The marijuana dispensary next door: We’re not ready

Pretty soon, marijuana will officially be wonderful. God help us.

There was a revealing story in Friday’s Citizen by reporter Jacquie Miller about a marijuana dispensary in Orléans that opened in a building that also houses a couple of services that cater mostly to children.

One was a private tutoring centre, the other a martial arts academy. The soccer moms are anxious. “This is killing me,” said one. “We are terrified,” said another, threatening to pull her three children from the tutoring centre.

What does this kind of passion, this visceral reaction, tell us? It suggests — as parents, as suburban communities that cherish safety, as a people spooked by a national fentanyl crisis, as guardians who worry what our teenagers are up to at night — we are not wholly ready for this.

Here, evidently, are the groups jittery about marijuana becoming legally available at an outlet near you: parents, young kids, senior citizens who never touch the stuff, cranky middle-aged newspaper hacks, small businessmen who don’t want pot shops nearby, the police, educators and plenty, plenty more.

So, who are we really legalizing marijuana for?

I was noodling through statistics from the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse. What an eye-opener.

According to a respected national survey done in 2013, eight per cent of adults 25 and older reported cannabis use in the previous year. Yes, eight. The rate in 2012 was 8.4, while the figure from 2011 was 6.7 per cent.

If the entire over-15 population is considered, the rate in 2013 was 10.6 per cent.

The rate among the 15-to-24 year-olds was, of course, higher, but not shockingly so: 24.4 per cent for past-year use, with males twice as likely to have used.

To recap, as a country we’re about to twist ourselves into knots because eight per cent, or one in 12 Canadians, has used pot — and maybe only once — in the last year. And of those eight per cent, it appears a good chunk are young people, males especially, going through a skater-boy phase.

At a public meeting last week, the idea of “social licence” was brought up in connection with the siting of the Civic campus of The Ottawa Hospital.

Well, if only to climb on that pulpit, does the social licence exist for the federal and provincial governments to go ahead with storefront cannabis sales anywhere retail sales are now permitted? I would say the answer is no. The day may come when nobody cares where pot is sold. That day isn’t today.

(The language, too, softens some hard truths. Relax, it’s a cannabis “dispensary” right, all clean and medical, not a drug den?)

Look. I’m perfectly prepared to admit I’m not one of the “cool columnists” who think Oh Cannabis should be our national anthem. If it works as medicine, fine, and we should ensure patients get as much pot as they need, when they need it, at a cost that is affordable.

I’m just not convinced that the state-sponsored sale of recreational weed is a public good. Look at booze, you say. Yes, indeed, look at booze.

You know, I was going to make a reference to the numberless “families touched by addiction” when I caught myself. Families are not “touched” by addiction, as though it were a feather: they’re run over by addiction, as though it were a freight train.

And does the legalization of another intoxicant — a step taken by their elders, their betters, their legislators — not suggest to young people that getting stoned is a perfectly legitimate endeavour? Shut up, Dad, it’s legit now. After legal pot is here, we all know this day will come: when a group of young people, maybe late teenagers, will consume legal pot, maybe mix it with a legal amount of alcohol, and drive the minivan right off a cliff. And we know, too, a good number of people will be asking this: “Why the hell did we help them do that?”

For now, we live in the Wild West. There are, Miller reports, 15 such legally dubious dispensaries in Ottawa, about which the police are taking a “measured approach.” Measured? Sure they are. Isn’t zero a number?

The legislation to make marijuana sales legal is due to be introduced next spring. Until then, why not set up a “dispensary” at 23 Sussex Dr. or in the Parliament Hill gift shop, or the lobby of the Justice building?

You’re asking moms and kids to walk by it every day. Why don’t you?

JACQUIE MILLER Some parents are upset by the CannaGreen marijuana dispensary in an Orléans building that also includes a martial arts school and a private tutoring centre, both of which are used by children.