Pubdate: Thu, 21 Apr 2016
Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)
Page: A2
Copyright: 2016 The Toronto Star
Contact:  http://www.thestar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456
Author: Rosie DiManno

FEDS' OBJECTIVE FOR MARIJUANA LEGISLATION IS HAZY

The reek assaulted the nostrils from a block away.

Deep inside the Weed Wednesday - formally 420 Toronto - demonstration
at Yonge-Dundas Square, averting a contact high was challenging. Not
so bad as that time the Star sent me to Amsterdam, on the paper's
expense account, to investigate legal pot use and it took two days to
recover from my research before I was fit to file.

Wednesday I eased the queasiness by sticking my head inside a chip
wagon and inhaling deeply. Rather the smell of oil and grease than
grass fumes.

Many people like the sickly sweet scent of cannabis. I do not. It
makes me gag - a built-in, say-no sniff aversion to marijuana and
hashish. But in this friendly gathering, that rendered me an alien
creature among the smokers and tokers, the bongs and pipes, the
bubblers and grinders.

On the stage, lined with lush marijuana plants, someone is hustling
cannabis colouring books. Kiosks do a lively business peddling dope
paraphernalia. Information booths offer advice on the law.
Merchandisers boast a vast array of seed kits. Bands, comedians and a
sea of blissful faces, all those consumers sitting cross-legged on the
pavement; students from nearby Ryerson University, homeless youth with
their stud-collared dogs, yet also plenty of folks well beyond middle
age.

This is what I think about pot: It may be a mildly mind-expanding drug
but it's definitely not brain-enhancing. I've never met a single
chronic user who is anything other than dim-witted and dull. It is the
perfect un-stimulant for slackers. If you want to indulge, however, be
my guest - just not when you're a guest at my tobacco-friendly house.

It all felt time-warpy, this passive assembly of marijuana devotees
participating in an event that traces its hazy roots to a bunch of
California stoners and Grateful Dead truckers in the '70s. Someone at
the microphone is now patting himself on the back as a dope pioneer,
recalling the days of The Riverboat, with Sonny Terry & Brownie McGee
performing. This makes me feel awfully old, because I was a great fan
of the folks-blues duo and saw them many times at that long-gone
Yorkville establishment.

Weed Day is annually celebrated on April 20, which was also the date
many advocates had circled on their calendar - 2016 - when Canada
would be pronounced a legal marijuana utopia coast to coast. That day
has not arrived yet, despite the faith dopers had put in Justin
Trudeau's campaign promise.

But yesterday did coincide with a declaration by our appropriately 
named federal health minister, Jane Philpott, at a special session of 
the UN General Assembly in New York: Canadian laws to legalize 
marijuana will be ready to roll within a year. "We will introduce 
legislation in spring 2017 that ensures we keep marijuana out of the 
hands of children and profits out of the hands of criminals."

Yay, went the crowd here. A low-buzz yay.

What Philpott really meant, I suspect, is we, the government, will
snort the profits of cannabis-retailing instead - an estimated
windfall of $5 billion annually from tax revenue on legal sales of the
drug. That's extrapolating from the 11 per cent of the population age
15 and older that had used marijuana in the previous year, according
to a 2013 survey contained in a November ministerial briefing. The
money won't come out of my pocket, but then I've already given the
government a small fortune from four decades of cigarette purchases.

Seems a bit counter-intuitive, promoting widespread use of cannabis
while smokers have been hounded into leper status, the province
reversing itself to restrict vaping and Toronto banning shisha
lounges. More sensible would be to decriminalize drugs in their
varieties so that addiction can be handled strictly as a health issue.

Except I know that cities with extremely lax drug policies, places
such as Amsterdam and Oslo, have been transformed into wastelands of
the wasted.

"As a doctor who has worked in both Canada and sub-Saharan Africa,
I've seen too many people suffer the devastating consequences of
drugs, drug-related crime and ill-conceived drug policy," Philpott
told the UN.

Doubtless that's true. Nobody has got it right. Maybe there's no such
thing, and the best we can aspire to is reducing harm.

But neither Philpott nor Trudeau has been specific about whether
Canada's legislation will be aimed at decriminalization or
legalization. Either way, after extricating Canada from international
narcotics conventions to which this country is now a signatory, we'd
be looking at an infernal regulatory bureaucracy.

Would the state have a monopoly on sales? Could provinces enact more
stringent rules on retail, legal age for consumption and where pot
could be used? If legalized, what would happen to the sounds of
individuals now serving jail time for trafficking when the state
becomes a trafficker? How would drug impairment be measured under
highway and traffic laws?

It hurts my brain just thinking about all the complexities and
permutations. And I hate the thought of what a mess government
pinheads will make of it.

So stressful. But hey, fire up a spliff and pass the munchies. I'll
just have a shot, beer back, thanks.  
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jo-D