Liberal promise stirs up a pot of trouble
PROVINCES MUST DECIDE ON THE BEST COURSE OF ACTION TO IMPLEMENT LEGAL MARIJUANA POLICY
The end of marijuana prohibition is nigh. No, really! The committee has issued its findings. The Liberal caucus has reportedly been briefed, and the attending deliverologist has signed off.
“The Liberal government will announce legislation next month that will legalize marijuana in Canada by July 1, 2018,” CBC reported Sunday. In brief: the feds will license producers and control product safety, set a minimum legal age of 18, and throw the rest in the provinces’ laps to figure out.
So, they’re going to table a bill — like Jean Chrétien’s Liberals did on decriminalization, and then Paul Martin’s Liberals, and here we are in 2017 laying 60,000 criminal charges a year for possession.
But if they’re giving it a splashy deadline, maybe they really think they can get this done. Surely a government that’s beginning to labour under the weight of its business-asusual behaviour wouldn’t go out of its way to raise expectations on another Big Change file — like, say, the expectation of celebrating the 151st Canada Day in a legally altered state.
Mind you, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau doubled down on electoral reform any number of times and that was never, ever going to happen. With the Trudeau team quite rightly trying to stay on President Donald Trump’s good side and an attorney general in Washington, Jeff Sessions, whose message on pot is that “using drugs will destroy your life,” this would certainly be an odd time to finally get it done. And, hmm, “finishing the job” might look good in the 2019 Liberal platform.
In any event, the legislation will have the benefit of forcing the provinces finally to come to grips with their policy preferences.
Quebec politicians, in particular, continue to strike a remarkably skeptical tone. A year ago, Finance Minister Carlos Leitao said he had “no intention of commercializing (marijuana).” On Monday, Premier Philippe Couillard warned of the burdens legalization might impose on his province: “regulation, implementation, how we’re going to test people.”
At Queen’s Park, Ontario Attorney General Yasir Naqvi said the government is conducting “very detailed analysis of all policy options,” and that all options for retail models and age limits were “on the table.”
Premier Kathleen Wynne has said she thinks selling pot at the provincial liquor stores made sense, but public health advocates disagree — and the federal committee studying legalization recommended against it.
Manitoba has been out in front of the issue by comparison. Last week the province introduced legislation covering where you can’t smoke marijuana (in public, in a car) and what police can do if they suspect you’re driving under the influence.
The others will soon have to follow suit. And they should be considering what to do if legalization doesn’t happen, as well.
Tabling the legislation and any associated boosterism is only going to energize the open black market that has flourished in Canadian cities’ storefronts under the polite fiction of “dispensaries,” making a hollow mockery of the law.
The cries of injustice when police bust these businesses have been silly. Policing marijuana isn’t a great use of resources at any time, if you ask me, but a Liberal campaign promise isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on; it’s certainly not a legal defence. If you’re a “budtender” working for minimum wage in a “dispensary,” now would be a good time to realize that, under the law, you’re a minimum wage drug dealer.
In Toronto, it has been instructive, if not surprising, to see that the dispensary model works. People value the expertise, the variety of retail environments, the fact it’s not some dodgy dude on a bike who wants to hang out for an hour.
The only things wrong with the model are byproducts of prohibition: lots of cash on hand makes them a target for robberies, for example, which often go unreported.
Across the country, people are happily buying marijuana the way people in jurisdictions all over the world (though certainly not in Ontario) buy their other intoxicants of choice.
That’s a lesson for Canadian jurisdictions to learn if the Liberals legalize marijuana: the private sector can handle it. And it’s a lesson if it stays illegal, too. The law is the law, but if Ottawa’s going to encourage people to break it, the ensuing mess doesn’t have to be the provinces’ problem.
Instead of enforcing it very sporadically, they could just not enforce it at all. Better yet, under such a policy, they could try to remedy some of the problems that prohibition creates in the storefront market.