Canada’s cannabis legalisation opens up ‘pot’ of trouble
SINCE December 17, cannabis edibles, extracts and topicals can now be purchased online in British Columbia (BC), a province along Canada’s west coast. This marks a “logical” next step following Canada’s legalization of cannabis (also known as marijuana, pot or weed), a substance that could lead to addiction to more potent drugs like heroin, cocaine or opioids that have destroyed so many lives and families around the world.
Canada legalised marijuana in October 2018, through Bill C-45, a legislative proposal sponsored by the federal Liberal Party, thus fulfilling a campaign promise the liberals made to voters who wanted to see marijuana legalised and the stigma associated with past use removed.
Cannabis legalisation was also touted as a public health cure of the problem of drug addiction, an effective way to protect youth, and a silver bullet to end organised crimes of the illicit drug trade and the profits derived from it.
But despite all the hype surrounding its legalisation, things have not turned out the way the liberals expected. Although baby boomers now have a legal source, other demographics continue to buy marijuana from illegal vendors. The overdose crisis persists.
While mainstream media were quick to report a 32 percent drop in illicit-drug fatalities in the first 10 months of 2019, this does not change the fact that BC’s death toll exceeded 1 000 for the year, or the fact that overdoses in general remain alarming — with over 20 000 overdose emergency calls in BC alone last year.
Canada simply gets better in keeping the death tolls down by spending more on first responders and naloxone kits.
Cannabis use among the youth continues unabated. Any parent who helps out on graduation night will tell you how administrators, staff and parents guard entrances, side doors and exits throughout the night to stop contraband, including drugs, from entering the school premises. Because legal supply has not caught up, the illicit market is still going strong.
Legalisation has not stamped out the illegal trade, nor deprived participants of their profits.
Such a dismal record should have prompted a reality check.
Advocacy, media bias
But that is not how the Canadian media or drug policy advocacy groups — the two big opinion influencers on drug policy here — see it. Instead, they tirelessly fill us in on how “informed Canadians” are taking a leadership stance in combating drug and reorienting policy.
Almost every time the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) radio service covers the overdose crisis, it will interview an “overworked” first responder, a grieved family member, a sympathetic doctor or a drug addict.
All these sources agree that addiction is a medical condition, that the overdose crisis is a public health emergency, that the government should relax laws regarding possession of illicit drugs and prosecution and that it provide safe drugs (heroin and other opioids, cocaine and marijuana) free of charge to stave off the tide of drug overdoses.
Every now and then the CBC gives listeners an update on marijuana legalisation, during which listeners can count on hearing a representative from advocacy groups or industry raving about how Canada is a world leader in shaping public perception of cannabis use and taking advantage of a multibillion-dollar industry that is growing into several hundred billion dollars.
In a country where the media are supposed to be neutral and independent, such biased coverage is indeed a rarity. One wonders why.
A look at the dynamics driving marijuana legalisation helps unravel some of the mystery.
Statistics Canada estimates that close to half of all Canadians have used, or are actively using marijuana.
Legalisation therefore has grassroots support. Users of cannabis for recreational purposes stand to gain by being assured of quality-controlled dope from government-approved vendors, hopefully cheaper than from street gangs.
Those convicted of cannabis possession or trafficking offenses in the past benefit by having such history removed from their police records while people who have been taking
Marijuana and various interests
Politicians see marijuana legalisation as a ticket to election wins.
Given the size of the pot-smoking voting bloc, whoever takes it seriously is assured a leg up on his competition, which is exactly what the incumbent prime minister did in 2015 and 2019.
Businesses like Canopy Growth and Hexo look to legalisation as an opportunity to take market share from the illicit trade and expand into new product lines such as edibles (including beverages), extracts (concentrates like shatter, dabs or wax) and topicals (lotions, balms and creams). The progressives, who do not necessarily consume weed but believe in private rights and choice, tend to support legalisation.
With so many interests aligned in favour of legalisation, it is no surprise that cannabis became legal without so much as a hiccup.
However, just because something is legal does not necessarily mean it is right. Slavery was legal for a century but was ultimately abolished because it was wrong from day one.
In Canada, residential schools were once legal but were eventually closed because they amounted to cultural genocide, a term the Truth and Reconciliation Commission used to describe the atrocity Canada committed against its First Nations. Furthermore, one person’s right to do drugs is not a license to infringe upon another’s rights.
With pot-smoking parents, their children’s right to grow up in a drug-free home is simply non-existent.
When a young girl was hospitalised after mistakenly ingesting marijuana-infused gummy bear candies somebody else left in a vehicle in 2018, her right to live a safe and trauma-free life was compromised.
With schools struggling to contain drug abuse among students, where is the parents’ right to peace of mind, that their children will not be tempted by peers who peddle pot as a part-time job?
Yet to the legal cannabis lobby, their rights are more important than others. And the media assent by lending them a free platform.
Falsification
Thus with a skewed moral compass, self-interest and expediency carry the day, warnings go unheeded, and hard facts are left to contend with false information.
According to Canadian Paediatric Society, “Canadian youth ranked first for cannabis use among 43 countries and regions across Europe and North America, with one-third of youth (regardless of gender) having tried cannabis at least once by the age of 15.”
Such “distinction” means Canada had a lot of soul-searching and backlog of work to do, yet many Canadians were convinced that legalisation would do the trick for them.
Neither cannabis producers’ losses in the first year of legalisation nor the Ontario government’s loss of US$42 million selling pot deter the country from embracing Cannabis 2.0, the second phase of legalisation. — China Daily.