The store manager of a Sarnia pot shop believes dispensaries and LCBOs are excluded from the province's vaccine passport system because they're essential services.
Earlier this year, the provincial NDPs and Liberals called on the Ford Tories to extend the vaccine certificate program to include places like LCBOs and cannabis shops.
Jordan Denomme with Sessions Cannabis told Sarnia News Today that peoples' routines have really gone out the window during the pandemic. He said because cannabis is an essential service, it is part of a routine as well.
"We're recreational, so we can't speak to medical, but that doesn't change the fact that people do purchase here for their own reasons, and I think it's important that they're able to continue those routines with their cannabis products."
Denomme said the Sarnia store would obviously follow whatever rules are given to them, but he's not confident all cannabis shops would do the same. Denomme talked about how some restaurants responded to the proof of vaccination system when they were required to start enforcing it.
"I know that there were lots of restaurants that weren't following that probably the way they should have been, and I'm not sure how some of my competitors would go about that too because it is very competitive right now in cannabis."
Denomme said having to enforce the passport system wouldn't significantly lower business but it wouldn't help it either.
Denomme added that business has been really good, especially considering all of the cannabis stores that have opened in the Sarnia area over the past year.
"When we opened, we were one of two stores in Sarnia, and now we're one of, I think, 11 or 12 or 13 or something, and that's not even counting some of the reserve dispensaries too."
Sessions Cannabis became Sarnia's second operational pot shop just over a year ago. At the time, CEO and co-founder Steven Fry said he thought Sarnia could sustain a dozen or more retail pot shops.
