Pot profits a product of hypocrisy
Age of oppression against potheads is drawing to a close
There’s just a few days to go, and when Oct. 17 arrives Canadians, hopefully, will no longer have to listen to the kings of corporate cannabis gloat about how much money they’re going to make when marijuana becomes legal.
The announcements from Big Dope have been steady: mergers, production facilities, deals with governments, profits preparing to bloom, etc. Statistics Canada recently reported legalized marijuana will be a $3.8-billion to $4.8-billion annual industry. No wonder the bud businessmen are laughing without even lighting a joint.
StatsCan estimates 5.4 million Canadians will use legal marijuana.
This is a good thing. Pot laws have been unjust for more than half a century, and legalization is a shimmer of sanity amidst the sea of insanity of modern-day politics.
But it is somewhat revolting to witness the corporate feeding frenzy as legalization approaches, and compare it to the experience of the hippies and yippies who pioneered the use of pot in days of yore.
It is worth remembering that some people said 50 or more years ago that marijuana should be legal.
It is equally worth recognizing that those people were right.
The politicians were wrong, the laws were wrong, the chiefs of police were wrong.
(Regarding the latter, perhaps now the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police will stop its political meddling with dire warnings about the dangers of dope, and commit to using its officers to do something that really will benefit the safety of the public, such as, say, chasing the speeders who cause such carnage on the country’s roads.)
The American-led war on drugs always was, and still is, fuelled by hysteria rather than by rationality.
In the 1980s, Nancy Reagan lectured American youth to “just say no.” She could have done more good, and saved more lives, by lecturing her husband, then-U.S. president Ronald Reagan, to “just say no” to Latin American dictators.
Conservatives have switched sides. Instead of preaching abstinence and backing politicians who will enforce it, chamber of commerce members are clamouring for their share of dope dollars. This hypocrisy is perfectly exemplified by former Toronto police chief Bill Blair, who is now an executive with a marijuana company. You begin to see why satire is so difficult these days.
But legalization is merely the beginning. It is the result of a cultural shift, of people realizing the injustice of the law and their willingness to be less harshly judgmental. The age of oppression against potheads is drawing to a close.
It won’t be complete, though, until politicians and the legal system admit the injustices they have inflicted upon thousands of people.
Here is a disturbing dilemma: while cannabis companies rack up $3.8 billion to $4.8 billion in annual sales, some Canadians will still be in jail because of cannabis convictions.
Past wrongs must be made right. Anyone in jail, on trial or with a criminal record because of a cannabis conviction should immediately be pardoned and given a proverbial clean slate.
I would go further. Given the penchant for official apologies, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, on behalf of all Canadians, should say sorry to all the hippies and yippies, whether former or current. Each could be bequeathed with a sacred tie-dyed T-shirt.
It won’t happen, of course. There will be no pardons or apologies. Paranoia endures about the evils of weed. Thus the law will limit Canadians to growing a maximum of four marijuana plants per household. With this rule, the government unintentionally proves the yearsold suggestion that the main reason marijuana was illegal was that the state hadn’t figured out a way to profit from it.
You can make beer at home. You can make wine at home. In neither instance are you limited to a maximum of four bottles. The goofy illogic of it suggests they’re already smoking something in Ottawa.