Author activist Dana Larsen supports personal use of marijuana opening two public storefronts of medical quality cannabis for adults. The Vancouver Dispensary society.
Pot activist Dana Larsen offering weed without doctor’s note
POT TV – In what could be a well-known pot activist’s boldest move yet, a dispensary owner is offering weed without a doctor’s note. Dispensary offers weed without doctor’s note. A local pot activist has been ordered to shut down his dispensaries, but instead, he’s defying orders even further, opting to sell marijuana to adults who don’t have a doctor’s note.
No doctor’s note for pot? No problem, say Vancouver dispensaries
GLEN SCHAEFER (Vancouver Sun)
Published: July 13, 2016
Two Vancouver pot dispensaries are no longer requiring a doctor’s note or membership from those seeking to buy marijuana.
The Vancouver Dispensary Society runs storefront operations on East Hastings and Thurlow Streets. Founder and pot activist Dana Larsen said other medical marijuana dispensaries have quietly dropped their requirement for medical notes, but he elected to go public with the change.
“We’ve always required a membership and medical documentation since we opened in 2008 — we’re the city’s third-oldest dispensary,” Larsen said Thursday at the Hastings outlet. “When we opened things were a lot different in Canada and Vancouver.”
In June 2015, Vancouver city council made a bid to regulate illegal marijuana dispensaries, launching a two-tiered business licensing system aimed at weeding out for-profit dispensaries in favour of non-profit compassion clubs. Dispensary owners were given 60 days to apply for a licence under criteria that included criminal record checks and restrictions on where their shops can be located.
As of this month, just over a year into the new regime, two Vancouver pot dispensaries had city-issued business licences, and six more were in the final stages of obtaining licences, according to the city website. Fifty-three more continued to operate without licences and were “subject to enforcement,” while another 34 shops have stopped selling marijuana.
Under the rules, clubs qualify for licences more easily than so-called profit shops that don’t provide additional services, as long as they are registered societies.
Larsen said his Thurlow Street outlet was among those in the final stages of getting a licence. Both outlets continue to operate without city licences.
“Although I strongly believe in medical access, I believe everybody should have access to cannabis,” Larsen said. “I’ve always thought the medical user should be at the front of the line.”
He said society members with medical needs will get discounts and special services. Other users will simply require ID and proof of legal age.
“I haven’t spoken to the police,” Larsen said. “The police haven’t come in here in the past nine years, and I don’t think they’ll come in any time soon.”
Vancouver Coun. Kerry Jang, who stickhandled around the city’s response to a proliferation of pot shops last year, said the city’s bylaw attempted to regulate land use, making sure the buildings themselves met fire and safety codes, and were located more than 300 metres from schools and community centres.
“This is why we need the federal government to regulate and legalize the substance,” Jang said. “These issues around whether you need a medical marijuana card, that’s a federal issue. It comes under Health Canada. We’re only regulating land use.”
Technically it’s against the law for a person to buy pot without a federal certificate issued on the advice of a physician or nurse practitioner. But dispensaries have long skirted that law by teaming up with other health professionals, such as naturopaths, who issue certificates allowing users to get marijuana after a brief chat about symptoms as benign as insomnia.
Meanwhile, Jang said the city is issuing $250 tickets to unlicensed pot sellers against whom they have received complaints. The city has also gone to court seeking injunctions to shut down 27 of the worst offenders.
“Eventually we’ll get to all the ones that are illegal.”
