By Ashley Legassic

Number of illegal marijuana dispensaries down to less than a handful in Kamloops

Dec 27, 2018 | 8:53 AM

KAMLOOPS — The number of illegal cannabis stores in Kamloops has dropped since marijuana was legalized earlier this year, but there’s still a small few operating.

Dave Jones is the City of Kamloops’s business licence inspector. He says out of the 13 illegal dispensaries that were running in the city prior to legalization, only three are still open.

“We received some information that another one is closing so there will be only two illegal ones that will be open,” he says. “Not any of them that have closed down have made any applications to the city as yet.”

For the most part, Jones says, all of the illegal stores were in spaces that weren’t properly zoned for those operations.

“The City of Kamloops is not looking at rezoning any properties where these were located, so for the most part they’ve closed down because they were illegal, and there’s been no indication that any of them have made any applications to the province for a licence,” he says.

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There’s currently a provincial task force set up to target illegal dispensaries, although it’s not clear if the team has visited Kamloops yet. Jones says once more stores open in the city, the team will likely make a presence to deal with any outstanding illegal dispensaries.

“For the most cases the illegal ones understood the new regulations changed, the new provincial legislation gives not only the provincial community safety team, but it also gives all police forces a fair amount of leverage now to — should they choose — to go in and issue any fines, they can do that too,” Jones says. “The last I heard when I was down in Vancouver at our meeting there had been 60,000 grams of illegal marijuana already seized by police forces so it appears the new legislation is working good for the police forces across BC.”