Saskatchewan Compassion Club operator Mark Hauk took to Facebook to respond to comments from Saskatoon police chief Clive Weighill regarding his raided business.
Weighill told the CBC that police couldn’t ignore the open sale of cannabis in the city and had no choice but to enforce the law – comments that Hauk called “drivel.”
Hauk questioned the police‘s position that it was his business’s openness that forced authorities’ hand.
“So if the club had just operated ‘underground’ like the rest of the black market, the Chief would have been ok with it?” Hauk wrote.
Weighill also said much of the pushback from the public over the police‘s move to raid the compassion club was driven by misinformation about the federal government’s pledge to legalize recreational cannabis.
“The founding of our club had and has nothing to do with the Liberals being elected and the accompanying, impending cannabis legalization – and you know it,” Hauk wrote. “Our club was founded a good seven months before the election this year – back when a Liberal majority was not something most thought remotely possible.”
Hauk said his operation exists to help medial patients that were and are unserved by the current federal system for medicinal cannabis.
“The program has been found unconstitutional in court a number of times,” Hauk said, going on to say that a judge has granted himself and two others arrested in the raids the right to purchase cannabis oils and other derivatives they require to treat illnesses from other dispensaries, out of province.
“So we now have court permission to use a service, for which are actually currently being charged for attempting to safely provide in our community,” Hauk said. “Make sense to anyone?”
“How is it that the Saskatoon Police still think they somehow they made the right choice here?” Hauk asked. “How it we can have a police chief and force that is that far out of touch with our local judges? How will the chief feel about his decision if, (in my opinion, when) all of the criminal charges from this case are ultimately thrown from court?”