Exploit skills of illegal growers: McLellan
Black market marijuana growers should be included in the legal market as they can provide valuable expertise as it evolves, says the chair of the federal government’s task force on legalization.
Anne McLellan said Monday that Ottawa’s Task Force on Cannabis Legalization and Regulation, whose recommendations were broadly adopted in the government’s proposed Cannabis Act, concluded that previous criminal convictions during marijuana’s century of prohibition “shouldn’t be an automatic bar to them coming into the legal system.”
“We didn’t want all those people excluded automatically from the possibility of participating in some way,” McLellan, a former Liberal cabinet minister who’s now a senior adviser at Bennett Jones LLP, said in an interview at a conference on cannabis regulation in Toronto.
The task force’s November report called on the federal government to set up a system that allows various-sized producers to participate, including independent and craft growers.
“There are lots of people who are producing now illegally — we talk about artisanal and craft producers — we want a diversity of producers,” McLellan said.
“There’s an awful lot of expertise that’s outside the legal system right now and you wouldn’t want to lose all that.”
Some pot activists, including Marc and Jodie Emery, have expressed their disappointment that the draft legislation sets up a system that favours “big marijuana” because the federal government will strictly regulate and license who can produce the plant for sale.
Under the current medical marijuana regime, Ottawa has handed out some 40 licences to produce, a small fraction of the number of applicants.