Hamilton should accept that pot is the future
Councillors who want to opt out of retail sales are on the wrong side of history
On Fennell Avenue, just east of Upper Sherman and across from the Dairy Queen, is a store. It’s just around the corner from East 33rd, where I spent the majority of my youth — in my grandparent’s home on the Mountain.
Back then, it was a convenience store, family-owned and -operated. They lived in the back of the building, their business was in the front. During the summer months, they sold flowers. Throughout the day, you’d find idling cars on East 31st or out front on Fennell while customers ran in quickly to buy a pack of cigarettes, some milk or their lottery tickets for that weekend.
Stores like this could be found nestled in every neighbourhood across our city — a random place of commerce smack dab in the middle of your local neighbourhood. And while they often aren’t the prettiest and don’t make much strategic retail sense, they’re almost as necessary as that park down the street or the sidewalks we walk on.
The convenience store was a place of community, you knew the staff by name, and you’d bump into your neighbours there. What was a simple stop in your day to grab small items could quickly become a half-hour chat. While times have changed in so many ways, this “place of community” reality remains true at many of these small neighbourhood stores across Hamilton. But a new reality has emerged.
That store across from the Dairy Queen is now called MJC or Mary Jane’s Closet, a paraphernalia head shop on one side and a small dispensary on the other. Twenty years later, you can still buy flowers at 837 Fennell Avenue East — but flowers of a different kind.
These dispensaries don’t fill the same role of that old convenience store. They do, however, fulfil a demand in Hamilton, and it’s a significantly large and growing demand. Hamilton has been called the “pot capital of Canada.” Our own Chamber of Commerce believes cannabis can be to Hamilton what grapes are to
Niagara region.
Our city staff recommend opting in for legal pot shops in Hamilton. The province has agreed to give municipalities half of their excise tax revenue. In a world such as ours today, where municipalities are handcuffed in how they can generate much-needed revenue, why would we opt out of receiving this additional revenue? If we have led the country in the number of illegal dispensaries operating in any one city — why would we turn our back on the opportunity to legalize some of them?
At its peak last year, the Hammer was home to almost 90 cannabis dispensaries, and per capita, they made it Canada’s “cannabis capital.” Hamiltonians seem to enjoy their cannabis whether medicinal or recreational. Hamilton has a lot of knowledge, experience and expertise in this “new legal kid in town” industry. And there’s other revenue opportunities including annual licensing of dispensaries, as Vancouver and Victoria have done.
It’s nice to look back on stolen moments
from our past and think fondly on yesteryear. Tomorrow though, that convenience store down your street will be an illegal cannabis dispensary. The day after, another storefront will be purchased or rented and converted to provide for the demand that exists in our neighbourhoods and across this city. Times change. Cannabis is legal. Demand is high. Hamiltonians enjoy it. And we do the biz parts best it seems.
While many of our councillors are considering opting out on the new legal cannabis shops in Hamilton, they’re on the wrong side of history on this file. And unlike Cher who wanted to turn back time in July 1989 — the same month and year I arrived on this earth, and when Rose’s Variety at 837 Fennell Avenue was a thriving business — city council needs to understand its efforts are best spent fighting for our future rather than fighting against it.
Dan MacIntyre lives in Hamilton and ran in the last municipal election