Shut-down pot vendor wants national standard

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This article was published 07/08/2015 (3697 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE owner of Winnipeg’s sole medical-marijuana dispensary issued his first public statement Thursday since his arrest earlier this week.

“First I would like to thank everyone for their support,” Glenn Price said in an email to media Thursday afternoon.

“Hopefully if nothing else is gained from this, we can at least shed some light on the struggles patients have obtaining medical cannabis.”

Price, 54, was arrested at his unlicensed Main Street dispensary and is charged with drug trafficking and possession offences, as well as possession of the proceeds of crime after police issued two search warrants at his home and business. He was released from custody.

His business was shut down Tuesday.

Price used his statement to call for a Canadian standard, one that would be the same from one province to the next and would allow patients easier access to medical marijuana.

His four-paragraph statement said nothing about his own case, which is now before the courts.

Price took issue with the current federal system of regulations. They allow for 25 licensed commercial production facilities to grow and ship medical marijuana to patients, but they outlaw storefront dispensaries such as the one Price operated.

“What I think the goal should be is equality throughout Canada,” Price wrote.

He went on to criticize the patchwork quilt of responses to medical marijuana as confusing.

“The (fact is there is an) extremely different outlook on medical cannabis from one province to another and from one political party to another,” Price said.

“Some say it’s criminal while others say legalize. One city can have over 100 dispensary operating while others can’t even have one,” the statement read.

By some estimates, there are as many as 38,000 to 40,000 Canadians who have held licences allowing them to smoke marijuana for medical reasons.

In the past, Price had vowed to fight charges if they were laid, and he told the Free Press Wednesday after his release he was in contact with a lawyer in Vancouver.

The Winnipeg Police Service alleged the dispensary was an illegal drug-trafficking business, from which they seized two pounds of the drug. Officers seized two ounces of marijuana from the accused’s residence above his storefront in the 1400 block of Main Street, police said.

Price didn’t have a licence to operate the dispensary, and there is no indication he had a medical-marijuana licence for personal use, police said.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca