From safety to tax revenues, the City of Red Deer will have its say on marijuana legalization.

 Council adopted a list of advocacy positions last night, which will be forwarded to the Alberta Cannabis Secretariat, which is coordinating the province's response to the federal government's decision to legalize cannabis by July 2018.

Mayor Tara Veer said it's important for the city to speak up about decisions made by other orders of government that will have local consequences.

“We are already dealing with significant public safety challenges, addiction issues and other concerns in particular that affect kids and youth,” Veer said.

“So we know that federal government decision will impact us locally. So it was important that we spoke on behalf of our community and identified those areas of concern.”

The following are some of the city’s stances on cannabis legalization

  • Support establishing strong criminal penalties
  • Advocate for federal standardized limits of THC, potency
  • Municipalities should have authority over the planning zoning policy around the growing and sale of medical and recreational cannabis (e.g. signage, location and size, proximity to uses like schools and payday lenders, etc.)
  • Support restricting the scale of residential growing for health and safety reasons
  • The City recommends disclosure of former large scale growing sites to ensure that these are restored to habitable residential uses.
  • Advocate to allow a residential property’s history as a grow operation to be available to potential home buyers.
  • Allocate tax revenues to treatment, crime prevention and other priorities identified by the municipality
  • Advocate that the pricing of cannabis does not encourage people to purchase in the illegitimate market
  • Advocate for limiting private cannabis to dispensaries in initial phases
  • Advocate for the prohibition of cannabis sold in packaging and forms that are appealing to children (e.g. gummy bears and suckers).
  • Advocate that smoking of cannabis use is prohibited in public areas (indoor and outdoor)
  • Advocate the legal age for recreational cannabis consumption in Alberta be 21 years to ensure healthy brain development
  • Advocate that the federal government restrict youth (12-21) from being in possession of cannabis
  • Create crime prevention strategies to resolve the unintended consequences