In what is becoming something of a ritual in Toronto, police used a hammer and crowbar to smash locks and force open the door at the city\u2019s California Cannabis dispensary last week.<\/p>\n
No arrests were made as nobody was on the premises at the time, but several hundred grams of herb were confiscated, according to the report from the\u00a0Canadian Broadcasting Corporation<\/a>.<\/p>\n This was actually the fifth such raid on the dispensary in Toronto\u2019s West End in less than three months. Each time, police confiscated computers and cannabis. There have also been arrests in some of the raids \u2014 although so far no convictions.<\/p>\n The fact that the place remains open is part of what the CBC calls \u201ca frustrating reality for law enforcement.\u201d Despite ongoing raids, businesses rarely stay closed and any charges are usually dropped.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve actually watched them go out and get new monitors the next day, new Bell lines for their Wi-Fi,\u201d Sgt. Todd Storey complained to the CBC. \u201cSo they\u2019re up and running on the internet, so they can tell their customers what they have, where they are, and that they are open.\u201d<\/p>\n But the report says Toronto\u2019s cops are determined to shut the dispensaries down \u201cfor good.\u201d Some 600 dispensary employees were charged in Toronto between May 2017 and the year\u2019s end \u2014 although more than 350 have had their charges dropped.<\/p>\n And in November, the province of Ontario passed new legislation to assist the crackdown on illegal dispensaries. \u201cWe have given police more powers to be able to close these stores and keep them closed,\u201d boasted Attorney General Yasir Naqvi.<\/p>\n The new measures allow \u201cinterim closure orders\u201d for any establishment police suspect is being used for illegal cannabis sales. They also impose penalties on landlords who knowingly lease properties to illegal dispensaries. However, what CBC calls \u201cthe problem\u201d (for police) is that these measures do not take effect until Canada\u2019s federal government actually instates the long-awaited cannabis legalization law.\u00a0That is expected to happen this summer. So federal legalization in Canada could actually see an escalated crackdown on independent dispensaries, at least in Ontario.<\/p>\n In December, Toronto\u2019s\u00a0Cannabis Culture<\/a>\u00a0dispensary\u00a0shut its doors\u00a0for the last time in a victory for the authorities\u2019 campaign. It had been\u00a0busted last March, and co-owners Marc and Jodie Emery charged with various trafficking-related offenses. Speaking to\u00a0Cannabis Now<\/a>\u00a0in December, Jodie Emery ironically mused: \u201cThere is a chance I could be in jail when cannabis is finally legalized. Our charges carry a potential of life in prison.\u201d<\/p>\n Also in December, Ontario passed a Cannabis Act, setting rules for the legal industry in the province after the federal law of the same name passes, as is expected in the coming months. Under the provincial Cannabis Act, a new governmental body will be created with an official monopoly on recreational sales \u2014 the\u00a0Ontario Cannabis Retail Corporation<\/a>, a subsidiary of the province\u2019s\u00a0Liquor Control Board<\/a>. The OCRC will initially operate 40 retail cannabis outlets, with the number increasing to 150 by 2020. As the\u00a0Toronto Star<\/a>\u00a0states: \u201cIllegal pot dispensaries will be forced to close.\u201d<\/p>\n Jodie Emery accused federal and provincial authorities of \u201csetting up a massive corporate takeover.\u201d While the federal Cannabis Act will have limited provisions for homegrown, the large-scale Licensed Producers\u00a0(LPs) created for the national medical marijuana system are poised to dominate the recreational market. Currently the LPs only deliver by mail to approved medical users, but they could soon be supplying to government retail outlets \u2014 while expanded enforcement shuts down the independent dispensaries, effectively eliminating the competition.<\/p>\n But it may not be so easy to enforce this new order. Another\u00a0CBC<\/a>\u00a0report this week notes that there are\u00a066 dispensaries and 219 cannabis delivery services listed in Toronto on the\u00a0Weedmaps<\/a>\u00a0app. The report profiles various dispensary operators who voice a defiant optimism. \u201cIf I get raided, I will be open the next day if my health allows it,\u201d said Justin Loizos, a multiple sclerosis sufferer who runs the\u00a0Just Compassion<\/a>\u00a0dispensary. Amid all the raids in Toronto, the cops haven\u2019t touched his operation. This is possibly because he maintains an ethical high ground by only selling to approved medical users \u2014 despite the fact that he is technically on the wrong side of the law.<\/p>\n TELL US,<\/strong> do you think cannabis legalization should come with crackdowns on businesses currently in operation?<\/p>\n The post Toronto Crackdown in Countdown to Canadian Legalization<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
In what is becoming something of a ritual in Toronto, police used a hammer and crowbar to smash locks and force open the door at the city\u2019s California Cannabis dispensary last week. No arrests were made as nobody was on the premises at the time, but several hundred grams ofContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[34,50,216,80,1898,90],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24486"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24486"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24487,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24486\/revisions\/24487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n
\nRead More: Toronto Crackdown in Countdown to Canadian Legalization<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"