The 100 Mile House District held a public meeting on March 27 over bylaw No. 1323-2018 zoning amendment and clear up any misconception and/input the public had about the amendment.
“The intent of this bylaw is to add a definition to what a retail cannabis store is,” said councillor Ralph Fossum. “If you think about it, probably every municipality in Canada has to revisit their bylaws because before retail cannabis stores didn’t exist.”
Council seeks to amend the two definitions in bylaw 1290-2016.
The first is: “Retail cannabis sales means a business that sells cannabis but excludes the sale of cannabis for exclusively medical purposes where the sale is made in accordance with federal medical cannabis or medical marihuana enactments and regulations.”
The second change is to “retail store” to mean “use of a building where goods are offered to the public for sale for personal or household use and not for resale purposes but does not include the sale of gasoline, new or used vehicles, industrial equipment, a liquor primary use or retail cannabis sales.”
Marijuana cannot be sold like toys, glasses, clothes, etc. so sales will be treated along the likes of alcohol sales.
The bylaw also bans the sale of recreational cannabis temporarily anywhere in 100 Mile House.
“The whole business of how, when and where is not what tonight’s meeting is all about,” said Fossum. “I realize the whole topic of retail sales of marijuana is a huge topic and that is why our senior governments are still working on it and I feel they are having some difficulty getting down to the final strokes of it but this is clearly tonight, just for the local the issue of temporarily saying no and that makes a lot of sense.”
The meeting was not a debate on whether the sale should be allowed or not nor where storefronts should or shouldn’t be. The latter will be tabled until the Federal and Provincial governments gives council direction empowering them to move on to the next stages of where and when.
Banning sales temporarily also prevents people from taking things into their own hands, such as opening a store before it can be regulated.
Only seven people (including the 100 Mile Free Press) were in attendance. Council heard the district received multiple phone calls but no written submissions. One resident who carried out a Facebook poll asked for it to be read aloud during the meeting but it wasn’t directly applicable to what the public hearing was about so council did not read it.
Medicinal sale of marijuana is not on the table right now.