POT’S LEGAL
Jack Knox looks at why it might be harder to find marijuana in Victoria today than it has been in a long time
To mark the legalization of marijuana, today’s newspaper comes to you with gummed edges. Roll yourself a giant joint.
Well, no, but it feels like we should do something to reflect the significance what is being treated as the greatest shift in public policy since women got the vote.
After 95 years of prohibition — of drug cops, gang wars, Cheech and Chong, locker searches, 4:20, prison cells, violent grow-show rip-offs, criminal records that follow the convicted like a permanent shadow, and of hockey bags stuffed with B.C. Bud being smuggled across Juan de Fuca Strait in the moonlight — recreational marijuana is finally legal in Canada.
The irony is that it might be harder to find cannabis in Victoria today than it has been for years. Many of the city’s heretofore illegal-but-tolerated dispensaries have shut their doors, hoping that doing so will improve their chances of swapping a Grateful Dead T-shirt for a suit and tie and earning a retail licence.
This leads to an obvious question: Will legalization actually change usage? You can argue that anybody who wants to smoke dope in Victoria already does, with little fear of punishment. (Statistically, your chances of being charged with pot possession in B.C. in 2017 were half what they were in 2011.) Marijuana is being legalized not because Justin Trudeau thinks getting high is swell, but because the status quo wasn’t working. Its main effect was to allow the black market to thrive, unregulated.
That’s the idea, anyway. The counter-argument is that the door will swing open to law-abiding citizens who now interpret legalization as tacit approval. Note that a just-released Angus Reid Institute poll found 37 per cent of British Columbians say they’ll likely use recreational marijuana. Confirming our Harold Hedd/Seth Rogen stereotype, that’s higher (as it were) than anywhere else in Canada. The national average is 26 per cent.
Health officials are among those worried about what comes next. Dr. Richard Stanwick, Vancouver Island’s chief medical health officer, predicts more car crashes, more children innocently eating not-yet-legal but still-available edibles (he said this before a Comox Valley child overdosed on some gummies found in a car this month) and more old people hurting themselves in falls.
Authorities also worry about old folks mixing marijuana and prescription medication, and young people combining it with alcohol.
Police are also concerned. They don’t have a convenient, timetested tool such as the breathalyzer to help nab drugged drivers. The feds have OK’d a salivatesting device, but it is neither widely distributed nor proven. Instead, police will rely mainly, at least for now, on “touch your nose and walk in a straight line” tests administered by trained officers. A new 90-day roadside ban awaits those who flunk the test.
Some employers are squirming, too, unsure of how far they might go in limiting employee behaviour. Others are acting decisively: The Canadian Armed Forces say the 5,700 military personnel at CFB Esquimalt must abstain for at least eight hours before going on duty. That stretches to 24 hours for those handling weapons or ammunition stretches, and to 28 days for those on submarines or military aircraft. Similar rules apply to the base’s 2,156 civilian employees: No smoking within eight hours of work or within 24 hours of “safety sensitive” duty.
It will also take a while to sort out where the pot shops are. In addition to the province’s online portal, bccannabisstores.com, which will send orders through the post (and make an adult sign for them), marijuana will be sold through a combination of government-run and private retail stores. However, no Vancouver Island store of either type has yet made it through an approval process that requires the blessing of both the province and the municipality in which the shop wishes to locate.
Greater Victoria municipalities aren’t making that process easy, either. Much attention has been paid to the fate of the dispensaries that sprouted like zucchini under the City of Victoria’s permissive approach, but less has been heard from the capital region’s dozen other municipalities, all of which — save for Sooke, which licensed three outlets — have shunned them to this point.
Many still plan to make applicants jump through hoops. Saanich this year amended its zoning bylaw to specifically ban marijuana retail shops, meaning anyone wanting to open one will have to convince council at a rezoning hearing. Colwood and Sidney followed the same path. A similar bylaw change will go to Oak Bay council in November. View Royal decided to shelve “the production or distribution or sale of recreational marijuana, including the growing or marijuana plants for personal recreational use” pending a public consultation process. Esquimalt, which once made The Colbert Report for chasing Bongy the Bong Warehouse mascot out of town, not only requires would-be pot retailers to apply for site-specific rezoning, but excludes them from opening within 500 metres of a school — an exclusion zone that covers about half the map.
Langford took a different route. It went to great lengths last year to stamp out a jumping-thegun pot shop that proved harder to kill than Michael Myers, but now that legalization is here council figures it might as well get a piece of the action. It has a pilot project in which up to five shops will be licensed, with the selection to be based partly on how much revenue applicants are willing to share with the municipality.
Some farming communities are as worried about growing as selling. Metchosin council voted Monday to ban marijuana retailing and production, except in the agricultural land reserve, where it may not ban growing. Even on ALR lands, though, Metchosin bars production in structures with anything other than a dirt floor (that addresses the concern about concrete-based greenhouses killing good farmland). Central Saanich passed similar growing restrictions this year.
Don’t expect all this municipal heel-digging to keep shops out forever. Councils just want to have vetting authority. And the B.C. Liquor Distribution Branch says Vancouver Island and the Lower Mainland are its focus as it looks to open its government-run B.C. Cannabis Stores. It is actively looking for suitable locations in Greater Victoria and the rest of the Island.
Once buyers get their marijuana, there’s the question of where they may inhale it. In Greater Victoria, a combination of provincial rules and the Capital Regional District’s Clean Air Bylaw ban it anywhere smoking tobacco is prohibited, plus some places where kids are found. There’s no toking in vehicles, parks, playgrounds, playing fields, public squares and public buildings. Same goes for school grounds or on adjacent sidewalks and boulevards. Ditto for bus stops, ferry docks, ferries, other boats or within seven metres of doorways, windows and air intakes. Hotels may ban you from smoking in your room.
Most condo complexes ban smoking cigarettes, and are expected to do the same with recreational marijuana. Landlords may ban renters from smoking, too.
There are a few exemptions: School authorities may permit medical marijuana under certain circumstances, say, and retirement homes may have designated smoking rooms. You can smoke in a parked RV if you’re living in it, or in a moored boat if it includes a bed, toilet and cooking facilities.
Breaking the provincial potsmoking law carries a $230 fine for an individual, while a CRD ticket comes with a $100 penalty.
You have to be 19 to smoke. Individuals may carry up to 30 grams in public. The household limit is 1,000 grams. People may grow four plants at home.
The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority has clarified the rules for flyers. Adults may carry up to 30 grams of marijuana on domestic flights, but passengers travelling with what looks like more than that will be asked to show medical-marijuana documentation. Cannabis oil will be treated like other liquids: a 100-millilitre limit, and packed in a one-litre clear, closed and resealable plastic bag.
Canadians may not fly across international borders with pot, though. And U.S. border agents have wide latitude when deciding who to let in, so don’t be a smart aleck.