Canada’s Trudeau vowed to legalize pot. It’s been tricky.

OTTAWA » Canada is set to become the first industrialized nation to legalize and regulate marijuana from production to consumption by next July, but increasingly, Canadians are wondering: What’s the hurry?

The government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is pressing ahead with legislation to legalize cannabis, a move that a majority of the Canadian public supports. But stakeholders such as police chiefs and psychiatrists are urging caution and even delay, worried that a rush to legalization will encourage consumption among young people and increase the incidence of impaired driving.

Under the proposed legislation, the Canadian government would license the growing of cannabis by tightly regulated producers and set standards for potency and penalties for abuse; the provinces would decide on methods for distribution.

“If legislation is ready to go in July 2018, policing will not be ready to go in August. It’s impossible,” Rick Barnum, deputy commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police, told the health committee of Canada’s House of Commons last month as it studied the proposed law.

Barnum was part of a contingent of police chiefs from across Canada expressing concern that there isn’t time to train enough police officers to detect impaired driving among cannabis users and that if police are not ready for legalization, organized crime will take advantage of the situation to secure its hold on the market.

Doctors are also worried by the legislation, which will set the minimum age for consumption at 18, although Canada’s 10 provinces will be permitted to raise the minimum age if they wish.

Quebec’s Association of Psychiatrists has called the proposed law unacceptable, arguing that cannabis use in young people can lead to attention deficit and memory problems as well as an increased risk of psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia. The group wants to set the minimum age at 21 or higher, ban all advertising of cannabis and prohibit the growing of cannabis at home. (The proposed law would limit cannabis growers to four plants per household for personal use.)

“When you expose a growing brain to cannabis, you actually change the way it grows and matures,” said Karine Igartua, president of the Quebec psychiatrists group.

Opinion surveys continue to show that Canadians support legalization in principle. But in a recent survey conducted by Nanos Research, 57 percent expressed a lack of confidence that the federal and provincial governments will be ready with a legal framework for cannabis sales by next July. And 48 percent are worried that legalization would lead to increased consumption by youths.

“People are still quite supportive of the legalization of marijuana, but they want the government to get it right,” pollster Nik Nanos said, noting that approval of legalization has been in the range of 60 percent in several surveys.

Trudeau shows no signs of wavering in his push for legalization, which he promised in his successful election campaign two years ago. “The current framework is hurting Canadians,” he said recently. “Criminal gangs and street gangs are making millions of dollars of profits off the sale of marijuana, and we need to put an end to this policing that does not work.”

In the United States, 29 states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana in some form, with eight jurisdictions allowing recreational use of pot, but cannabis remains illegal at the federal level, leading to a patchwork of regulations and enforcement.

The Canadian process is designed to result in full legalization across the country. Uruguay is the only country with a full regime for the legalized sale of cannabis, although a complication with U.S. banking regulations could imperil the country’s new marijuana market.

Trudeau’s government hopes that legalization will reduce access to marijuana by underage users. Bill Blair, a former Toronto police chief who is now a member of Parliament and Trudeau’s point person on cannabis legalization, said he understands public skepticism over whether the legislation will achieve this goal.