Ontario could play role in pot regulatory vacuum

There is a hallucinatory quality to the way intoxicating substances are bought and sold in Ontario these days.

Choose your alcoholic poison — beer, wine, spirits — mindful that robust government regulation (not to mention revenue) remains on tap.

But choose your leafy medicine — marijuana, whether truly medicinal or merely recreational — knowing that government enforcement has gone up in smoke.

Antiquated drug laws that once dispatched small-time dope dealers and tokers to jail never made any sense. But in our haste to decriminalize and legalize marijuana, we have opened up a regulatory vacuum that looks increasingly dopey.

Now, all three levels of government are messing up while missing out on money.

First, federal plans to liberalize marijuana usage, while well-intentioned, are sending mixed signals across the country.

Second, Ontario is moving slowly on its plans to profit from marijuana usage while safeguarding public health.

Third, municipal enforcement, by police and zoning inspectors, has become so haphazard that a marijuana free-for-all is taking root.

More than 100 pot dispensaries have magically mushroomed across Toronto, like so many pop-up stores smoking out the latest retail trend. This isn’t the first time governments have been caught flat-footed by fleet-footed entrepreneurs — Uber is expert at flouting laws for profit — but there are broader public and fiscal health considerations at play.

While booze and tobacco are legal, they remain controlled substances sold only in licensed establishments. The Ontario government made a deliberate policy choice to limit expansion of beer and wine to selected supermarkets while pointedly excluding corner stores, motivated by social responsibility concerns and, yes, profitability. Sales of spirits, however, were kept out of supermarkets — restricted to the LCBO because of their much higher alcohol content and social concerns.

All those considerations apply equally to marijuana. Yet since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s public pledges before and during the 2015 federal election, a once-banned substance has become commonplace in corner stores — not the mom and pop variety, but those pop-up stores selling pot.

Decriminalizing dope has always been the right thing to do, given how the social and policing costs of pro- hibition were prohibitive. But just as alcohol transitioned from prohibition to regulated distribution, so do marijuana sales cry out for enforcement. If one of the goals of decriminalization was to reduce lawlessness in an underground market of dope dealers, why reward and legitimize the network of uncontrolled sellers that arises in its place?

In recent weeks, police have belatedly cracked down on these storefront operations, whose suppliers are unregulated and unknown to us. But like pop-up stores anywhere, they will crop up again and again as long as the legal ambiguity and commercial opportunity remain.

It is more than a game of cat and mouse. We now know that the marijuana sold today is far stronger than in the past, and its higher potency risks greater abuse. All the more reason to move quickly on control- ling dope as we do cigarettes and alcohol.

Medical marijuana requires a prescription from a medical doctor and can be supplied only by federally licensed producers. Like other controlled substances, it lends itself to distribution through pharmacies whose trained personnel have experience in dispensing narcotics.

Recreational marijuana, on the other hand, could benefit from a pre-existing retail channel that has experience in provincewide distribution. No, not the Beer Store.

The LCBO remains reasonably popular with customers despite (or possibly because of ) its old Holiday Inn character — no surprises, for better or for worse. Its unionized staff are well-trained and primed for the task.

Just as they recommend fine wines, LCBO workers would doubtless rise to the occasion when called upon to suggest a particular strain of grass highly regarded for its distinctive highs.

With its 650 outlets across the province, the LCBO also has the virtue of being government-owned — ensuring any weed windfalls flow into the treasury at the very time its revenue base is being diluted by the encroachment of supermarkets into its erstwhile wine monopoly.

An interdepartmental working group of government bureaucrats is mapping out future marijuana sales to “legalize, regulate and restrict access,” Finance Minister Charles Sousa told the Star’s Robert Benzie last week. At least there are no foreign-owned cartels to deal with . . .

Common sense in the distribution of dope means shutting down Toronto’s pop-up pot stores. And rebranding the once-liquor-focused LCBO.

Perhaps the ICBO — Intoxication Control Board of Ontario? Martin Regg Cohn’s political column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. mcohn@thestar.ca, Twitter: @reggcohn

On the path to marijuana regulation it makes sense to shut down Toronto’s pop-up pot stores and expand the brand of the liquor-focused LCBO.