Pot shop enforcement
Photo: Dustin Godfrey
Penticton city staff may look into involving the RCMP to deal with dispensaries that have remained open or cropped up without business licences.
The issue has been a continued dispute between City Hall and Jukka Laurio, whose dispensary Herbal Green Apothecary has remained open after council denied him a temporary use permit in December.
Another dispensary, Okanagan Cannabis Solutions, also opened its doors this year, despite council denying it a permit. Most recently, Laurio failed to appeal a staff decision to deny him nonprofit status with the city after he no-showed for the meeting.
Currently, the city’s trajectory has been to increase fines before seeking a court injunction. But after Prince George RCMP reportedly accompanied city staff to dispensaries in that city, resulting in the shops’ closures, Mayor Andrew Jakubeit told Castanet city staff in Penticton may look at that same option.
“Certainly we will have staff investigate that option,” Jakubeit said in this week’s Mayor’s Minute. “This is new with Prince George sort of stepping up the enforcement with the RCMP. Whether that applies here or can apply here, we’ll certainly look into that.”
Jakubeit noted the incoming detachment commander Insp. Ted De Jager, and speculated that his position may be different from the previous regime. However, Jakubeit says he hasn’t had a chance to speak to De Jager about the issue so far.
“We’re hoping for him to come in at least for a meet-and-greet and we can sort of talk about policing priorities,” he said, noting that the police don’t take orders from the city. “Police operational tactics and the court system are a separate arm of the city, and so we really rely through the experts on how to handle these scenarios.”
Jakubeit speculated that part of the reason for a lack of enforcement on the dispensaries may have been because of the time it would take to bring a dispensary operator through the court system.
“By the time it gets through the court system, the federal government will have potentially deregulated it, and it sort of becomes a moot point,” he said, adding that that hasn’t been communicated to him from the police.
Castanet reached out to the Penticton RCMP detachment for comment, but received no response as of publication.
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