Yes. Legal pot is far safer than black market

Some remain skeptical the proposed Cannabis Act (Bill C-45) will achieve one of its primary objectives: protecting youth from cannabis-related harms. Some feel the minimum age should be higher than the minimum age for alcohol, worried that those under 25 seem more vulnerable to dependence and health problems linked to long-term, heavy use.

Critics of the proposed minimum age may be overlooking another primary objective: displacing the black-market. Young adults aged 18 to 24 represent one third of the market. The act attempts to strike a balance between keeping marijuana away from minors and cash away from criminals.

Bill C-45 enables the provinces to harmonize their minimum age for cannabis and alcohol. Setting the minimum age for cannabis higher would send a dangerously misleading message that alcohol is safer.

The minimum age won’t delineate consumers from abstainers, but rather consumers who obtain labelled, quality-controlled cannabis from licensed sources from those who continue to purchase nondescript cannabis of unknown potency, purity and provenance on the black market.

Some have misinterpreted the plan to decriminalize possession of 5 grams or less by youth 12 to 17 as “allowing” them to possess personal amounts, but the provinces are implementing more ageappropriate remedies, such as they employ with minors in possession of alcohol; confiscation, fines, referral to parents and health professionals, etc.

Most of the harms associated with cannabis are attributed to heavy use. Happily, of the roughly 25 per cent of Canadian youth who report using cannabis in the past year, only1to 2 per cent are daily consumers.

Daily consumers are often self-medicating psychological problems, such as ADHD and PTSD, they might otherwise treat with more dangerous drugs. Indeed, contrary to the “gateway theory,” there is a growing body of evidence that cannabis is an economic substitute for alcohol, opiates and pharmaceuticals.

Asecondary objective of Bill C-45 is to protect consumers from the harms of prohibition, such as unregulated cannabis products, exposure to more dangerous illicit substances, systemic violence and crippling criminal sanctions, disproportionately meted out to youth and racialized groups.

Yes, cannabis strains and extracts that are high in the psychoactive tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) but low in the antipsychotic cannabidiol (CBD) may trigger psychosis in a few predisposed youth, but these products are yet another unintended (yet tragically predictable) consequence of prohibition.

Traffickers favour more potent and concealable products. Under alcohol prohibition, beer and wine gave way to moonshine and spirits. Coca became crack. Opium morphed into fentanyl. After the U.S. sprayed Mexican fields with herbicides, the mild herb baby boomers might remember was replaced with higher quality Colombian, later replaced by domestic “skunk weed” refined into “dabs” and “shatter.”

Some fret that allowing adults to grow up to four plants per residence will increase access for minors, but it’s in the owner’s interest to prevent theft, if not by decree then by lock and key. Households may contain tobacco, firearms, home-brewing, liquor, detergent pods, gasoline and pharmaceuticals, often secured by nothing more than parental oversight.

Prohibition impedes and competes with research, education, prevention, harm reduction and treatment. What has a near century of prohibition accomplished? Canadian youth are among the heaviest consumers in the industrialized world, they find cannabis as, or more readily, available than alcohol, they are twice as likely to try cannabis than try tobacco before they graduate from high school and their average age of initiation is 14.

Preliminary data from jurisdictions that have legalized adult cannabis use show little to no impact on youth usage rates. Bill C-45 is more restrictive than commercial regimes in the U.S. It prohibits providing cannabis to youth and products appealing to youth, and it mandates warning labels on plain, child-resistant packaging.

The bill creates a new offence for involving minors in cultivation and distribution. The black market offers young Canadians entry-level jobs that require no education, training, experience, or income tax. Drug dealing is more glamorous and lucrative than babysitting or flipping burgers.

Let’s face it. We have more control over cat food than the so-called “controlled drugs and substances.” We can do better, and as federal laws and provincial regulations evolve, we certainly will.