Pubdate: Fri, 30 Sep 2016
Source: London Free Press (CN ON)
Copyright: 2016 The London Free Press
Contact: http://www.lfpress.com/letters
Website: http://www.lfpress.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/243
Author: Randall Denley
Page: A6

WHAT WILL CANADA GAIN FROM LEGALIZATION OF POT?

Smoking marijuana can impair one's thought processes, but all the
federal government needs to do is talk about it to achieve a state of
surreal confusion.

Consider the situation today. Marijuana is going to be legalized next
year. Cool. In the meantime, illegal pot stores are proliferating
under the guise of offering medical marijuana. Since they are illegal,
and theoretically don't exist, they are unaffected by zoning
regulations and business licence requirements. Little is known about
quality of what they sell. When Health Canada received a report about
dangerous toxins in pot sold in dispensaries in Vancouver, it did
nothing. Police don't know what to do about this, and in Ottawa, they
are not enforcing existing law.

The government has promised a new regime all about public health,
protection of children, regulation and fighting organized crime.
Instead, it has delivered its own form of reefer madness, where
anything goes.

Not to worry, though. The government's expert task force will have
worked out all the legalization details by November and new
legislation is coming by spring.

That's seen as slow, but legalizing marijuana is easy to promise and
hard to execute. There might be a reason Uruguay is the only country
in the world that has done it.

The government's own discussion paper demonstrates conflicting goals
of the Liberal plan. The government wants to make marijuana legal and
widely available without normalizing its use or letting young people
get their hands on it. It also wants to control production and sale of
the product and tax it, without making the price so high that
organized crime will still dominate the market.

Realistically, how does government sanction the sale of a drug, maybe
even become the vendor, without normalizing its use? Three-quarters of
Canadians older than 15 drink alcohol, available from your local
government outlet, but only 11 per cent use marijuana. Might that have
something to do with it being illegal?

Marijuana demand is concentrated among young people 15 to 24, with 25
per cent using the drug. According to a 2013 UNICEF report, that rate
is the highest in the world. Surely the Liberal government doesn't
want to make that number larger, but if it imposes strict age
restrictions, it will leave a big market for drug dealers.

Worry over increasing drug use among youth isn't just some fuddyduddy
concern. The Canadian Medical Association recommends a minimum age of
21 for legal marijuana purchase because of effects the drug can have
on developing brains. People who enjoyed the product back in the 1970s
might scoff at that, but the marijuana sold now has THC levels of 12
to 15 per cent. Back in the day, it was a far less potent three per
cent.

At first glance, legalizing marijuana would seem to end the
much-reviled war on drugs, but it doesn't deliver that benefit.
Instead, it would shift the focus to rooting out producers who operate
outside the government-sanctioned system.

The only real benefit of legalization would be to end criminal
penalties for people guilty of nothing more than bad judgment. But
it's a goal that can be accomplished by decriminalization rather than
legalization.

It's possible the government's enthusiasm for legal marijuana has
something to do with the anticipated tax windfall. Pot is said to be a
$7-billion industry in Canada. Government will charge fees for
producers and retailers, the HST, and whatever taxes it deems fit.
Legal marijuana will allow governments to get their beaks very wet
indeed.

It's enough to make a reasonable person ask what we really hope to
gain by legalizing marijuana, and if we have any prospect of
accomplishing those goals.

Randall Denley is an Ottawa commentator, novelist and former Ontario PC 
candidate.
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MAP posted-by: Matt