City should lead on pot legalization
Learn from U.S.: Instead of blazing some misguided trail, Vancouver must put its resources into regulating marijuana in B.C.
Secret illegal marijuana home-grow operations — how are they working for you, Surrey? White Rock? Abbotsford? It must take at least 100 such guerrilla cannabis production centres to supply Vancouver’s burgeoning pot shops.
While Vansterdam-on- thePacific’s council tries to reap a harvest of $30,000 licensing fees from the scores of prohibited dispensaries it has allowed, our neighbours can enjoy the fallout — the opportunity to earn a little mortgage relief with a basement garden.
Canadian municipalities spent most of the last decade lobbying Ottawa to change the medical pot program to eradicate “the scourge” of residential medical grow-ops because of health, fire and public safety concerns.
That was one of the biggest changes April 1 when the Conservatives introduced the new free market, mail-order supply system for approved patients — no more grow operations.
Vancouver now claims it is “fixing” the federal government’s mistake with a bylaw that licences illegal retail storefronts with no legitimate wholesale suppliers who are dependant on illegal growers.
That other cities will soon embrace this bylaw is unlikely, unless they want to denounce their own fire and police departments.
There is no evidence or experience to support this coffee house-style approach, some in Amsterdam that indicates it doesn’t work and plenty pointing to the proper strategy — legalization with a multi-faceted regulatory system that addresses impaired driving, advertising, retail sales, taxes ….
You can’t make gin in your bathtub and sell it on the corner as an elixir of life, and Bayer can’t push Aspirin in whatever form it likes no matter all the magical properties of willow bark, which like cannabis was used for centuries as a herbal cure before it was synthesized into ASA.
The trouble with the pot debate at the moment is it is clouded by the ignorant, the ideological and the self-interested — count council among them.
While the weed might be relatively benign, the highly concentrated derivative products such as cannabis capsules now being sold are not necessarily so.
There isn’t even proper labelling at the moment to allow consumers to make informed personal safety choices.
Why would you allow anyone to peddle such products without regard for the federal law or public health concerns?
Vancouver’s bylaw encourages the growth of a privileged class of cannabis consumers operating outside the law who have no interest in ending the prohibition because they are OK.
In Washington state, the existence of a similar vocal community made it more difficult to achieve legalization because they were happy with the old status quo that recognized their rights.
We should be following the example of jurisdictions who avoided that problem.
In both Colorado and Washington, coalitions of smart people from different levels of government conducted research, looked at the evidence, addressed the conflict between national and state political desires and drafted comprehensive laws to legalize marijuana embracing land-use concerns, security, advertising restrictions, production and retail tax rates, how the tax money should be spent, etc.
Two other states have since followed suit.
That is where city council should be spending its energy — working for marijuana legalization in B.C.
Vancouver should be leading the broad group of serious, well-placed people who already recognize the prohibition must end.
Barely three years ago, in April 2012, the former U.S. attorney who prosecuted Marc Emery came to Vancouver to promote legalization and the founding of a coalition devoted to that end.
John McKay, the once highprofile American federal prosecutor appointed by president George W. Bush, along with former B.C. attorneys general Geoff Plant, Ujjal Dosanjh and Colin Gabelmann, sang the same chorus: Marijuana must be taxed and regulated because it provides too much cash to gangsters and fuels too much violence.
Three former mayors, Larry Campbell, Sam Sullivan and Philip Owen, replied with a hearty “Amen.”
The organization Stop the Violence BC hoped to overturn the prohibition. “The government’s own data shows young people have easier access to marijuana than alcohol or tobacco,” insisted Dr. Evan Wood, a founder.
Within a year, Washington state had legalized and in B.C. the group was supporting a pot referendum brandishing an Angus Reid Public Opinion poll that indicated 75 per cent of the province supported legalization. They failed because cities like Vancouver sat on their hands.
Instead of committing resources and its clout to that goal, Vancouver now is blazing its own misguided trail — pretending to protect our children by making sure they have to walk at least 300 metres from school to the closest pot shop and frowning on the sale of cookies and candy bars.
Meanwhile B.C. Attorney General Suzanne Anton, who is responsible for policing in the province, continues to maintain a deafening silence as the city and its police force place distracted driving above organized crime as a priority. Talk about an abdication of responsibility.