Pot stores keep popping up in downtown Richmond Hill
Police speak to owners, pop-up store back in business

YorkRegion.com
Feb. 2, 2016
Kim Zarzour

Legal or not, one thing’s for sure: this pop-up pot peddler is persistent.

The on-again, off-again marijuana business, alternately called Cannibliss, CannaClubs or Sativa & Kush, seems intent on setting up shop in Richmond Hill’s village core.

After closing doors in December, the iterant establishment appeared to be active again this month in the same plaza at 10165 Yonge St., south of Dunlop.

Det.-Sgt. Peter Casey of the vice and drug squad said Monday that York Regional Police are aware the pot shop has been operating again “in some fashion”.

Police spoke with the operators last week, he said, and they are continuing their investigation.

This week, the sign appeared to have been blacked-out (leaving visible just the word Sativa, a species name for the cannabis plant) and a For Lease sign was visible in one of the windows.

Sativa & Kush is listed as “no longer active” on the website that provides dispensary information.

It is listed on another dispensary website with hours of 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. weekly and until 6 p.m. weekends, but the phone number is not in service.

Nearby shop owners, however, say the business is still buzzing.

One local businessman said the entire building smells of marijuana and customers seem to be smoking pot in the back parking lot.

Richmond Grill, a once-popular restaurant next door, is no longer open for lunch because customers are turned off by the stigma and stench, said owner Kumar Nadarajah.

“They say they are legal because they have a licence,” he said. “I don’t know about that. I just know I can’t stay here any longer.”

Nadarajah said he’s throwing in the towel after many years in business.

“I lost.”

Under current laws, there is no such thing as a marijuana dispensing licence, Det. Sgt. Casey said.

“At the end of the day, YRP is guided by laws that exist.”

But some observers say those rules are hazy and unjust and the pop-up shops will continue to sprout across Ontario.

While Health Canada directs users of medical marijuana to order directly from a company that has a licence to grow it and the product is then mailed to clients, a growing number of shops in the GTA set up as “dispensaries”, operating as private — but unauthorized — clubs.

“The police simply don’t have the resources to shut them down if the shops open the next day,” said one anonymous post on social media. “It is civil disobedience in order to provide access to sick and dying people.”

SIDEBAR

GOOD TO KNOW:

Want a say in the future of the downtown village core?

The Town of Richmond Hill is holding a public meeting Wednesday night at 7:30 p.m., in council chambers, 225 East Beaver Creek Rd., to discuss the Draft Downtown Local Centre Secondary Plan http://bit.ly/1nL9oIc