The city of Toronto is responding quickly to the big rise in dispensaries popping up in the area. It’s looking like this crackdown wasn’t something the city decided to do all by itself. Licensed Producers have openly lobbied for the government to do something about all of the new dispensaries popping up.
Cam Battley, who is the chair of the advocacy committee for an industry association for the LPs known as Cannabis Canada, says that they have been pressuring the government to crack down for a while now. “This is a long time coming. We warned the municipal government last fall that things were getting out of hand.”
The number of dispensaries in Toronto was only around two dozen when LP’s began to push the city towards shutting down their primary competition. Today there are supposedly over 100 dispensaries operating, but the LPs view them as an unregulated black market and they were able to convince the city of Toronto to intervene into the local cannabis dispensary market.
Aaron Salz, a financial analyst for Interward Asset Management, estimates that the private dispensary market is almost four times the size of the LP market. Private dispensaries have around 500 million dollars in sales while the LP’s only have 130-140 million dollars in sales. Salz says that “If the city fines dispensaries and shuts them down, the approach is obviously strong-armed, but I think it stems the growth and impact on (licensed producers) more than just letting them proliferate.”
We will be closely following the crackdown on dispensaries in Toronto and keep you up to date on the situation there as well as in Vancouver. Be sure to check it with us regularly as the news happens.