Cannabis has now been legal in Canada for a full year, and Regina Police say it’s been so far, so good.
RPS says previous concerns over cannabis-related impaired driving and public consumption hasn’t been a problem to this point.
Chief Evan Bray said he has been impressed by Regina residents and their actions with cannabis.
“Generally, I think our police service has seen that people have been responsible with the use of cannabis,” Bray said. “We have not seen any real escalations in the number of calls for service, in the number of impaired drivers, in the amount of public consumption, which is a real positive thing.”
While Canadians have been legally allowed to consume cannabis for about a year, starting Thursday, regulations are in place for edibles.
Often seen as a more fun way to consume cannabis, the new regulations for edibles include a maximum of 10 milligrams of THC per package, and packaging and product must not be appealing to youth.
Bray said edibles could pose a new challenge for his staff.
“I know that a lot of the ‘where you can possess/how much you can possess/who can possess,’ those types of things, are parallel when it comes to consumption,” Bray said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re going to smoke cannabis, or you’re going to eat it in a cookie, there still are some rules and those are very similar, so when you’re talking about youth, locations in the city where it can or can’t be consumed, those types of things.”
One problem the police service has noticed is illegal dispensaries.
Bray said before legalization, illegal dispensaries were a serious issue.
“We did a very public campaign to advise that was not possible in the city, and that we would be taking enforcement action,” Bray said. “We had a lot of compliance with dispensaries that were operating illegally, shutting down voluntarily.
“We then did enforcement action on six (dispensaries), and had to do repeat enforcement action on two.”
Bray adds that since legalization, the police service is still investigating dispensaries operating without a licence, which has resulted in seizure of product and the closure of four dispensaries.
