The debate around Toronto’s pot shops will have to wait a few more months as the city has deferred official discussions about the matter until October.

In a letter sent to the Licensing and Standards Committee last month, Mayor John Tory asked the executive director to work with the chief medical officer of health and police to review a possible regulatory framework for marijuana dispensaries.

The group was asked to report back on their findings at today’s meeting but the report now won’t be received until Oct. 25 because the committee is still waiting for details from federal legislation that will effectively legalize the drug.

That legislation – known as the Marihuana for Medical Purposes Regulation (MMPR) – is expected to be finalized by August 24, 2016.

The municipal committee deferred their own report so that the outcome of the federal government’s revised regulations could be discussed. 

Advocates of legalization who were hoping to have a chance to speak out publicly about the city’s recent raids on pot shops were upset with the decision. 

Kevin Hall, the founder of Chronic Pain Toronto, called the decision to defer the matter a “failure of free speech.”

“As you’ve seen with Vancouver and Victoria, they have gone ahead with this consultation process, yet Toronto has not,” Hall said. “So we hope that the city, Mayor Tory, will step up and listen to the voice of patients.”

Councillors who sit on the committee were also upset about the deferral but said Ottawa has left them in a tough spot. 

"Let (Prime Minister Justin Trudeau) listen to everybody here and have them filter out a more substantial report for municipalities to deal with this. That's how it should be done. This is a federal issue," Coun. Giorgio Mammoliti told reporters Monday, accusing the federal government of "pawning off" its duties to municipalities.

"Trudeau should not sit on his hands on this. He's the one who has made the suggestion, he's the one who should deal with it...This report says city staff are not ready for it."

Pot shops have become a controversial and pressing issue in Toronto ever since Ottawa announced it would decriminalize marijuana.

In late May, Toronto police raided 43 pot shops across the city in an attempt to crack down on the dispensaries as part of an initiative dubbed 'Project Claudia.'

Ninety people were arrested as a result of the raids. 

Through the MMPR, there are only 18 federally licensed producers in Ontario and only three of those producers are in Toronto. But the announcement from Ottawa sparked an unprecedented boom in businesses selling marijuana. 

"We saw the number of dispensaries go from 20 to 100. I don't know what number it would have ended up at," Mayor John Tory said Monday at a news conference with Premier Kathleen Wynne.

He reiterated his support for the raids.

"In the absence of federal legislation, we felt we had to take some action to investigate licensing -- which is all that is going on. I sort of similarly asked the law enforcement officials if they could take a look at what they thought they should do, but obviously understanding that I have no control over that.

“The one option that was not acceptable to me was leaving things the way they were,” he said.

But not everyone on city council agrees with the city’s approach. 

Coun. Jim Karygiannis was joined at city hall Monday by Michael Price McLellan of the Toronto Dispensaries Coalition and medical marijuana patient and advocate Jesse Beardsworth. They told reporters the crackdown on marijuana dispensaries was a "knee-jerk reaction to a couple hundred emails."

"Let's not forget what happened -- there was a letter from the mayor to the committee and within a month, we raided the dispensaries," Karygiannis said.

"We need to ask if the money we've spent on the Project Claudia is well spent,” Karygiannis said. “If we're going to respect our tax dollars, this is one of the things we need to ask ourselves."

Karygiannis said he doesn’t know how much money the city spent on the raids but that it was likely a "substantial amount."

"This is something we might have to ask at the meeting, but when you put that amount of police officers at $60 to $70 an hour, and that amount of by law officers at $50 an hour -- that's quite a substantial amount. That was not money well spent," he said.

McLellan, of the Toronto Dispensaries Coalition, told reporters he and the other speakers planned to present the committee with a “collaborative approach” rather than an “enforcement approach.”

He suggested marijuana dispensaries, if regulated, restrict access to minors, install signage that warns of the “negative interaction” between alcohol and pot, and find ways that stores can be presented to the public without hiding – such as the use of frosted glass storefront windows.

“There’s misinformation going around, by media, pundits and bureaucrats,” Hall said. “If you go by evidence based, there’s very little public harm by these places of access. If the public was more informed I think they would be much more supportive.”

In the meantime, Wynne said the province can do little to move the situation forward until Ottawa reveals its plan.