Pubdate: Thu, 24 Nov 2016
Source: Record, The (CN QU)
Copyright: 2016 The Sherbrooke Record
Contact:  http://www.sherbrookerecord.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3194
Author: Tim Belford
Page: 6

LEGALIZING MARIJUANA

At the risk of being accused of pulling a Hillary Clinton and playing
fast and loose with the truth let me say this; I have never smoked
marijuana, and if I did I never inhaled. Okay, if I inhaled it was
only by accident. Except for that one time I was offered a toke from a
totally awesome young thing and I took it just to be polite.

Anyway, what I did or did not do when I was young and foolish can't be
proven anyway, since thankfully back then we didn't take selfies.
Besides, all the potential witnesses to my escapades are now either in
a seniors' home or at the point where they need to leave a memo on the
fridge door just to remind them to take the grocery list when they go
shopping.

What I really want to talk about is the legalization of marijuana.
Better still, I want to discuss who will be allowed to market and sell
weed once Trudeau Secundus waves his magic wand and makes 200,000
aging hippies happy.

It has been suggested by many that the free market is the way to go.
Sell licences to anyone interested as long as they can prove they have
no connection to organized crime and are willing to comply with health
regulations and age restrictions. In other words, let the customer be
the judge of quality versus cost much like they do when buying groceries.

The other suggestion, in typically Canadian fashion, is for the
government to control everything, including growing, marketing,
selling and, most importantly taxing - a smokers version of Quebec's
SAQ or the LCBO in Ontario. Of course this would also be a pot fan's
ultimate nightmare, akin to putting prohibitionists in charge of the
liquor cabinet.

The main worry in all of this, whether the government decides to leave
it to the private sector or sets up its own system of SMOG (Societe
Marijuana Officiel de Gouvernement) outlets, is that it will treat the
whole thing as a new cash cow. Thus, a gram of marijuana that now
sells for $9 on the street (I'm just guessing of course) would retail
for $28 after the government figured out its costs and slapped on a
nice 100 per cent sales tax.

This is precisely what happened in Washington State and the result was
that only about 17 or 18 percent of sales ended up going through the
legal outlets while the rest of the State's puffers stuck with Guido
or Lothar down on the corner.

In a recent report the Parliamentary Budget Office in Ottawa took a
look at projected sales of legal marijuana in Canada along with
potential tax revenue as well as spin-offs such as investment activity
and pot tourism. It concluded that yes, customers would be "price
sensitive" but that a tax assessment of about 35 per cent would still
result in about two thirds of users switching to the legal outlets.
But that's in an open system with competition.

Given the SAQ'S history of dealing with wine and liquor, you'd be
forgiven for assuming that "price sensitivity" ranks about 2 on a
scale of 1 to 500. Bottles of our favorite tipple are routinely
subject to as much tax as the government can gouge out of its
customers. It's what monopolies do and there is little reason to
believe that if the Quebec government controlled the sale of legalized
marijuana that things would be any different.

As for sticking to the underground market, there's one thing you can
be sure of. The government would use a lot of its new-found profits to
make the local grow-op a thing of the past.
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MAP posted-by: Matt