But confusing Alberta’s coming pot-store proliferation with the Wild West would be like fearing that one toke makes you a squinting dope fiend. A tour of New Leaf Cannabis’s concept store in a west Calgary strip mall lays bare the tight regulations governing retailers. Windows are covered so nobody can see inside, like an adult video store.
There are no large canisters of cannabis on display, only tiny sample smell jars cable-tethered to tables. In fact, all the product arrives at stores in federally mandated packages that look like a cross between cigarette packs and prescription medicine bottles: child-resistant and opaque, with small logos, much larger health warnings and a stop-sign-like red THC label. These unremarkable bud boxes and baggies must be stored in a backroom with steel-reinforced walls and doors. Conveniently, this concept store used to be a bank, so it’s all in a former vault, says chief administrative officer Angus Taylor. Staff will wander the Apple-style sales floor, swiping customers’ payment cards and retrieving purchased product from the locked backroom. But they’ll be banned from answering customers’ queries about pot’s potential medical benefits. All stores are solely for recreational-use marijuana."
"Such confusion may have been inevitable, given that politicians and bureaucrats face the seemingly incompatible tasks of encouraging legal enjoyment of cannabis while simultaneously shielding everyone from its harms. They’ve been pulled in conflicting directions by entrepreneurs, law enforcement, health experts and grumpy seniors who vote, producing contradictions in rules from jurisdiction to jurisdiction that can border on the absurd. Calgary won’t allow pot shops to operate next to liquor stores (other municipalities have required a buffer zone of 100 m between them), while most Nova Scotia stores will be co-located
inside provincial liquor outlets. While stores are not allowed to link products to medical advice, Maritime shops will tell customers how strains may make them feel: Nova Scotia stores will categorize varieties as
relax,
unwind,
centre and
enhance—while New Brunswick-sold pot will let users
discover,
connect or
refresh. Stores in New Brunswick and Quebec will require ID checks upon entry; others won’t. Alberta’s online sales portal will require age-of-majority verification, while other province-run sales websites will have the simple checkbox method and request proof of age upon delivery. Manitoba and Saskatchewan will let its private brick-and-mortar retailers sell online, as well."
"In Vancouver, most safe bets are that Oct. 17 will look much like all the days before it. The city, which at one point had more unregulated dispensaries than Starbucks coffeehouses, brought in its own civic licensing regime in 2015, before the passage of federal or provincial rules; 19 are licensed, but far more have only partial okay or fall outside regulations. And a business licence doesn’t automatically mean a store will be okay under the new province-led regime: the B.C. government asks a city for its assessment of provincial licence applicants. But in late August, chief licence inspector Kathryn Holm said Vancouver was still sorting out how to choose its winners and losers. There will be added twists, as what the city previously regulated as “medical marijuana-related” businesses transition to the federal government’s recreational-only model. Stores with terms like “medicinal,” “dispensary” and “health” in their names will have to rebrand. Among other requirements, Vancouver had barred its licensees from having any window coverings, to make it harder to conceal illicit activity. But provincial rules now encourage fully covered windows by requiring that no product displays be visible from outside a store."
"Finally, while almost everybody is expecting a complicated and bumpy first few months after legalization, the icing on the cake could literally be icing and cake. By October 2019, Ottawa must have new regulations in place for cannabis edibles, which for now remain banned. Regulators will soon launch consultations about product types, marketing and food-handling issues; stores that launch in the first year will save room to add fridges and shelves. “This is big now—when edibles come, it’s going to be about 10 times the size of dried flowers and oils,” said Alberta’s Nejad.
If the history of alcohol is any guide, it’s reasonable to think conservative regulations and bans will eventually be loosened. Cannabis lounges could eventually be sanctioned. Alternatively, there could be counter-revolutionary moves—Quebec’s opposition leader, François Legault, has pledged that if he wins the fall election, he will boost the cannabis age to 21 from 18. But there will be time, down the road, to ponder future changes. For most Canadians, the ones under way are proving brain-numbing enough."
Entire article:
https://www.macleans.ca/society/marijuana-laws-canada-isnt-ready-for-legal-weed/