Joint effort: Victoria to follow Vancouver’s lead on medical pot regulation

Different strains of medical marijuana sit on the shelf at a dispensary in Vancouver, March 5, 2014.

Vancouver’s landmark decision to regulate illegal marijuana dispensaries could help spark similar changes in Victoria, the city’s mayor says.

In a Canadian first, Vancouver City Council voted eight to three in favour of regulation on Wednesday, ruling pot businesses will have to pay a $30,000 licensing fee while non-profit compassion clubs will pay $1,000 to operate legitimately.

With more medical marijuana dispensaries than Starbucks locations in Victoria, the city will soon be making an historic decision of its own.

“I appreciate the leadership Vancouver’s taken so we can follow their lead instead of having to make it all up ourselves,” Helps said. “I think our staff’s job just got a lot easier.”

She said she’s interested in adopting features from Vancouver’s legislation including a requirement that stores be located 300 metres from schools and community centres.

Any shops found to be connected to gang activity or selling to children will be penalized under a new system.

“This isn’t the Wild West, and if these are businesses we need to treat them like that,” Helps said.

Helps also praised Vancouver’s decision to create a two-tiered licensing system so non-profit compassion clubs pay less to operate.

But Victoria isn’t just going to blindly follow its coastal neighbour, and the city will be consulting with businesses and the public on new regulations, she said.

As for Rona Ambrose’s stern warning to Vancouver that police must uphold federal drug laws despite the decision, Helps had some strong words of her own for the federal health minister.

“What I say to the minister is when the police have tried to enforce the law, they go to court, and the judge throws it out,” she said. “If the court doesn’t hold those decisions, then we’re wasting police resources by chasing a medical substance.”

One local pot advocate praised the decision and said it bodes well for Victoria-based organizations, even though they’ve been operating in plain sight of local law enforcement.

“For the longer-standing dispensaries, we haven’t really hidden all that much,” said Steven Roberts from the Vancouver Island Compassion Society. “We’ve really wanted regulation for a long time, it just hasn’t been pushed.”

He said the regulation requirements Vancouver has set would be “easily attainable” by most businesses here.

“That would make us very happy. That’s one more step to legitimizing what we do,” he said.

Officials say they know of 20 medical marijuana dispensaries calling Victoria home -- even eclipsing the number of Starbucks retailers in the city.