Marijuana may now be legal but you’ll still get in trouble if you smoke it on the streets of Rossland.
The federal legalization of recreational cannabis that came into effect Oct. 17 doesn’t really change much as far as public consumption is concerned.
The city’s smoking and vaping bylaw, which was updated over the summer to include cannabis, forbids public smoking in most places in the city.
“It’s not permitted, not on public streets or parks, just in back alleys,” said Mayor Kathy Moore. “We’re hoping people will, if they have product they want to smoke, they’ll smoke it in their own homes.”
However, there’s little the city can do to actually force people to obey the new rules.
“We don’t have extra police to be patrolling and making it happen, so we hope people will follow the rules,” Moore said.
Rossland council sets direction for local pot rules
At press time no celebrations were announced to publicly mark the end of the decades-old prohibition. And it’s not clear yet when a retail shop will open to sell pot in Rossland.
The only existing cannabis dispensary in the city was planning to close Tuesday to comply with the new federal and provincial rules.
“We have reapplied for a licence, but we aren’t sure when it will be approved or when we’ll be reopening,” said Emily Roberts, a manager and medical marijuana consultant at the Rossland Dispensary. “[It] could be the end of the month or December.”
Roberts said the dispensary plans to move down the street from its current location and is changing its name to “Jimmy’s Cannabis Shop.”
However, that move will have to wait for the province to clear the business to operate under the new regulations.
The province has said only one retail outlet will be open in time for legalization, and that will be in Kamloops. However, people will be able to purchase cannabis products online and have them delivered by mail.
Roberts said people coming to the dispensary are angry with the way the government has handled the rollout of the new rules.
“They say it [the government] should keep their hands out of it,”she said. “Especially with medical marijuana. People will be missing out on their medicine. They may have just got used to it and now all the product is changing.
“It’s unfortunate.”
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The chief administrative officer for the City of Rossland said the city has only received one business licence application for a recreational cannabis retail store. Bryan Teasdale said the city is waiting for that business to receive provincial licensing before approving it to operate locally.
While the city’s not limiting the number of retail outlets that can open, it did update its zoning bylaws to restrict how close they can be to schools, daycares, and other areas children frequent.
