Canada Is Ready to Open the Door Wide to Legal Marijuana
Turns out, Clarke didn’t have to go nearly so far to open his own retail cannabis outlet.
On Wednesday,
“I am living my dream. Teenage Tom Clarke is loving what I am doing with my life right now,” he said.
At least 111 legal pot shops are planning to open across the nation of 37 million people on the first day, according to an Associated Press survey of the provinces. That is a small slice of what ultimately will be a much larger marketplace.
No stores will open in
Canadians everywhere will be able to order marijuana products through websites run by provinces or private retailers and have it delivered to their homes by mail.
“It’s been hectic,” said Roseanne Dampier, who joined her husband — both former welders — in opening Alternative Greens, a licensed store in
A patchwork of regulations has spread in
The provinces also have been able to decide for themselves how much to mark up the marijuana beyond the 10 percent or $1 per gram imposed by the federal government, and whether to allow residents to grow up to four plants at home.
Steve Hawkins, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, a
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As
Trevor Fencott, chief executive of Fire and Flower, said his company has 15 Alberta stores staffed and ready to sell marijuana, but the province has supplied only enough product to open three of them Wednesday.
“We’re aware of some of the kinks or growing pains that come with creating an industry out of whole cloth in 24 months,” Fencott said.
Clarke and Brenda Tobin, who is opening a store in
“We expect to run out. I don’t know the first day, but I don’t expect we’ll have it too many days,” Tobin said.
Tobin and her son Trevor plan to open their pot shop at , a reference to 420, slang for the consumption of cannabis. Tobin, a longtime convenience store owner, said they will be cutting a ribbon and cake.
“We are just ecstatic,” she said.
She doesn’t expect to make much money off the pot itself, noting
“There’s no money in the product itself,” she said. “You got to sell $250,000 worth of product in order to make $20,000. That’s not even paying someone’s salary.”
Brittany Guerra, 30, shut down her illegal dispensary in
“Everybody would say, ‘It’s never going to be legal, you are dreaming,'” but obviously it worked,” she said. “We do feel vindicated.”
Gene Johnson reported from