Canada can learn from U.S. marijuana experience, expert says
OTTAWA— Legalized pot could be a reality in Canada in a year, thanks to relaxed marijuana laws in the United States that could offer the incoming Liberal government a roadmap for reform, one legal expert says.
Canada is just now catching up on the trend happening across the U.S. and around the world to relax marijuana laws, said Alan Young, an associate professor at the Osgoode Hall Law School.
“The prime minister is in a good position because he’s not a frontrunner on this issue,” Young told the Star Monday. “And because we’re just catching up, he has the luxury of being able to reflect and analyze on other models that have been developed in other jurisdictions.
“It’s a complicated exercise but the obstacles are not insurmountable and the choices are enormous.”
Justin Trudeau’s Liberals pledged to “legalize, regulate and restrict access to marijuana” — a promise that is now on track to become a reality with the party’s surprise election win just over a week ago.
Five U.S. jurisdictions — Oregon, Alaska, Colorado, Washington and Washington, D.C. — have made recreational marijuana legal. Their path to legalization, and the experience in other jurisdictions around the world, offer Canada examples of problems to avoid.
Trudeau will name his cabinet on Nov. 4. His new justice minister will be likely be handed responsibility to oversee the promised reforms.
In their platform, the party pledged to create a federal-provincial task force to hear from experts in public health, substance abuse and law enforcement.
That task force would then “design a new system of strict marijuana sales and distribution with appropriate federal and provincial excuse taxes applied,” the platform stated.
“We are going to get working on it right away. We will learn from the best practices of jurisdictions around the world who have moved forward (and) work with the provinces,” Trudeau said Sept. 30 during the election campaign.
Young agrees that a “brief” and “very focused exploration” of what is happening in other jurisdictions should be done before overhauling Canadians laws. But he also cautions that a drawn-out study reduces the chances of reform.
“I do not believe that it would take a long time to come up with a model that would suit Canada,” Young said, adding that a new law could be a reality in 12 months or less.
Yet Neil Boyd, director of the school of criminology at Simon Fraser University, suggests the process to reform could be more complicated and time-consuming.
“I don’t think it will be a quick and easy process. I think there are a lot of issues to consider,” Boyd said in an interview Monday. “It will be very important to get a sense of what has happened in Colorado and Washington and what to look out for, what kind of processes are best.”
Indeed, that will be part of the process as Ottawa and the provinces decide how to grab a share of the revenue generated by what Young calls a “mega-industry.”