Vernon council still wants to handle cannabis store requests

Jul 23, 2020 | 5:40 AM

Retail cannabis licencing applications will still have to go through Vernon council to get approval.

A recommendation by city staff to give city administration the authority to approve the requests was rejected by council.

“Council is quite clear that it wants those to come back to council, so any new cannabis retail license will come back to council, ” Mayor Victor Cumming told Vernon Matters.

Cumming said given the newness of legal cannabis stores, council wants to continue to monitor the impact of the outlets.

“To date the impact has been very small in terms of our reports back from bylaw and the RCMP which indicate there have been no issues. So we would like to continue with that and be very clear what those impacts are before we turn it into an administrative approval process,” added the mayor.

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With more than a dozen cannabis outlets in the city already, Cumming said his personal opinion, as a regional economist, is there are more than enough shops in the city — along with several on the Okanagan Indian Band reserve — and he would be surprised if there were more applications.

“I think the market is well served,” added Cumming.

by Pete McIntyre

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