Police, lawyers expect little to change with legalization
While the legalization of marijuana signals big change in a broader sense, it isn’t expected to have a major impact on the way the province’s police service drug units or members of the legal community do their jobs.
“I think a lot of it’s just not going to change a lot — that’s just my gut feeling,” said Regina lawyer Barry Nychuk of the potential impact on his job.
Nychuk has represented clients in the past who were caught up in large-scale police investigations into marijuana grow-ops and trafficking. But, he adds, that was so long ago he has trouble recalling exactly how many years have passed.
“I’m sitting here trying to think of the last type of major investigation they had on a marijuana grow-op or marijuana,” Nychuk said. “It’s been years and years. So as far as my practice, practice won’t change.”
Nor is the work police drug units are doing, said Saskatoon Police Service spokeswoman Kelsie Fraser. She said in the nearly seven years she’s worked for the SPS, she doesn’t recall seeing an investigation singling out marijuana. Rather, she said, it simply crops up as an added drug while police are looking into hard drugs. (One notable exception in Regina are the recent busts of marijuana dispensaries.)
“I think that as a police service, we recognize that there are drugs out there that cause more harm to our community than cannabis — for example, like fentanyl,” she said. “And I know that’s the same with Regina as a priority for investigators, just because of its potency and potential to be fatal to users as well as those who come into contact with it.”
She added investigators have targeted methamphetamine, since it’s been found to be a factor in property crime and is connected to increasing crime rates in general.
“We’ve certainly prioritized those illicit drugs that are more harmful to our community,” she said.
Regina lawyer Andrew Hitchcock wondered if there might actually be an increase in enforcement as a result of legalization.
“What I suspect will happen paradoxically is that enforcement will probably go up because the government will want their taxes now, so they’ll want to make sure that people aren’t selling illegally,” he said.
“And I suspect use will spike for a little while and then go back to normal.”
He also questioned what legalization might mean in terms of impaired driving, with the potential for more people deciding to give pot a try. He anticipated police might step up enforcement to respond to public worries about drug-impaired driving.
Where legalization has the potential to affect lawyers is in terms of the Crown proving impairment at the time of driving. With alcohol, testing delivers a specific reading; with marijuana, it’s not so easy. Hitchcock noted the drug can stay in the system for days, leading to arguments about whether the person was legally impaired at the time of driving.
“There’s going to be litigation, of course,” he said.
“You can’t anticipate every potential argument. So I think a lot of defence lawyers are going to get rich at the beginning.”
But while Nychuk said he wouldn’t be surprised to see a temporary spike in impaired driving charges — given more people might decide to try the drug — he added the Criminal Code already considers drugs within its impaired driving sections.
“I don’t think a lot’s going to change,” he said.
“I think a lot of it’s going to be overhyped. I think that those people that smoked marijuana last week are going to continue to smoke marijuana next week. This whole thing — ‘Oh, my God, what are we going to do about the impaired driving laws?’ — well, it’s always been the impaired driving law. You can be impaired by drug or alcohol under Section 253(1)(a).”
Where police are likely to see a little more work might be in terms of bylaw enforcement, as cities work on establishing where and how people can smoke — or not.
While Fraser said police are working with the city to establish as many of the rules ahead of time, there might still be some unanswered questions for a little while.
“This whole thing is just really going to open up a lot of questions that we have to address,” she said. “We’d like to make sure we have the answers ahead of time, but this is really uncharted territory.”