Vernon city looks to create a 500 metre buffer between cannabis retail stores

One Vernon city councillor believes the city is “headed in the right direction” by looking to establish a prohibition on retail cannabis stores within 500 metres of other retail cannabis stores.

During their meeting on Monday, council was presented with a report reviewing retail cannabis licensing regulations that discusses plans for future cannabis stores looking to set up shop in the city.

Currently, Vernon has 13 retail cannabis stores operating within the city.

“The proximity buffers would encourage the distribution of retail cannabis stores throughout the city,” said Matt Faucher, city planner.

Coun. Kari Gares said in her opinion, she believes council should’ve had these considerations done “quite some time ago.”

“I think this is a great step in the right direction, to make sure everybody knows we're heading on the same path and I'd like to see the success of some of these retailers,” said Gares.

She noted that she’d seen some cannabis stores already considering closing their doors.

Coun. Scott Anderson believes there may be too many cannabis shops within the city.

“I’m certainly in favour of legalization, I'm in favour of the direction we’ve gone, except I think there might be too many, but the market will sort that out,” said Anderson.

He asked administration to include information on public cannabis use in their report back to council, noting that he’s concerned about the smell and the venues that people are using the cannabis at.

“Some people really don’t like the smell, it’s not called skunk weed for no reason.”

Gares piggy-backed on Anderson's comments about too many cannabis shops in the city.

“From my perspective, the role of the city is to ensure that we don't have an accumulation of cannabis stores, because quite frankly there’s regulation around them, as to what they can sell, how they can sell it, it’s all the same."

“The only thing that differentiates businesses is really service levels - the way I look at it is, if we have 10 stores located in the same area and if we look at business practices and 50 per cent of them could potentially fail within the first five years of operation we might be looking at some empty commercial spaces.”

Administration will report back to council on Jan. 10 with a report discussing licensing fees in the city and on Jan. 24 with a report discussing retail regulations.