Pubdate: Wed, 05 Apr 2017
Source: Calgary Herald (CN AB)
Copyright: 2017 Postmedia Network
Contact:  http://www.calgaryherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/66
Author: Naomi Lakritz
Page: A10

CITY TEAM NEEDS POWER TO BE PROACTIVE AHEAD OF LEGALIZED POT

Federal legislation is being rushed along, laying the groundwork for a
black market

Just what is the Trudeau government's reason for legalizing marijuana
on Canada Day 2018? What does pot have to do with Confederation?

Maybe the link is a letter written by Lord Dufferin, governor general
of Canada from 1872 to 1878, in which he describes his visit to
Charlottetown at the time of Confederation.

"I found the Island in a high state of jubilation and quite under the
impression that it is the Dominion that has been annexed to Prince
Edward," Lord Dufferin wrote to Sir John A. Macdonald in 1873.

Calgary's smoking bylaw prohibits the use of pot in public places.
However, with many communities across Canada scrambling to come up
with new rules, it's possible that second-hand marijuana smoke, which
contains as many carcinogens as tobacco smoke, could fill the air in
some public places.

This legislation has been so rushed all along, that it seems there was
little regard for anything else, including the health effects of
breathing in the stench of someone else's marijuana fumes. And while
the federal government has apparently solemnly declared that people
will only be able to have four plants in their homes, I'd like to know
who will be going door-to-door to count them? The answer, obviously,
is nobody. Given the example of how the black market in marijuana has
burgeoned in Colorado following legalization there, it's good to see
that the City of Calgary is presciently considering extending the
powers of its Coordinated Safety Response Team to potentially deal
with, among other things, illegal grow ops.

The team, which has organized members from various agencies, including
Calgary police, could do this by extending its mandate to occupied
properties.

"… what we need to do is create a threshold for identifying and
earmarking those particularly problematic properties sooner, rather
than later," Coun. GianCarlo Carra said.

Carra was referring to all kind of bad-neighbour behaviours. However,
if the team gets those powers, it would be great news, because the
high-minded folks in Ottawa don't appear to have put too much thought
into their vision of pot utopia in this country.

A recent report in the Daily Beast describes how one black-market
entrepreneur in Denver, the rather ironically named Michael
Stonehouse, made so much money from his illegal marijuana business,
that prosecutors described it "as lucrative as that of any Mexican
cartel, growing hundreds of pounds of pot and delivering it in duffel
bags to at least five other states where marijuana remains illegal."

Let's not kid ourselves. The black market will be doing a booming
business in Canada by undercutting the legal sellers. Why bother with
taxes and regulations when you don't have to?

We will have what one Colorado police officer describes in the Daily
Beast as "a counting nightmare on the doorstep." The criminals there
"are hiding behind Colorado's pot laws and getting away with it,"
according to Tom Gorman, director of the Rocky Mountain High Intensity
Drug Trafficking Area program, part of the Office of National Drug
Control Policy, which studies the effects of legalized marijuana.

"Instead of eliminating the black market, Colorado has become the
black market," Gorman said.

The Calgary team will be handling all kinds of complaints that
typically go with cheek-by-jowl urban living, including noise,
partying and the usual stuff, but if it gets the new powers it needs,
it will be able to close up properties linked with continued criminal
behaviour. Just the need to control illegal grow ops once pot is
legalized should be enough reason for city council to grant it those
powers. As Carra says, "The problem emerges when you got bad actors,
then maybe it's probably smart to move from a carrot to a stick kind
of approach."

If Calgary is not proactive on this front, the only high state of
jubilation, to quote Lord Dufferin, will be among the black
marketeers.
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MAP posted-by: Matt