Canada: Marijuana Missionary Set To Speak In Kamloops Thursday Night

Katelyn Baker;3282747 said:

A cannabis evangelist who pioneered one of Canada’s earliest dispensaries is not sitting back waiting for the Trudeau government to provide Canadians with legal marijuana.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” said Dana Larsen, who operates a dispensary in Vancouver, served as editor of Cannabis Canada for a decade and is now on a lecture circuit where he gives away 100 marijuana seeds to every guest.

He will also mail seeds to those who cannot make it to a lecture.

That tour comes to Kamloops Thursday, March 9, at 7 p.m. at the Doubletree by Hilton Hotel at St. Paul Street and Third Avenue downtown.

“Right now they’re saying [legalization] is going to be a couple years,” Larsen said of Ottawa’s plans for marijuana. “I’m not going to sit idly by.”

The federal Liberal government is expected to introduce legislation this spring to legalize sale of recreational and prescription marijuana.

But Larsen estimates it will take until at least the fall before it becomes law. Then the provinces will have to decide their own regulations.

That will kick legalization down the road to 2019, he said, just in time for another federal election.

“What happens if Trudeau loses the election before it’s legalized?” Larsen asked.

He said his goal is to allow unlimited personal growing, what he acknowledges is a libertarian ideal not likely to be embraced by government any time soon.

Among topics Larsen will discuss tonight is advice on opening a marijuana dispensary.

Entrepreneurs in Kamloops, emboldened by lack of enforcement by the city or RCMP, have set up at least six clinics, most of them in the last year.

Those clinics are nominally required to provide for medical use, with buyers needing to produce a doctor’s note or get marijuana through a nurse provided by the clinic, for example.

More recently, however, shops have stripped any pretence to requiring medical proof.

Last summer, the Vancouver Dispensary Society, where Larsen is a director, dropped any medical requirements and will sell pot to any adult with ID. Larsen said that laissez faire attitude is now common in the dispensary industry.

He predicts the dispensaries and producers who sell to them operating under the former rules won’t be going anywhere once legalization comes to pass.

The federal Liberals are expected to pass laws that would restrict production to licensed producers, such as Canopy Growth Corp. or Organigram — both large publicly traded companies with multi-million dollars in funding behind them.

Larsen believes the current system will sell alongside the officially sanctioned one as court battles sort it out over a number of years.

“I don’t want to carry cannabis for Tweed (subsidiary of Canopy Growth),” he said. “I don’t believe in those companies or their system.”

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Full Article: Marijuana Missionary Set To Speak In Kamloops Thursday Night
Author: Cam Fortems
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Website: Kamloops This Week

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