By Jon Hiltz

 

The City of Toronto, the police, and dozens of dispensary owners across the Greater Toronto Area appear stuck in a costly game of cat and mouse where lawyers win billable hours, and patients lose safe and affordable access.

While this political and social drama unfolds, the police continue to pursue criminal charges with little or no chance of conviction because of a precedent created by the Allard decision. The 2016 Federal Ruling found that regulations forcing Canadians to obtain marijuana from licensed producers via mail-order impaired patients’ health and safety and were, therefore, unconstitutional. In February, the court set a six-month deadline for the new Liberal government to amend the current system or develop a new one, which in theory means that dispensaries have a grey area to operate with for the time being.

Toronto City Council, Jim Karygiannis, has been going against his colleagues and Mayor Tory on this issue, with much fanfare from cannabis patients and dispensary owners alike. He took the time to speak with Marijuana.com on his latest efforts to get the city and police to leave these businesses alone.

“There are absolutely no rules on how dispensaries should be regulated.” Karygiannis shares the opinion of many, that the Allard decision earlier this year in Vancouver called on the government to put up or shut up in regards to regulating the ways Canadians can buy their cannabis. That means until August of this year there’s no real reason why police should be allowed to conduct raids of any kind.

“We have a vacuum of regulations. Taking people to court while the vacuum of regulations exists can only amount to two things. One, taxpayers money being spent unwisely. Two, all these cases will be thrown out of court.” Karygiannis goes on to outline the endless list of costs that are involved with prosecuting these cases with almost no hope of ‘success’ for the prosecutors who are seeking a conviction.

“A vacuum [in this case] is something that doesn’t give clear action, so people sometimes tend to take that opportunity and set up what they want, which behooves the government to act quickly and bring some rules down.” Karygiannis is in favour of the city enforcing by-laws such as not being close to schools and other locations that minors will frequent and being wheelchair accessible for example.

“If you want to do things right you call the stakeholders and say okay, where do you see the dispensaries going? There are other cities that have dispensaries, why have we not consulted with them to say what have you been doing? What’s working?” Karygiannis is also convinced that the police are simply reacting to the Mayor wanting something to be done. “The Mayor sends a letter to the committee as and soon as they Mayor sends it to the committee then we are reactive.”

Karygiannis says the first step is to stop police action so a dialogue can be created. “Let’s stop wasting taxpayers money by doing more raids, because all of this is going to be thrown out. It’s going to make the lawyers rich and the people that need cannabis will not be able to have accessibility to it.”

The Councillor is going to continue his efforts on this by talking to the many involved. “I’m talking to the stakeholders. I’m planning on holding some sort of get together where I can listen to the people.”

Eventually, marijuana will be available legally for all adult Canadians. Hopefully, it will also be accessible.