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VPD to feds: We won’t enforce new pot law
City won’t interfere if illegal stores sell only to patient
Vancouver police say they won’t bust down the doors of the city’s many illegal medical marijuana dispensaries April 1 when a new federal law will delegate weed production and distribution to a handful of licensed premises.
Coun. Kerry Jang — who closely watches health issues — minced no words, saying the city believes the federal law interferes with the right of people to access medicine. As a result, the city won’t make any extraordinary efforts to shut down “professionally run” medical marijuana dispensaries, even though most operate without city business licenses.
“It really is about access to medication, and the rules under the new federal law would essentially block people from getting their medication,” he said. “We just don’t see these dispensaries as something we need to shut down, as long as they are only providing marijuana to people who medically need it.”
The city’s position is being hailed by medical marijuana dispensary operators as a reasoned response to a new federal law they believe will force the production of medical marijuana underground.
The Vancouver Police Department said it is aware of at least 29 illegal medical marijuana dispensaries in the city but doesn’t raid them as long as they are only selling to people who have a medical marijuana permit.
“I don’t think for now there is any plan to change the current drug policy that is in place to fit specifically with these changes,” said Const. Brian Montague. “We don’t have plans for massive raids on April 2nd.”
Jang said the city doesn’t have a business licence geared for dispensaries, in part because of what he said were confusing Health Canada rules.
This isn’t the first time the city has defied the federal government on the issue of illegal drugs and how they affect society. Vancouver was the first city in Canada to adopt a “four pillars” approach to harm reduction around drug use, including a law enforcement policy that focuses on public safety and street disorder rather than busting people for simple possession.
Under successive councils since 2003, the city has defended the establishment of Insite, a needle exchange program in the Downtown Eastside that has helped curb HIV infection rates and overdoses. The facility won a 2011 Supreme Court ruling which found that Ottawa’s attempt to close it threatened to undermine the health, safety and rights of addicts.
Health Canada says the marijuana dispensaries represent a public safety issue because they are both illegal and unregulated.
But the police who enforce drug laws in Vancouver disagree. Montague said police have shut down three medical marijuana dispensaries in recent years that were found to be fronts for trafficking. But the dispensaries now in business don’t appear to be doing that, he said.
“The dispensaries all operate differently, but some of them you go into and it’s like walking into a medical clinic,” he said. “Everybody is wearing lab coats and somebody comes in with their license to possess marijuana medically, and they sell them the marijuana and it is like filling a prescription at your local pharmacy.”s |
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發表於 2014-3-5 06:52
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