Harcourt hopeful for budding pot plan
Ex-premier with unique perspective says Ottawa’s finally on the right road
Former premier-turned-pot-proponent Mike Harcourt couldn’t have sounded happier and more optimistic than if he just blew a big blunt.
“I did use marijuana in the ’60s and early ’70s but haven’t used it since,” he laughed.
“I’m into wine — and a beer after a good tennis match. But from my experience of the last 13 years as a partial quadriplegic — 20 per cent of my body is still paralyzed — and I work with Rick Hansen and the disabled community, so I’ve seen the suffering and the pain that people with spinal-cord injuries and other disabled people go through, and I think there are real benefits to cannabis.”
Injured in a 2002 fall at his Pender Island cottage, the avuncular erstwhile mayor of “Vansterdam on the Pacific” and NDP leader now is chair of Lumby-based True Leaf Medicine International Inc., one of 400-plus firms in the regulatory pipeline to produce medicinal cannabis.
The new Liberal administration, however, has announced it will legalize pot and recently appointed a task force to report on how that should happen next spring.
Harcourt this week wrote to Ottawa urging it to use the existing “onerous” vetting process for producers and the same distribution system for medical and recreational cannabis.
His unique perspective should carry some weight.
“I’ve seen this issue from the angle of being a criminal defence lawyer for 15 years and how destructive the laws were then, particularly around marijuana,” he explained.
“I saw it as chair of the ( Vancouver) police board for three terms and as premier. My riding was Mount Pleasant with the Downtown Eastside ... I’ve been around the issues of drugs for a long time from an inside-the-system viewpoint, not just thinking about it as a citizen who thinks the marijuana laws are wrong and haven’t worked.”
Finally, he said, Ottawa is on the right road.
“I think it was gutsy for the prime minister and the Liberals to take on this issue,” Harcourt said. “I think there is a pretty good consensus in the country (that) there is a better way to deal with this, and we’re starting to move in the right direction.”
As with alcohol under the Constitution, he thinks Ottawa will maintain health responsibilities for cannabis but devolve authority for recreational pot to the provinces and territories.
There are 33 licensed producers who have survived the exhaustive seven-part screening and security clearance licensing process and serve the medical market. But many more will be needed to meet recreational demand.
“You’ve got a system up and operating, and potentially another 400 companies who could and should supply both the recreational and medicinal market with a product that will comply with the strictest safety standards,” Harcourt maintained.
“(Medical cannabis) is a comprehensively and carefully regulated sector, unlike the ad hoc blossom of illegal dispensaries around the country.”
In B.C., he envisions regulated producers such as True Leaf selling via the liquor distribution branch supplemented by private outlets (as with alcohol), naturopaths, pharmacists, doctors and licensed existing dispensaries.
If you want to grow your own, that would be OK, he added.
“It’s like people in my own community, the Italian community, used to make their own wine, still do,” Harcourt said. “What the heck! I think people who have the capacity to do that (grow cannabis) and want to do that, why not?”
He didn’t think many patients would grow their own because most have special pain management issues that require particular strains of the plant: “It’s quite ailment specific and doing it on your own is hard to do.”
He predicted that the “wild west” in Vancouver, Toronto and other cities — where dispensaries have opened willy-nilly in defiance of the still-in-place criminal prohibition — will soon end.
Business licence and zoning requirements are essential elements to any new scheme for regulating and distributing the drug: “I think it can be worked out quickly and well.”
He said the biggest problem he saw south of the border was the conflict between states’ legalization legislation and federal laws that say marijuana is illegal.
“So banking institutions can’t deal with producers or retailers,” Harcourt said. “I think we can have a better system in Canada because we have a national government that is dealing with it intelligently instead of youknow-the-evil-of-weed hysteria that has been going on since 1938 in the U.S. with huge tragic, terrible consequences for millions of people.”