CANNABIS LEGISLATION IS FAR FROM PERFECT — AND THAT’S JUST FINE
Legalizing marijuana a big step for society so we should expect changes down the road
“The bill is probably not perfect.”
That was what Lucie Charlebois, the provincial public health minister, had to say after Bill 157 was approved by MNAs. Never has imperfection sounded so perfect and never has everyone been so certain about uncertainty.
Why is an imperfect piece of legislation exactly what’s needed when it comes to cannabis? Well, actually, it’s not that the bill is imperfect, it’s that we’re admitting that this version of the law won’t be the final word.
For once, everybody seems to agree that Bill 157 will have to be reopened and revisited at some point in the future. Both the Coalition Avenir Québec and the Parti Québécois would look to rework cannabis legislation should they be elected to form the government in October; the CAQ wants the age for consumption to be lifted from 18 to 21, while the PQ takes issue with cannabis consumption in public places. The Liberals, meanwhile, are the ones responsible for the current piece of legislation, and want to wait and see how Quebec society reacts once cannabis is legalized before revisiting Bill 157 and making the requisite changes.
Nobody is talking about whether changes are necessary, but rather about when they’ll be necessary. Charlebois, the minister responsible for the province’s cannabis dossier, is right that the bill is probably not perfect. But very few pieces of legislation are; doubly so when they reverse decades of social norms and spark contentious debate between parties and even different levels of government. We would be remiss to expect a seamless transition.
We were never going to hit the bull’s-eye on the first shot. Even the federal government was unable to get its legislation in order in time to meet its original self-imposed and semi-symbolic July 1 deadline; that deadline has since been shifted to a more forgiving “summer of 2018,” which definitely seems attainable.
There will be growing pains; both literal ones pertaining to how many plants people can or cannot grow at home in Quebec, and figurative ones involving the dearth of Société québécoise du cannabis storefronts.
Some see Bill 157 as being too conservative and overly careful, but the question I have is: What, if anything, did we stand to gain by opening the proverbial floodgates right off the bat? Even the staunchest cannabis advocates should be satisfied, because there’s a good chance that Quebec’s legislation will make legalization seem more innocuous than in other provinces. And that will make it easier for a future Quebec government to adopt a system more in line with the rest of the country — yes, including growing plants at home, a possibility Charlebois alluded to.
Too often legislation is pushed through quickly, for political point-scoring or score-settling. The result can range from outright confrontation between different levels of government to governments forced to change course or, worse yet, a system that is doomed to fail.
For a while, it looked like cannabis legalization was going to fall into that latter category. There was no real guidance for months and there were questions about the role provincial governments would play, whether distribution would be privatized and what infrastructure would need to be put in place. Not all may agree with how things are proceeding, but those who don’t can take heart that current policies are not the last word.
Imagine, if you will, that the government had given private enterprises carte blanche at the outset, or mandated the SAQ — which oversees the SQDC and the 20 stores that will serve Quebec when cannabis becomes legal — to open five or 10 times the number of SQDC storefronts. It wouldn’t have left a great impression about the legalization project — “these potheads are so disorganized!” — and would have, one imagines, led to backlash and potential crackdowns by the provinces.
Instead, the government has chosen the opposite approach.
There may come a time when Couche-Tard is part of the equation and there may come a time where SQDCs are almost as ubiquitous as SAQs, but that time isn’t now, nor should it be. Alcohol is a great, but imperfect, parallel to be drawn when it comes to cannabis legalization — what’s important to remember, though, is that that economy has had almost a century to develop.
We, as a society, can’t skip steps just because we decide that now’s the time for cannabis legalization. After all, slow and steady wins the race.
For once, we should be excited that a bill is imperfect and that all parties agree that it needs to be revisited. Nobody knows what will happen when the prime minister signs a piece of legislation undoing decades of cannabis prohibition.
As it stands, we’re ready to deal with the immediate aftermath. Beyond that, though, we don’t really know what to expect besides the fact that we’ll definitely have to adapt.