Ashcroft Council has given the green light to explore the possibility of implementing a bylaw, allowing the sale of legalized cannabis in the village.

Mayor Barbara Roden says currently, cannabis retail stores are restricted from opening up a shop in Ashcroft, noting it was a decision the previous council made prior to the legalization of non-medicinal cannabis in October 2018.

“In the spring of 2018, we knew a few things about what that was going to look like, but we didn’t know a lot more. So we had our lawyer come out to Ashcroft to talk to the then-council,” she said.

Due to many uncertainties about what the provincial and federal legislation would look like, Roden says the village took a wait-and-see approach.

“We wanted to see and wait for other municipalities to put bylaws in place and not reinvent the wheel. If another community has come up with something that is legally sound and seems to be working, let’s just take it and sort of cut and paste Ashcroft in there,” she explained.

“What a lot of communities said at the time was; ‘Because we don’t know what this will look like when it rolls out, we’re just going to take preemptive measures so that no one can set up a cannabis store before it becomes legal.'”

However, five years later, Roden suggests that changing the bylaw fell by the wayside until now.

“We have had a couple of inquiries over the last few years from people who say: ‘Hey, does Ashcroft allow this?’ and we have had to say; ‘No, not yet.’ So now the time is right.”

The next step, as Roden explains, is for Ashcroft staff to bring a proposed bylaw to council for input before it heads to public consultation.

“Going back to 2018, because we didn’t know what it was going to look like, there were people who were quite concerned about pot shops in their community, but I think a lot of those fears have been allayed over the years.”

While Roden doesn’t anticipate any hurdles, she said they want to hear what the community has to say about the potential change.

“We do need that public consultation; we want to hear what people think. They might say: ‘Okay, we don’t mind, but we want it to be, maybe, not on the main street.'”

If all goes well, Roden suggests that a bylaw allowing the sale of cannabis in Ashcroft could be in place by the end of 2023.