Banning pot shops in the city would be unwise

Municipal politicians faced with voting whether to allow marijuana stores in Peterborough should ask themselves a simple question.

Would they vote to go back to alcohol prohibition? Legalized pot is a big change that requires a broad new set of laws and regulations.

But pot is already here. It’s in schools, at parties, on the streets and in the houses of a million or more Canadians.

What is changing is that the sale and production of legal marijuana will now be regulated.

That’s a big step forward.

The non-medical marijuana industry – and it is a very large industry, with estimated annual sales of $5 billion to about one million customers – is currently illegal.

That obviously isn’t working as a control system, just as prohibition in the 1920s did nothing but drive booze sales underground and make criminals rich.

Canadians recognize that makes no sense. Polls in recent years have consistently showed about 70-percent support for legalization.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government introduced its legalization bill in the House of Commons in mid-2017. In a perfect world the Liberals would have included a national framework applied consistently from St. John’s to Victoria.

In the real world of federal-provincial stresses and territorialism, that might have produced enough heated opposition from premiers to send the whole process up in smoke.

Instead, each province gets to set its own regulations. Ontario under the Wynne Liberals was setting up monopolistic, LCBO-style stores that would not have been nimble enough to fully compete with a black market that will continue to exist.

Buying legal pot has to be as simple as getting it off the street, and prices must be about the same. That will push the illegal dealers into a very small corner.

In a positive move, Premier Doug Ford has shifted to a system of private, regulated pot stores.

Ford is taking a page from the federal Liberal playbook by sharing some of the responsibility for regulation with Ontario municipalities. Cities like Peterborough can decide not to allow pot stores within their boundaries.

It’s a shrewd move. Municipal councils often complain that Queen’s Park tells them what to do without understanding local priorities. Ford has given them what they want – although it’s a one-time offer – and deflected criticism from the minority who oppose legalized marijuana.

Don’t want a store in your city? Talk to your mayor and council.

A pot store ban in Peterborough would be ineffective. A neighbouring township would inevitably allow sales and stores would be located near the city boundary, as happened when Peterborough originally banned casinos.

But that’s not the main reason to allow stores here. Neither are the jobs they will create nor the property tax revenue they will generate

Regulated, legal marijuana is a vast improvement over what happens now.

Well-designed regulation will make It be harder, not easier, for teenagers to buy pot.

Thousands of Canadians will no longer be saddled with criminal records for taking part in a social pastime less harmful than drinking alcohol.

Police and the courts can re-direct hundreds of millions of dollars into dealing with real crime, including large-scale illegal growers who will fight to survive as their market shrinks away.

Municipal councils that kill the legal supply chain by banning local stores won’t be protecting their communities. They’ll be helping the criminals.