Changes caused by marijuana law may yet be down the road
You can buy pot legally today ... which likely is of little interest to most of you.
If you have never smoked marijuana or maybe only experimented with it a few times, it would seem unlikely you will engage in heavier use simply because it’s legal. It’s not as if it’s going to be especially convenient to go down to your corner store and buy product.
With no stores set to be opened today in Saskatchewan (and few stores in other provinces for similar reasons), it’s not an impulse buying issue.
Heck, with only 51 approved Saskatchewan retail locations becoming operable, it’s highly doubtful marijuana purchasing will ever be as convenient as buying booze at Saskatchewan’s 700 liquor outlets or countless restaurants and bars or charity/money-making events or weddings or parties with special occasion permits.
Moreover, unless you actually own your own home in Saskatchewan or are in someone else’s private dwelling where use is permitted, you may have a hard time finding a place to light up.
If you own a condo, it’s still up to the condo board. If you are in an apartment, it’s up to the landlord, and the province’s two biggest leasing companies aren’t allowing it.
You can physically transport cannabis from the store to home (up to 30 grams), but no smoking is allowed for drivers or even passengers. In Saskatchewan, it’s not allowed in outdoor community parks, on sidewalks, near schools, playgrounds, daycares, cinemas and outdoor theatres. It may be allowed inside campers, tents or around campfires in provincial parks, but that could also be subject to fire bans.
In other words, the legal impediment may be removed, but the rules seem to be designed to keep the practical impediments in place to dissuade casual users.
Of course, if you are already a moderate to heavy cannabis user — and there are an estimated 4.6 million Canadians who smoked pot on a somewhat regular basis when it was illegal — your habit is less likely to be altered by such inconveniences. As such, there will be little change for you, other than the fact you no longer risk a criminal record for smoking a joint.
That said, the chances of even heavy users being charged with possession (separate from trafficking) have been steadily decreasing.
Marijuana-related crimes have been on a major decline. In 2016 in Canada, cannabis-related charges fell by 11 per cent (17 per cent in Saskatchewan) in what was the fifth straight year of such downward trends.
Of course, police expect a spike in impaired driving, not withstanding whatever testing problems may arise, according to the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP).
Whether legalization will actually produce dramatic increases in impairment remains a question. But if it does, even the CACP acknowledges pot impairments will be dwarfed by impairments from alcohol, which will remain the source of all manner of social ills because of abuse and addiction.
Moreover, legalization should alleviate policing costs now spent on simple possession enforcement but also, in the long run, enormous policing resources dedicated to cracking down on organized crime suppliers.
Maybe it won’t eliminate all illegal trafficking, but it is a game changer.
So does this make the new law a good thing? Well, there are downsides that have justified provincial governments proceeding with caution.
One smaller, immediate issue is how this will affect your ability to cross the U.S. border — potentially, a very big deal.
However, the biggest issues will be how today’s changes may affect our kids.
Let us accept that kids before today had relatively easy access to illegal marijuana if they so chose. And if you are under 19 years of age today, possession and use is still illegal.
However, questions on how marijuana use affects developing younger brains still linger. That this will be the first generation to see marijuana as more socially acceptable because it is now as legal as alcohol may yet be a challenge.
Perhaps only time will tell us whether this is a real concern or not.