Mayor John Tory supports the police raids on pot dispensaries
While he backs legalization, Tory says the law has not yet been changed and it is still illegal to sell marijuana.

thestar.com
By BETSY POWELL
March 10, 2017

Mayor John Tory “strongly supports” the latest Toronto police crackdown on marijuana dispensaries even though the federal government will soon introduce legislation to legalize pot.

While Tory says he supports legalization, the people who have been selling pot out of city storefronts have jumped the gun.

“I just think when you have a law that you have to make your best efforts to enforce it,” he said Friday a day after the raids on pot shops in Toronto, Vancouver and Hamilton.

Police arrested the owners of the seven Cannabis Culture locations, Marc and Jodie Emery, at Pearson International Airport. The Vancouver-based couple, known as the Prince and Princess of Pot, face trafficking and possession charges as well as conspiring to commit an indictable offence.

They were released on bail Friday.

While some pot advocates have expressed surprise about the raids and arrests, Tory said he has made it clear the “vast majority of people” do not want pot sold in “wild west” fashion.

Since pot dispensaries spread across the city last year, Tory said he has received “significant public feedback” that residents don’t want dispensaries “on every corner and neighborhood,” even in a “legalized environment.”

The mayor also applauded members of the city’s licensing and standards division for seeking an injunction in Ontario Superior Court of Justice to close a chain of dispensaries called Canna Clinics.

The application says the pot dispensaries on 213 Ossington Ave., 350 Broadview Ave., 2352 Yonge St., 1556 Queen St. W., 44 Kensington Ave., 527 Eglinton Ave. W., and 2087 Dundas St. W., are contravening zoning bylaws.

While the city failed in its attempt to obtain a court injunction to force Uber to stop operating two years ago, Tory said he has confidence city lawyers would not have commenced the proceedings if they didn’t think there was a reasonable chance of success.

The mayor said he expects the courts will conclude these are not appropriate uses under current law, “and they’re not, that’s a fact and so is it a fact that marijuana is still illegal under the laws of Canada, we can’t just have people selling it on every street corner.”

Police and city staff say pot sales are legal only if Health Canada-approved patients get it, via mail or courier, from a federally approved distributor located in an area zoned industrial.

Pot activists insist there is a legal gray area surrounding Canada’s medical marijuana laws which a judge has struck down as unconstitutional.