking. That ended not only her job, but her plans to take a veterinary technician course.
“It took me so long to find a purpose and a reason to be here,” Holder says, explaining how she vowed to turn her life around three years ago after doing a high school co-op placement at a veterinary hospital and discovered a passion for working with animals.
“Now my purpose feels like it’s fizzing out in front of me.”
Holder got her high school diploma last month. But she can’t do the vet tech course if she has a criminal record, because it requires work placements. Most jobs require criminal record checks, she says.
Now Holder faces an agonizing choice. Does she plead guilty and hope a judge will spare her? Four of her fellow budtenders in Ottawa have pleaded guilty to drug trafficking: two received criminal records and two did not.
Or does she proceed to trial and take her chances there? That’s unknown territory because no trials have been held yet, in either Ottawa or Toronto. Holder said she’d prefer “option C” — having the charges withdrawn — but that has not happened in Ottawa.