Pubdate: Tue, 12 Sep 2017
Source: Ottawa Sun (CN ON)
Copyright: 2017 Canoe Limited Partnership
Contact: http://www.ottawasun.com/letter-to-editor
Website: http://www.ottawasun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/329
Author: Kelly Egan
Page: 4

THE GOOD OLD DAZE

Liberal pot plan will see tax dollars lost in cloud of smoke

The government selling weed to anybody is a terrible idea.

So is the creation of a subsidiary of the Liquor Control Board of
Ontario to create and run a retail network.

I was noodling around Ontario's sunshine list on Monday, the
phone-book sized document that catalogues public-sector salaries over
$100,000.

The LCBO has either 359 or 313 employees on the list - honestly, it
was like counting jelly beans in a giant jar - including a president
and CEO who made $494,308 in 2016. Everyone worth every penny, no doubt.

But it brings us to the central point when the government retails
anything: the overhead costs are ridiculous. The stand-alone Cannabis
Control Board of Ontario - if such is even its name - will be required
to have "a board," with paid members, supporting staff, some kind of
secretariat one imagines, and an audit committee and such, and an
annual report, and a logo, and offices and, one assumes, many, many
more people on the sunshine list. This is before it sells a single
gram.

The LCBO as a model? I was skimming its 2015/16 annual report, a
104-page gripper I'm sure cost nothing to produce. It listed 10
vice-presidents. It did not list the names of 8,000 in-store
employees, most of them casual, some of whom earn close to $27 an hour
to put wine in a bag.

That year, it cost $874 million in total expenses to run the LCBO, a
scandalous sum lost in the vast billions that liquor brings in and the
annual premium it sends to the province ($2 billion, give or take).

(Under "divisional expenses," there was an entry for $122 million for
"administrative" work, plus $43 million for sales and marketing and
$31 million for logistics. The noodle boggles.)

For our own safety, no doubt, the LCBO reported it did 633,000
"quality assurance lab tests" in one year, for which there must be a
whole department, with staff and supervisors and directors and barons
and earls. Lord only knows how they'll test truckloads of weed to be
smoked by our kids.

You know, life was so much simpler when the mob and bikers ran
marijuana.

So, the point is an old one, like the story of the $1.99 hammer that
costs $59.99 after nine departments and six committees, in two
languages, decide it is an appropriate device to strike nails. The
government, not driven by a profit motive, is bad at selling and
buying things.

Already, the first 40 stores - we're guessing Ottawa gets three or
four - sound silly. There will be no self-service and the products
will not be "visible" to youth, instead in some kind of
behind-the-counter setting. It being the government, the stores won't
be junky, but high-end, full of security devices and vaults and
probably cost the Earth to lease or build.

People will line up for their pot, one assumes, like getting your
licence-plate sticker, or returning stuff to IKEA. It sounds
miserable. The products will not be sold alongside alcohol because,
you know, these are two nations under God that never intersect.

Staff, the government assures, "will have knowledge of the individual
products and public health information about how to use cannabis
responsibly." (On that note, I'd like to see the one living public
health official who is going to encourage anyone to use cannabis
"responsibly" or otherwise.)

There seems to be all this concern about keeping these weed shops away
from schools. Why? Isn't cannabis a suitable product for anyone over
the age of 19? If not, why is the government selling it? And doesn't
the CCBO want to sell as much marijuana as possible? If so, set up
right across from Carleton University and uOttawa and Algonquin.

Or are we just embarrassed about the whole thing?

The Globe and Mail published the results of an interesting poll on
Monday. It found only seven per cent of respondents agreed with the
Liberal government pitch that legally distributing marijuana would
lead to a drop in consumption by Canada's youth.

That's because 93 per cent of Canadians are smart.

On the weekend, a friend related this comment passed along by her
buddy: "You know, I haven't talked to one parent who thinks this is a
good idea."

Look at the lead quote from Yasir Naqvi, Ontario's attorney general
and himself the father of young children, who makes it sound like the
province is retailing vials of nitro to young people with the jitters.

"We've heard people across Ontario are anxious about the federal
legalization of cannabis." (Oh, "heard" have you?)

Booze, gambling, weed. How are any of these a public service in
Ontario, Yours to Discover?
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MAP posted-by: Matt