Hipster Toronto police officer thinks dispensaries are overraided

TORONTO, ON—Get ready to hear a lot less of the phrase "Thank you for selling me my two grams of weed, doctor."

With a number of marijuana dispensaries popping up around Toronto recently, Constable Billy Constable has been put in charge of Operation Less Weed, a special task force of elite trendy officers designed to shut down the sale of marijuana.

"Some of these places are hiding in plain sight," says a man-bun-ed Constable. "When I unicycle by somewhere called Weedville or Little Italy's #1 Weed Dispensary, my cop intuition kicks in and the team and I scope it out."

"It gets a bit trickier when wordplay is involved," he continues. "A lot of the shops count on differentiating themselves with a clever name. I'm talking about the [now-defunct] dispensaries like Weed Ends At Burnies; Congrats! Weedid It!; Now Defunk'd; or even Your Mother And I Would Like To Talk To You About Something: Weed Think It'd Be Best If You Bought Marijuana From Here. Luckily I'm kind of quirky so I'm able to recognize the names of these stores are subtle nods to weed culture."

As Constable explains while colouring in his zine, not every storefront with a pot allusion is a dispensary:

"One time I walked into a place called The Green Depot having read too much into the P-O-T in 'depot' and it turned out to be a plant store. Glass half full, though: my instincts weren't totally off – they had lots of weeds, just not the criminal kind. I was embarrassed so we only made them close down for four months."

With the legalization of weed seemingly around the corner, it's fair to wonder what the long-term benefits are to raiding these otherwise successful small local businesses.

"People having access to insignificant amounts of weed is scary," claims Constable. "My dad told me that a long time ago based on very little information and I can never not believe it. Even throughout my vinyl record collection you hear artists rapping about weed, glorifying it. When I was a kid the only thing rappers wanted to rap about was how they were here to say. And we loved and respected them for it."

Insiders, meaning people inside the dispensaries, say the raids are a poor use of the city's resources.

"It's ridiculous," says Jormy, a 23-year-old with a lighter in the shape of an alien's head. "They board up these windows, affix a little piece of paper to the front and that's it, over. Now I have to call my friend Mike and get him to get me weed for almost the exact same price. Sucks."

After digging a little deeper, it becomes clear that morals and legality were not the only factors the police were concerned with.

According to Constable, this operation is "an incentive-based program."

He explains: "We shut a place down and some unnamed big corporation rewards each officer with a lot of $$$ (Editor's Note: in this case, Constable Constable said verbatim "symbol for dollar, symbol for dollar, symbol for dollar". I believe he was trying to be quirky.)

"A lot of people are mad at us for continually raiding these 'legal' establishments, but the companies who make the big wood boards and papers are constantly flushing us with praise. Makes me feel good. The tape guys like us, too. I get as much tape as I want. I don't really want that much but it's helped a bit."

When asked whether the upcoming Shoppers Drug Mart deal, which will allow the giant retailer to sell weed much like the LCBO sells alcohol, will face the same scrutiny from the police, Constable politely laughed and changed the subject to niche graphic novels.

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