Pubdate: Sat, 22 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
Author: Tabatha Southey
Page: F2

STIRRING THE POT LEGISLATION

It seems there is no task in Canada as thankless as legalizing
marijuana. Last week, the Liberals announced their plans to fulfill
their campaign promise and do just that - by July 1, 2018, at the
latest - and a chorus of complaints went round the country.

People opposed to legalization of any kind, public policy-failure
aficionados, were of course displeased. Those convinced that anything
short of the government passing Bill 420 on the left-hand side,
printed on small white papers, mandating that their local MP spark up
a doobie for them when they get home from work is an infringement of
their fundamental rights were also put out. No one seems happy.

I'm as guilty as the next person. I am bothered by the stipulation
that, under the rules as they are currently taking shape, only four
marijuana plants will be allowed to be grown per household.

Why per household, I want to know. Why not per resident adult? Surely
this four-plant limit will discriminate against couples? At ease, gay
people: I may have found the real threat to traditional marriage.

It's not always easy being in a committed relationship. Far too many
married Canadians have to share their home with someone who just
cannot load the dishwasher properly, and soon they'll have to share
their pot-growing potential, too.

I would amend that limit, Liberals. Many parts of Canada already have
a housing crisis - you go ahead with this plan, you watch how quickly
boomers finally start throwing their adult children out of the house.

My mother, enjoying a little medicinal weed mid-chemo this week, is
concerned about this as well. "It is such a pretty plant," she said,
adding, "Oh! Your father's just come in from the garden."

She was laughing harder than I have heard her laugh in a while.
"What?" I said. "He did a ballet twirl, he's had a nibble of the edibles."

She also called me this week to say, "I had the best dream. I dreamed
we had a really small elephant, just wandering around the house." This
is how I know I was born into this family. "And the most wonderful
part of the dream was," she said, "that you and the children were here
visiting when the elephant spoke its first full sentence."

Clearly things are pretty trippy over there. This is
new.

Sale of edibles is not currently legal in Canada, and my mum's not up
to baking these days. I didn't inquire about the provenance. I can
only assume my mother stays in touch with some of my old high school
friends. Edibles are something the government is moving more slowly
on, a rare case of the government encouraging smoking. There is a
legitimate concern that edibles will be consumed by children,
especially if they're made as appetizing-looking as, say, dishwasher
tablets, which the kids can't get enough of these days.

I'd argue that most homes are brimming with things that are
potentially dangerous to children, from sharp knives to prescription
pills, and we encourage, warn, educate and take legal action but also
trust parents to put these things where their children can't get them.
We should keep doing that.

Dear government: My mum is entitled to whatever comfort she can find
and she's a one-woman temperance movement of smoking, so please keep
that in mind and move this thing along. Also, she likes wine gums, if
that helps, but there is no reason for drugs to look like gummy bears.
I think we can work this out.

Some people complained that the Liberals' decision to set the age at
which one can legally buy weed at 18 - because that is, after all, the
age of majority (individual provinces will be allowed to raise that
age) - is irresponsible. There seems to be a general misunderstanding
about legalization; the government is not advising 18-year-olds, or
anyone else in Canada, to smoke weed. They are just recognizing that a
fair, but hardly alarming, number of us do, and are moving the country
in the direction of not pissing in the wind.

In a 2015 Forum Research poll, close to 20 per cent of those surveyed
said they had smoked marijuana in the past year. When asked about
their future weed-smoking ambitions, 30 per cent of Canadians said
they'd be likely to light up within a given year provided weed were
legal.

Will that relatively small increase actually occur, and if so, will it
specifically occur among the young, for whom, understandably, the most
concern is expressed?

Given what teenagers tell me about the current abundant supply
available to them - I know when I was growing up, scoring a 26er was a
coup; weed was in Derek's locker - I suspect not. In fact, data from a
2015 Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment study showed
that, after that state's 2012 move to legalization, 21 per cent of
Colorado's teenagers had smoked weed in the past 30 days, a slight
drop from the 25 per cent who had gotten stoned in the past month in
2009, prior to legalization.

Similarly, a federal study showed that in 2014, the year commercial
marijuana was made available in Colorado and Washington State (29
states have a legalization program of some sort), the rates of use
remained virtually unchanged.

It turns out not everybody must get stoned, and those who want to are
mostly already doing it. Concerns about the "normalization" that will
supposedly occur if we stop sending people to jail for getting buzzed,
eating all the chips and enjoying that 5-percent fresh comedy on
Netflix more than it deserves overlook the fact that many teenagers
aren't all that interested in being normal.

Think of this more as "staidification." The government will do to
marijuana what your dad did to lolcats.

There are some pretty good reasons not to smoke weed, or a lot of
weed, especially if you're young; but reasonable, unalarming, informed
education about this is the best recourse. Good to keep the police and
the pontificating out of it.

Naturally, Shoppers Drug Mart, London Drugs Ltd. (a large chain in
Western Canada) and the LCBO here in Ontario are all over this
pot-ential money-maker. They'd all like to be the Derek's Locker of
Canada, but I'm with the C.D. Howe Institute on this one.

In a letter released on Thursday, addressed to Bill Blair, the MP the
Liberals have put in the unenviable position of overseeing
legalization, C.D. Howe research fellow Anindya Sen, who is also an
economics professor at the University of Waterloo, urged the
government to allow independent, licensed and regulated retailers to
sell marijuana.

Leaving the retail side of weed in the hands of these boutique-type
outlets, rather than huge companies and government outlets, Prof. Sen
argues, would largely avoid potential conflicts - a situation in which
a province might attempt to bolster weed sales to pay its bills.

I just think it'd be a shame to leave the dispensaries for medical
marijuana that have sprung up around Toronto out of the
full-legalization shift. Specialized outlets with detailed product
knowledge would, no doubt, like most bar owners and restaurateurs,
guard their licences very closely. As one-trick ponies they'd have the
most to lose, and if the product is legal and recognized as
recreational, there should be no ignominy or judgment in being
passionate about it.

The Shoppers-Drug-Mart-will-save-us option bothers me in the same way
that the fact that Loblaws will soon be allowed to sell beer in
Ontario but that Domingo - who owns Fairway, my local corner store, a
man who's there every day running a tight ship, and knows the names
and ages of most of the children in the neighbourhood - won't have
that option. I bet Domingo wouldn't just refuse to sell you a
six-pack, you hypothetical 15-year-old booze-hound. He'd tell your
mom.

There's an implicit mistrust of small business at play here that's
unfair to both owners and consumers, in that it threatens to
homogenize our retail landscape. Also, my journalistic research shows,
the customer service at these mom-and-pop pot shops puts most other
stores in the country to shame, so let's allow the dope depanneurs, I
say.

Although I realize that, like the rest of Canada, I'm playing fantasy
football with our blossoming pot laws.
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MAP posted-by: Matt