Toronto city councillor Jim Karygiannis said the recent wave of police raids on cannabis dispensaries are a waste of resources.
“That was money that was not well-spent,” said Karygiannis “It was a knee-jerk reaction because of a couple hundred emails.”
The councillor made the remarks before a municipal licensing and standards committee meeting that will begin the city’s process of investigating how to potentially regulate dispensaries.
Karygiannis called for the inclusion of stakeholders from the cannabis industry to be at the table and raids against current businesses need to end, with patients often suffering as a result of police raids.
Toronto police Chief Mark Saunders has previously said that dispensaries are in business solely to make money, not help serve a medical need.
“They are distributing for monetary gain, let’s make no mistake about it,” said Saunders. “If they’re very concerned about the well-being of people, then I would expect that they would look at the regulatory processes, have a standardization of how it’s being manufactured and distributed, identify what the quantity of THC is in the product and also be able to validate through quality control that [it] is, in fact, correct.”