Denis Leblanc, general manager at Priape Inc, confirmed that Priape’s four stores across Canada — Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver — closed their doors Oct 21, 2013 at 8am Eastern Standard Time.
A fixture of gay villages, Priape says it has been struggling since Health Canada demanded retailers take poppers off the shelves.
In June, just before the Pride season, Health Canada issued a warning asking retailers to stop selling and distributing alkyl nitrites or, as they are more commonly known on the party scene, the popular drug “poppers.”
“For us that represented a huge amount of sales and profit, so that’s what triggered it all,” Leblanc says. “It’s not so much percentage of sales, but the gross profit it brought in, and proportionately it was very significant.”
Although poppers are not considered a narcotic in Canada, and possession of alkyl nitrates is not illegal, they are considered a drug, and their sale is regulated by the Food and Drug Act.
Unauthorized sales of the drug can be punished with jail terms of up to three years and fines of up to $5,000.(keep reading)
1 comment:
What a bummer!
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