Pubdate: Tue, 22 Dec 2015
Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)
Copyright: 2015 The Toronto Star
Contact:  http://www.thestar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456
Author: Christopher Reynolds
Page: A6

PROHIBITION: A HISTORY LESSON

Historians see parallels between repealing the prohibition on alcohol 
in the 1920s and the forthcoming end of illicit pot.

Though Ontario lifted the ban on alcohol sales in 1927, the province 
tightly regulated its availability through a monopolized liquor 
control board that for more than four decades kept track of customer 
history and personal information through permit books and purchase forms.

"In Ontario and most other provinces, they followed this pattern of 
strong government regulation," said Mark Sholdice, a doctoral 
candidate in Canadian history at the University of Guelph.

"It legitimized the reintroduction of alcohol and allowed it to go 
forward," he said.

Now, after 88 years of being sold exclusively on LCBO shelves and in 
Beer Store backrooms, six-packs arrived in Ontario grocery stores on 
Dec. 15, with wine to follow.

A similar possibility awaits marijuana - eventually: "Essentially 
heavy regulation of production, distribution, consumption . . . with 
more liberalization as the decades go on and it becomes normalized."

Premier Kathleen Wynne said Dec. 14 that LCBO outlets are "very 
well-suited" for pot retail, once legalization is dealt with by the 
federal government.

Sholdice cautioned that a state-controlled marijuana agency - LCBO or 
otherwise - may follow incentives not just to allow consumption but 
to encourage it over time, along the same lines as provincial lotteries.

"Governments by the 1980s had become dependent on these 'vices' to 
raise revenue, so they become much more comfortable with actually 
promoting these activities, whereas before the government was much 
more interested in controlling the behaviour and in educating the 
consumers," Sholdice said.

The prohibitionists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries sought 
to eliminate problems like workplace accidents, public drunkenness 
and "social deterioration," said Dan Malleck, associate professor of 
history at Brock University and author of books on Canada's drug laws 
and Ontario's post-Prohibition booze rules.

Those issues aren't necessarily linked with marijuana, though Wynne 
stressed the LCBO's ongoing corporate policy of "social 
responsibility." Recent research on the drug's effect on the 
adolescent brain makes youth consumption an ongoing concern, Malleck noted.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom