We recently covered the mayor of Delta and her concerns over the growing number of legal grow-ops across Canada and in her city. Her attitude seems to resonate politically, as the city of Delta is taking a hard stance against medical cannabis dispensaries. Recently the denial of a business license to a dispensary was upheld, with the municipality then saying that they will do whatever they can to make sure the shop is closed.
They issued the following statement in response, “Delta will take all necessary steps, up to and including filing court injunctions, to prohibit medical marihuana dispensaries, until legally permitted by the Government of Canada.”
WeeMedical Dispensary Society applied for a business license in early May. After that, Hugh Davies, manager of property use and compliance in Delta, informed the council of what he saw when we visited the dispensary two days after filing for the business license, “There was marijuana visibly available in the display cases along with marijuana edibles and smoking pipes, T-shirts and other materials for sale,” Davies said. He issued a stop work order after seeing this in addition to building violations at the dispensary. Bylaw inspectors have also been issuing daily fines of $200 per day for the business remaining open, but these fines were recently increased to $1000 per day.
Director of the WeeMedical, May Joan Liu, wrote a letter to the council last week in order to convince them to allow the business license to go through. In it she said, “Since the federal government has already announced that they are decriminalizing the use of marijuana and will be setting regulations in spring of 2017, allowing WeeMedical to continue operating will be considered a progressive step forward in the direction of the future and not backwards where the only way to access medical marijuana for most people in in the streets where they put themselves in danger in some cases.” She says the store will stay open as long as they can to offer the service to the community.