I am not good at waiting for things.
Ordering something and then waiting for it to be delivered can cause deep anxiety, especially since it is so easy to track your package online now.
Watching as my delivery bounces from warehouse to warehouse, through customs, brokerage houses and back again — well, let’s just say my nails are pretty short by the time I get that notice my package is going to be delivered today.
And the less said about Christmas the better. Even the thought of all those carefully wrapped presents under the tree fills me with near insatiable curiosity.
It appears that the people who want to sell us marijuana aren’t willing to wait either.
Penticton isn’t alone in having a number of storefronts opening up to sell pot — using a variety of justifications — since now Prime Minister Justin Trudeau led the Liberal Party to a come-from-behind win with the promise to legalize the sale of recreational marijuana as a major campaign plank.
There were lots of other campaign promises, of course, but legalization definitely fired up some of Canada’s entrepreneurs.
But among all the talk of how much tax money legalization would bring in and other benefits, like having a much more relaxed population, no one ever answered the burning question of when this would happen.
It took until the end of June for the government’s task force on legalization to go public, kicking off 60 days of public input to find out what the country wants.
But our progressive entrepreneurs weren’t any more willing to wait for official legislation than I am willing to carefully unwrap a birthday present so the wrapping paper can be reused.
Rip and tear, that’s me. And our pot vendors are moving just as quick.
Penticton has four operations dispensing all shapes, sizes and strains of marijuana, setting the stage for a new type of connoisseur to join the oenophiles (wine lovers) and cerevisaphiles (beer lovers, or perhaps, hops heads? Though, maybe that term should be reserved for our new green connoisseurs).
Nearby Nelson, long famed for it’s production of all things green, already had more than that by Jan. 2016, and now boasts eight.
But the new shops in Penticton are now under various forms of suspension as the city tries to stamp out the trend.
The city has a point, of course, since storefront sales of marijuana are still illegal, and it’s likely to take the feds quite a while before they build a framework for sales.
I am hoping that someone in the government has enough of a sense of humour to schedule the eventual announcement for April 20 of whatever year, maybe around 4:20 in the afternoon?
But I digress. The problem is that these pot entrepreneurs might have flown under the radar for a lot longer, if so many of them hadn’t rushed in to answer the undeniable desire on the part of consumers.
One, or two, shops might not have caused so much concern for officials, as long as they were willing to overlook lineups stretching down the block.
In the long run most, if not all, of the current shops would have to be shut down anyways.
After all, the federal task force has a mandate to not just work on legalization, but also the regulation and restriction of access to marijuana.
Did you really think the government wasn’t going to do their best to profit from this newly legalized economy?
And never mind the profit on weed, think of how much money there is going to be made from selling munchies?
Steve Kidd is the senior reporter for the Western News and has never inhaled.
