A courier company with experience delivering medical marijuana will be bringing recreational pot to Islanders once it is legalized next month.
P.E.I. Liquor Control Commission spokesman Zach Currie confirmed shipping company Purolator has been chosen to provide home delivery for recreational cannabis in the province.
Purolator submitted one of four or five proposals, Currie said.
“There wasn’t major interest.”
Choosing a delivery provider brings the province another step closer to being ready for Oct. 17 when recreational marijuana is legalized across Canada.
Home delivery won’t be the only way for Islanders to buy marijuana once it is legalized.
The Cannabis Management Corporation, which will oversee marijuana sales, will run stores in Charlottetown, Summerside, O’Leary and Montague.
It will also sell it through an online platform at peicannabiscorp.com, which shows as being under construction with a countdown timer on its homepage and lets visitors request a notification by email when it goes live.
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Currie said past performance was something considered when the commission looked at the proposals for home delivery, and Purolator already had involvement in the medicinal marijuana market.
“We certainly felt as though that was a very attractive option in and of itself,” he said.
Purolator was also attractive from a pricing standpoint, Currie said.
“You always want to be able to offer customers as low a cost as possible.”
Currie said customers will pay a flat rate of $8 per delivery no matter where they live in the province.
That rate is not full cost recovery.
In an interview with The Guardian, Purolator spokesman Ramsey Mansour said recreational cannabis delivery was a natural extension for the company, which has experience with “complex commodities” that have special requirements.
That experience includes delivering medical marijuana, he said.
“This is, in a way, a natural extension of the service capabilities that we already offer the market.”
Among the conditions for a delivery provider was a requirement to check that buyers are 19 or older.
Mansour said Purolator already has an adult-signature-required service that shippers can request
“We’ve already got our legs underneath us, so to speak,” he said.
Once the province starts offering home delivery, Purolator will have the necessary technology, processes and training in place, Mansour said.
“We are already set to go.”
Although the province will be ready for legalization on Oct. 17, Currie said the store in O’Leary won’t be up and running by then.
“We may be a bit late there, but certainly before the new year we anticipate that we’ll have all four of our initial rollout stores fully operational.”
