Pubdate: Thu, 25 Jun 2015
Source: Kamloops This Week (CN BC)
Copyright: 2015 Kamloops This Week
Contact:  http://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1271

A RATIONAL STEP BY VANCOUVER

Regardless of where one stands on the marijuana-legalization debate,
it is simply irrefutable that the City of Vancouver's decision to
regulate its burgeoning medical-marijuana dispensary business is positive.

There are about 100 storefront marijuana dispensaries operating in
Vancouver and they exist because the police in that city have taken a
stance to concentrate on real crime, rather than spend precious time
seeking to shut down the stores.

By seeking to regulate the stores - not the product sold - the City of
Vancouver wants to ensure regulation is strict and that locations are
away from schools, community centres and other marijuana
dispensaries.

With a permit fee of $30,000, Vancouver is ensuring it is more
difficult, not easier, for such businesses to operate in the city.

Compare the city's rational response to the fact marijuana is on its
way to being decriminalized or legalized to the sad histrionic
viewpoint of federal Health Minister Rona Ambrose, whose ridiculous
warnings would be more at home in a Reefer Madness script.

Like her Conservative peers. Ambrose sticks to the failed war-on-pot
stance that has done nothing but make gangsters rich and give regular
people criminal records.

Ambrose opposed Vancouver's plan to regulate its medical-marijuana
dispensary business, noting marijuana is illegal and claiming such
regulation will increase pot use and addiction.

Of course, Ambrose is wrong.

Regulation and the stiff permit fee that will accompany it will likely
result in fewer medical marijuana dispensaries in Vancouver, so
Ambrose's fear of skyrocketing addiction rates will probably not come
to fruition.

Speaking of addiction, has Ambrose perused the latest statistics on
death and damage that results from legal alcohol?
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MAP posted-by: Matt