Pubdate: Thu, 20 Apr 2017
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2017 The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Page: A10

BEFORE WE LEGALIZE, DECRIMINALIZE

The Trudeau government has put itself and many Canadians in a bind
with the announcement that it will legalize marijuana by July of next
year.

On the one hand, Canada has made it clear that the war on this
particular drug is over - a decision based on pot's popularity and
ready availability in this country, and in the knowledge that
criminalizing its sale and possession for personal use is more
harmful, on balance, than allowing its consumption in a tightly
regulated market.

But on the other hand, Canada intends to continue in the interim to
make it a crime to have pot in your possession, except for medical
reasons. Having identified the harm of criminalization as
justification for a sweeping reform, the government has committed
itself to at least 15 more months of perpetuating this very same harm.

That leaves the estimated 2.3 million Canadians who use pot in a limbo
in which the use of the drug has essentially been normalized by the
government, but the possession of which, at least until next summer,
could still see them slapped with a criminal charge for walking around
with a joint in their pocket. Some might say tough luck. The law is
the law; don't break it. That's certainly the position we take with
regard to the illegal dispensaries that have popped up in Vancouver,
Montreal, Toronto and other cities. The transition from an illegal,
underground marketplace to one in which licensed producers will soon
provide legal marijuana to licensed and supervised sellers should not
be short-circuited by the greed of those who are breaking the law and
jumping the gun, creating headaches for police departments and
municipal councils. Tough luck, indeed.

Besides, there is no viable interim regulatory regime that could
accommodate a quasi-legal retail market. But there is when it comes to
personal possession. It's called decriminalization.

That is something many police chiefs have been calling for for years.
They would love to be able to ticket someone caught with a small
amount of pot that they intend to use for personal consumption,
instead of having to arrest them and lay criminal charges.

Decriminalization would immediately unburden the already overburdened
criminal justice system, by removing the tens of thousands of minor
pot charges that occur in Canada every year. It would also spare
people from a possible criminal record for an offence that the
majority of Canadians do not see as meriting such a heavy hand - a
conclusion some have reached partly because Ottawa has successfully
argued that criminalizing pot possession is more harmful than helpful
to society.

What decriminalization would not do is create an illegal and dangerous
free-for-all, as illegal pot dispensaries have done. People who
consume and carry small amounts of marijuana during the interim period
might still face sanction - perhaps even more so, since police, freed
from the time-consuming burden of arresting, booking and participating
in the prosecution of suspected pot smokers, might choose to focus on
the easier job of writing tickets. Or, police might choose to ignore
pot smokers altogether.

Ottawa could well bring in an interim regime involving
decriminalization, but so far it has insisted that nothing will change
in the months ahead. It is legalization or nothing for the Liberals.

Which doesn't make sense, at least not from a technical standpoint.
There is every likelihood that decriminalizing the possession of
personal amounts of pot, while maintaining the crime of getting caught
with large stashes that are clearly meant for trafficking - like the
kinds found in an illegal dispensary - could be achieved fairly easily.

The Liberals' reluctance to demonstrate any sort of interim mercy is
most likely the product of their desire to reinforce the point that
the legalization of marijuana does not mean that it can be produced
and sold by anyone who wants to do so, or will be suddenly even more
available to people under 18.

They have hammered home their message that pot will be legally
available in Canada only inside a restrictive framework that favours
large companies shipping safely produced weed to provincially overseen
retailers that may look more like an Ontario liquor store than a chic
boutique dispensary.

To its credit, Ottawa has effectively persuaded Canadians that the
chief harms of criminalization - which include the damage done by
criminal records given to otherwise law-abiding citizens - are worse
than the harms of legalization.

But having done the math, both social and political, it now insists
that all the harms of criminalization will continue for the
foreseeable future, even though it could immediately end the one that
most directly hurts the most Canadians. In focusing so much on its
calculations, it has lost track of some basic common sense.
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MAP posted-by: Matt