Cannabis Compassion Club Raid in Victoria Blurs Moral Lines
Long-Time Grey Market Cannabis Storefront Closed Down; Police Say to Expect More – LPC
A cannabis compassion club raid in Victoria, BC raises blurs the lines between black market cannabis and legal cannabis. City police and the British Columbia Community Safety Unit (CSU) shut down the Victoria Cannabis Buyer’s Club last week, asking customers to leave and detaining employees.
“Our goal from the start has been voluntary compliance,” wrote the CSU in a statement. “If they do not obtain a provincial licence they will have to close or will face increased enforcement action.”
But the cannabis compassion club owner Dylan Nickerson said a provincial licence won’t help. The cannabis they sell including high-concentrate products which can’t be purchased through the legal medical cannabis system. According to this article, all members have a prescription. (Please see link to the full article below.)
Nickerson vowed to open again, despite police warnings. “We have members right now that are dying and we are not going to cut their source of medicine off,” he said. “Especially products that cannot and will not be made available through the government.”
Patrons praised the cannabis compassion club. Some claim it saved their lives.
“The medicine I’ve been able to access here has been the main thing for me being alive for the last five or six years,” said Dylyn Wilkinson. Wilkinson said he suffers from PTSD and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a disorder that causes painful joints and tearing blood vessels. “The hoops you have to jump through to get acknowledgement for conditions that aren’t visibly disabling and aren’t well-known.”
Wilkinson added that the cannabis compassion club is so important because traditional medicines “make you unable to do anything else”.
Cannabis Compassion Club: Scourge on Society or Meeting a Need? – LPC
One of the main goals of cannabis legalization was to increase product safety by shutting down black market cannabis. BC has struggled more than most provinces with the lowest legal cannabis sales per capita. Reasons include loyalty to their dealers and quality of the product.
The cannabis compassion club model lands in a grey area – at least in moral terms. In legal terms, police in Victoria were clear: get a provincial licence or get shut down. But the Victoria Cannabis Buyer’s Club, which has been open for 23 years, is not your street-corner pusher. Should shops like this that are doing a service for so many people be shut down? Or should the law continue to turn a blind eye?
This isn’t recreational cannabis which by definition is optional. There seems to be a significant number of people who are being helped through the cannabis compassion club model. Perhaps the best approach is to ensure government-sanctioned options to fully meet patients’ needs are available before cracking down on this small – but important – grey market storefront.
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