On Thursday, Peterborough Police Deputy Chief Tim Farquharson and Rob Stevenson, owner of The Medicine Wheel appeared on The Morning Show. Their shared interest? The privatization of pot sales.
Farquharson said there’s a lot of work to be done, and he’s not confident the police service will be ready by Oct. 17.
“We have the youth concerns with cannabis, the impaired-driving legislation, we still don’t have an oral screening device, there’s drug recognition expert training, that’s a concern,” the deputy chief said, rattling off a lengthy list.
The former Liberal government created the Ontario Cannabis Store (OCS), and planned to set up stores run by the LCBO.
But the Conservative government nixed that plan, and recently announced that Ontario residents would be able to buy pot online only as of Oct. 17. From there, the province says it will consult with police and municipalities with the goal of privatizing pot sales sometime around April 1.
“We still don’t know a lot about the regulatory or legislative framework, or how that’s going to look,” Farquharson said.
Stevenson said privatization won’t affect his business, though he believes there’s a lot of potential in that business model.
“With the OCS stores originally having the monopoly, I thought they were leaving out the little guy,” he said.
Stevenson stressed that The Medicine Wheel is about health, treatment and education. And while he supported privatization, there was a caveat.
“I’d really like to see the type of mom-and-pop shops open up so people can really get the right type of treatment and information, as opposed to some big conglomerate,” he said.
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