Legal pot, new PC leader arrive together
Pot will be legal on Oct. 17, just in time for the Nova Scotia Tory leadership convention.
That’s a happy coincidence and something for the leadership aspirants to bear in mind. Rather than the usual raucous, boozebolstered crowd, they could wind up delivering their convention speeches to a mellow if slightly peckish group, more receptive to absurdity than rabid partisan rhetoric.
Canada’s justice minister Jody Wilson-raybould says the law that legalizes cannabis throughout the land is “transformative.” Really? What will legal pot transform Canadian society to?
The inbox has been jammed of late with missives on two topics – legal cannabis and Tory leadership candidates, and that shared space is about where the relationship between the two begins and ends.
There are a multitude of interviews on offer from selfproclaimed cannabisians – purported experts offering everything from tips on pots’ cultivation to insight into its rarer psychological effects. Apparently, we can anticipate an increase in Canadians’ propensity to gaze, if not howl, at a full moon.
As for the Tory leadership, recent comments in this space were deemed so utterly fantastic they can only be attributed to premature celebration of legalization, or conversely, like a dart that found the bull’s eye, they were unerring in their precision. Neither is accurate, so let’s split the difference and conclude they were straight bull.
The association of Nova Scotia’s once and now selectively progressive Conservatives and cannabis is limited and strained. While the Tories don’t reject legalization entirely – it’s a federal matter, but regulation falls to the province – Nova Scotian Conservatives wanted much stricter regulations than the provincial Liberal government enacted.
Legalization of cannabis may be considered “progressive” but it’s doubtful many Canadians can articulate the social benefits the adjective defines in this case. Legalization will take a bite out of crime and decriminalize what has become an accepted if not entirely acceptable social behaviour. To those merits, we can add safer dope and government revenue, but after that progress stalls.
It’s sometimes suggested that cannabis enhances one’s creativity, although if memory serves English papers composed while under its spell required a complete rewrite in the cold, sober light of the day after.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge was addicted to opium, so we can’t thank pot for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and advocacy of legalizing other psychoactive substances is limited almost exclusively to a segment of the harm-reduction school of addiction management.
These days poets can’t feed themselves let alone support a daily drug habit, anyway.
Canadians have the Senate to thank for legal pot going on sale nearer the winter than the summer solstice. Now that the slumber chamber is jammed with unaffiliated or independent appointees, it seems the job formerly known as a taskless thanks has taken on meaning, at least in their minds.
No longer appointed in gratitude for their political fundraising prowess, senators seem to have mistaken their lofty perch as an essential cog in democracy’s machinery. Not so fast. In a democracy, if electors can’t rid themselves of the legislators, any legislative function should be limited to ceremony and, if they behave, a rubber stamp.
There are more Conservatives in the Senate than any other party, although since Justin Trudeau performed radical de-liberalization surgery on the Upper Chamber the place is crawling with independents carrying Liberal Party membership cards.
Back on the home front, an unrepresentative sampling of Tories hold that leadership front-runner Tim Houston has been handled roughly here, while his nearest competitor Cecil Clarke has been afforded approbation beyond his due.
“Writing when it is bandied about . . . ill-treated or unjustly reviled always needs its father to help it; for it has no power to protect or help itself.” Plato said that, warning of the dangers of the reader’s unaided interpretation of the written word.
To try again: Houston, the odds-on favorite, performs well. Clarke, a close second has both baggage and support from party heavy weights. Elizabeth Smithmccrossin is a strong consensus second choice. John Lohr is a conservative’s Conservative and Julie Chiasson is surprising with her performance and Halifax support.
But there’s a transformation coming just 10 days before the Tory leader is chosen. The federal Liberal justice minister tells us so.