Toronto police are raiding pot dispensaries throughout the city

The day of reckoning for Toronto’s storefront marijuana dispensaries has been drawing nearer ever since mayor John Tory began fulminating against them a few weeks ago. Now, the day is here: police are currently in the process of raiding several dispensaries in different parts of downtown.

This isn’t—or, shouldn’t be—a surprising development. Despite lots of talk about “grey areas” in Canada’s drug laws, there is currently only one definitely legal way to get weed in this country: with a medical marijuana prescription, from a regulated mail-order supplier. There’s nothing in the law that explicitly authorizes storefront marijuana sales, even for medical purposes.

The Toronto Police Service has yet to release the names of the businesses on the to-bust list. A press conference is scheduled for tomorrow morning:

The police say property owners were warned:

It’s clear that Kensington Market, where there were at least half a dozen dispensaries operating at last check, is a centre of law enforcement activity at the moment. Here’s video of Toronto Cannabis Dispensary, on Nassau Street, being swarmed by police earlier this afternoon.

Twitter is full of reports of other dispensaries in similar situations: