So what are you expecting us to do with your wall of quotes?
Coastal, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act was enacted by Parliament in 1996. I’m not nearly as pessimistic as ** Sekigahara** about the record you will find. The Act was fully debated in Parliament and the Hansard on a major bill, particularly the Committee hearings, normally contains a lot of debate on the policy reasons for the contents of the bill. That would be a good starting point for you. The debates may also contain references to various studies that have been conducted. Particularly with regard to marihuana, legalization has been an ongoing debate for several years, so I expect you will find some references to that issue (at a guess, I would expect Svend Robinson would have had something to say about it, given his long track record of questioning long-held social and legal conventions).
Nor do I agree with Sekigahara that the Act would have just been passed because the RCMP and the federal Crowns asked for it. On such a major piece of legislation, their views may have been solicited by the government, but the federal Department of Health would also have been consulted. In the Canadian system, there’s an extensive policy development phase for major bills before they’re ever introduced in Parliament, which could involve policy papers from Justice, from Health, from the Law Reform Commission, and others.
Odds are, however, that you won’t find much of that on-line, because the Internet was just starting to take off in 1996 and the federal government was still mainly paper-based. You’ll likely need to go to a good research library, as Spoons suggested, one that has a good government publications section. The Library of Parliament is of course the best source for federal government publications, but most major universities will also have a gov’t publications section.
But, and this is a major “but”, you’re wanting answers to complex issues of social and legal policy. There aren’t likely to be short, simple answers to your questions. You’ll have to be prepared to invest some time and effort into the research. Public servants aren’t research assistants for any question that someone happens to ask. The public servants employed in major libraries will provide some assistance, but you will have to do the work yourself.
Last week I took a couple of hits off of a joint after not smoking for 22 years. I was drug out and not myself for almost 5 days, lower than normal energy, lack of concentration, poor retention and logic etc. It sure made a believer out of me. I spent over 20 years as a dailey smoker but never realized how bad it was until I quit then gave it another try.