Buying Weed from the French
Over the reading break I had the pleasure of visiting Montreal. This was my second time visiting, first in the spring of 2021, when I was 18 and with my parents. Montreal is a beautiful city, with amazing architecture, progressive infrastructure, and easy walkability, but we all know all this. I want to talk about buying weed. Quebec has centralized their Cannabis distribution as well as their liquor. The names Daily Blaze, FOUR20, Spirit Leaf to name a few, are missing in the beautiful Montreal street facades. What a shame. During my trip, me and my friend had the pleasure of visiting SQDC, Quebecs Cannabis store.
Let me paint you a picture: Upon entering the street level establishment, we are met with a Francophone security guard in a plain room. He is standing at a small desk with a computer. He asks for our IDs and checks them longer than the average ID checking time. Once he's confirmed we are 21 he asks if we've been here before. My friend says yes (a lie) and then he quizzes us… He says something like “okay, you've been here before, then how do you get out?” … uh the way we came? You can tell he knows that we know that he knows we've never been here. He ushers us through a back door into a separate room where finally we can buy some weed. Oh and the exit is just a separate door from the separate room. All the way from finding a place to buy marijuana, to the blunt (maybe rude) security guard, to the separate room, Quebec is so different from Alberta.
In Edmonton, walk five blocks and you've already passed 3 different cannabis stores, each with a cute kitschy name. In Quebec, you have to be 21 to buy weed, it can't be fun coloured edibles, and you can't consume in public. This is all because of Quebec's apparent greater priority of public health, and greater concern for illegal underage consumption. Is this a direction many other provinces should go? Or is this strict system grounds for more illegal distribution and use? Overall, this experience made me think about how different weed is perceived within our country, and figured the experience was silly enough to share.
-Written by Maja Wilson.