Cambridge to allow pot shops

Councillors decide to follow lead of neighbours in 7-1 vote

CAMBRIDGE — Mayor Kathryn McGarry was about to call the pot shops question.

The 7-1 victory for a motion allowing walk-in weed outlets in the city had not yet materialized, but it seemed as certain to come as cold weather in January.

That’s when Al Dettweiler — a longtime city resident and past Libertarian candidate, ironically — stood up in the gallery and blurted out his thoughts on the rationale for hosting legal cannabis storefronts.

“Let’s legalize prostitution, too, so we can have a safe product,” Dettweiler bellowed in a council chambers filling up for an evening planning committee meeting. “You guys are disgusting.”

And with that, council inhaled deeply and voted in favour of pot shops on Tuesday.

Cambridge joined the cities of Kitchener and Waterloo, as well as the townships of Wilmot and Wellesley in opting-in. Woolwich was to vote Tuesday night as well. North Dumfries is due to vote next Monday, a day before the provincial deadline for municipalities to make their choice.

Maybe there’s a pot of excise tax gold waiting at the end of the federally mandated legalization rainbow for Ontario municipalities. It’s hard to say exactly how much, city staff said. But that’s the opt-in carrot the province is dangling in front of municipalities.

Safety of supply. Harm and crime reduction. Some controls on location.

That’s why two former cops on council, Frank Monteiro and Mike Mann, changed their old on-the-beat thinking and voted in favour. In a city reeling from overdose deaths amid an opioid crisis, those are big reasons.

“Like Coun. Monteiro, years ago, I would have been adamantly against this,” Mann said after listening to a presentation from city staff and Waterloo Regional Police Chief Bryan Larkin.

“By opting in, we protect ourselves from illicit drug use. We don’t eliminate that, but we do protect ourselves.”

The lone vote against belonged to Coun. Nicholas Ermeta. He figured 60 per cent of his east Galt ward residents were against pot shops in the city. On some streets, as many as 90 per cent were against, he said.

“I don’t think the community is unanimous on this,” Ermeta said. “I don’t think our vote should be either.”

Two councillors, Pam Wolf and Shannon Adshade, lamented that the Ontario government chose to license private retailers for the brick-and-mortar shops serving regulated pot products, the first 25 selected by lottery last weekend. Both councillors would prefer cannabis be sold through a government arm like the LCBO.

“Unfortunately, this government has given us very little choice,” Wolf said.

Going it alone, being the only council in the region to reject pot shops, would have put Cambridge in an uncomfortable spotlight, or potlight.

“To me, the deciding factor was the fact that all our neighbours decided to opt in,” Wolf said.

“I would have voted against this if they had voted to opt out and we were the only community in this area that was going to opt in. I think it’s important that we try to maintain some consistency throughout the region and, by opting in tonight, we’ll have done that.”