Pubdate: Sat, 16 Jan 2016
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2016 The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Margaret Wente

HOW THE HECK DO WE LEGALIZE MARIJUANA?

Canada Wants to Show the World How to Do It in an Orderly and 
Responsible Way. Good Luck With That

I'm the only person I know who flunked a medical marijuana test. Now 
all my friends are laughing at me.

A while back, I tried some pot in Colorado, for therapeutic purposes. 
I liked the result. It did wonders for my disposition, and also for 
my sleep. So I decided to apply for a medical prescription in Canada. 
I thought it would be pretty easy. You even get one via Skype.

My family doctor was happy to help me. (She doesn't think I'm the 
dope fiend type.) She sent me to one of those referral clinics that 
are springing up like weeds. They screen you, give you a prescription 
and hook you up with a licensed grow-op, which sends you your 
medicine in the mail.

Soon I was in a waiting room filling out a bunch of forms. There were 
lots of boxes you could tick off - stress, anxiety, sleeping 
problems, aches and pains, frequent feelings of utter and complete 
inadequacy. That was me! I noticed I was 35 years older than 
everybody else in the room. The other patients looked like stoners.

Sadly, the middle-aged female psychiatrist who interviewed me was not 
convinced. "I'm probably feeling lousier than you are right now," she 
groused. It didn't help that I'd signed my real name on the forms. 
"Globe and Mail columnist plans pot clinic expose," was probably the 
headline running through her head. She told me to take up meditation.

When my friend Bernie heard this humiliating story, he burst into 
laughter. "Here, try some of this," he said. He offered me some pot 
he'd bought at a "dispensary" that opened a block or two away from 
the referral clinic. You walk in there and show them your 
prescription for high blood pressure (or whatever), and they'll sell 
you anything you want.

Canada is going to show the world how to legalize marijuana in an 
orderly, rational and responsible way. That's what Justin said! 
Meanwhile, the pot entrepreneurs aren't waiting. They are rushing to 
establish facts on the ground. Illegal storefront operations that are 
ironically often municipally licensed are sprouting everywhere, 
selling anything they want to whoever wants to buy it. For all we 
know, they buy their stuff from illegal grow-ops, blackmarket gangs, 
and some unauthorized home growers who were approved under the 
previous federal pot regime. The cops leave them alone because no 
level of government has any policies about any of this and soon it 
will be legal anyway, so what the hell.

Don Briere, who runs a string of retail stores in the West, will give 
you a franchise to sell illegal products in Toronto for only $50,000. 
He wants to be the Tim Hortons of cannabis, and who wouldn't? Pot is 
cheap to grow, and the margins are beyond belief.

Good luck to Bill Blair, Justin Trudeau's new Pot Czar. The barn door 
is wide open and the horses are galloping off in all directions.

The medical pot people hate the retail storefront people, who are 
undermining their credibility. The storefront people push some 
incredibly potent products designed to get you more blasted than you 
have ever been in your entire life. The medical people want an 
industry that is highly regulated, quality controlled and 
doctor-directed. "The federal government needs to step in and tell 
everybody what are the freaking rules," said a spokesman for the 
association of legal growers .

"Patients, who are often very ill, need to buy something that's safe 
and is the same every time," Danial Schecter told me. Dr. Schecter is 
co-founder of the Cannabinoid Medical Clinic, which now has four 
branches and 4,150 patients. He says unregulated pot could be full of 
pesticides, bacteria, fungi and other nasty stuff. "You never know 
what the 'dispensaries' are selling," he warned.

They're also stealing potential business from the medical clinics. 
Millions of Canadians suffer chronic pain from conditions that 
cannabis could ease. Why bother going to a doctor when they can get 
the over-the-counter stuff just down the street?

Mr. Blair promises that all of this is going to get sorted out - just 
as soon as a federal-provincial task force is assembled to examine 
all the facts, new legislation is passed, a regulatory and inspection 
framework is put in place, and someone figures out who gets to own 
and operate the industry, how the prices will be set, what the taxes 
will be, where and how the stuff is sold, and whether there is any 
way to minimize the number of young people who will become 
dysfunctional and brain-damaged from consuming too much THC.

But hey. It's the vision that matters! And while the government sorts 
out the details, the industry has a vision of its own. Its vision is 
to develop yummy, delicious and health-giving pot products for each 
and every one of us. It's already working on legal edibles - cookies, 
candies, brownies, gummi candy, you name it. In case you can't wait, 
you can already get all that stuff online. You can even get your 
illegal pot by mail - no need to lurk around some shady dispensary. 
It comes vacuum-sealed, bubble-wrapped, triple-bagged and delivered 
to your doorstep by Canada Post.

"Don't tell me you haven't heard of Bud Buddy," one of my friends 
said pityingly. "You really are a bunny." Now I know. Who needs 
medical marijuana when there's that?
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom