Move to legalize pot easier said than done

P rime Minister Justin Trudeau has a mandate to legalize pot. He ran on it in last year’s election. But as Postmedia’s just-completed, six-part series O Cannabis illustrates, it’s one thing to promise legalization, another to deliver it.

The biggest challenge facing the Liberals is how to regulate and tax the sale of marijuana — an estimated $7 billion-a-year underground business in Canada, that could increase to $10 billion to $20 billion with legalization.

The problem is that if the government makes legal pot too expensive, then the black market in it will continue to thrive.

That’s exactly what has happened with cigarettes — a legal product, which is nonetheless sold through an extensive black market across Canada because of the huge price differential between legal and illegal cigarettes.

That’s of particular concern if, as Trudeau says, one of his main reasons for legalizing marijuana is to keep it out of the hands of children.

While Federal Health Minister Jane Philpott announced at the United Nations on April 20 — International “Weed Day” — that the Liberals will introduce legislation to legalize pot in the spring of 2017, many questions remain.

What limits will it set on the potency of legal pot?

Who will be allowed to grow it beyond those already licensed to sell medical marijuana?

Who will be allowed to sell it: corner stores, big corporations, government-run outlets?

Will the government warn people about the health dangers of smoking pot, as it does for cigarettes, since pot smoke contains many of the same carcinogens as tobacco smoke and excessive use can lead to bronchitis, chronic coughing, wheezing, dehydration, vomiting and other health issues?

The current lack of information about these issues has put municipal governments and local police forces in a tough spot.

There are varying degrees of enforcement across the country of our current laws that make marijuana illegal, including on the issue of raiding pot dispensaries that are springing up in cities in anticipation of legalization.

That’s to say nothing of how police will enforce impaired driving laws, given that tests to determine how much pot someone has consumed are far less specific than those that exist for alcohol.

Canadians need answers to all of these questions — soon.