Pot-shop king takes city to court

Don Briere, known as the King of Cannabis for his 21 marijuana stores across Canada, has a problem in Vancouver.

The marijuana retailer — believed to be the biggest storefront seller of pot in the country — is doing a booming business.

Briere says he recently remitted $431,000 in provincial sales taxes and federal GST in just one month. If that’s correct and you do the math, it means he’s raking in tens of millions of dollars in annual sales.

But not one of Briere’s medical marijuana outlets in Vancouver has received one of the city’s new operating licences.

None of his stores meet the city’s licensing regulations, which require dispensaries to be at least 300 metres away from schools, recreation centres or other dispensaries.

He said he tried — and failed — to locate potential store sites that fall within the guidelines.

“That’s 300 metres in every direction, so 600 metres across,” Briere told me Wednesday. “Factor in all the schools and other dispensaries and there’s nothing available. We tried and tried.”

Is the 300-metre bubble zone a reasonable requirement? Not when you look at how many outlets are selling another popular intoxicant in the city, Briere argues.

“Go along Commercial Drive and you’ll see a bar beside a bar, kitty-corner to another bar, and they’re all less than 100 metres away from a school,” he said. "Look how many places you can buy alcohol: restaurants, pubs, cabarets, liquor stores. I want to play ball with the city, but let’s play fair.”

The city shows no sign of reducing the bubble zone to 200 metres as Briere suggested. So he’s going to court instead. Briere has launched a constitutional challenge to keep his stores open, arguing that depriving his customers of their marijuana “medicine” would contravene their charter rights.

"We have one customer who gets around using a walker,” he said. “He lives across the street from one of our locations and it’s a challenge for him to even get that far. He can’t use the bus and he can’t afford a taxi.”

Closing the store would be “punishing the sick,” he argues.

In addition to a constitutional argument, Briere also makes a business case for keeping his cash registers humming.

“The demand is out there,” he said, noting he and his 130 employees give back to society by paying income taxes, corporate taxes, property taxes, employment insurance, Canada Pension Plan contributions and WorkSafe B.C. premiums.

“And we’re driving business away from organized crime, but they want to shut us down. What is wrong with this picture?”

There’s nothing wrong with the picture, the way he paints it. But Briere’s pot shops aren’t the only businesses out there that must play by the city’s rules.

The campaign to legalize marijuana is close to achieving its goal. Now governments will bring in their rules, regulations and red tape.

Welcome to the real world of running a business. It’s not easy.