With the City of Vancouver‘s dispensary regulation process now entering its second phase, city councillor Geoff Meggs said the process has been a distraction to the city.
The City revealed yesterday that it had advanced 11 dispensary business licences, 30 additional applications too close to one another and headed into a “declustering” process, and the rest rejected.
Meggs said with the election of the Liberals, and their promise to legalize cannabis, systems can be put in place to deal with dispensaries in the future, but the city’s current program will cut down on the number of shops in Vancouver.
“There’s a number of locations where two or three shops are near by each other, that’s not going to fly either,” Meggs said. “So the sorting has begun, let’s not speculate how many will make it through but it will be a relatively small number.”
Meggs said he expected the regulation process to be completed by early 2016.
Owner of nine Weeds Glass & Gifts locations in the city, Don Briere said only his location on Victoria Drive was approved by the city, with the other eight required to either find a new location or shut down within the next six months.
“We plan on pursuing [a lawsuit],” said Briere. “I’ve been approached by other shops [to participate].
The complete list of successful applicants won’t be released until sometime in November, when the city posts the applications to its development information page.