So, the Liberal Party got a majority in Parliament. Its website says: “We will legalize, regulate, and restrict access to marijuana.”
The restrictions appear to be limited to:
“create new, stronger laws to punish more severely those who provide it to minors, those who operate a motor vehicle while under its influence, and those who sell it outside of the new regulatory framework.” which seems eminently reasonable.
I can’t see it coming any time soon. As a new PM, Justin has a lot to learn and do in a hurry and marijuana’s got to be way down on the list of priorities. WAG: in a year or two, he’ll commission a study, and the results will give him the justification to announce some kind of legalization just before the next election, but which won’t take effect until afterwards. In other words, four years until legalization. I’ll be happy to be proven wrong, though. Maybe the tax income will come in handy sooner.
I don’t think any other drugs have nearly the social acceptance that pot does. I seriously doubt that consideration will be given to legalizing any of them in the near future. Baby steps…
One of the largest employers in my community is a medical marijuana producer although they have recently suffered because of the number of illegal dispensaries that have popped up.
I would imagine the easiest way to regulate marijuana would be in the same manner as tobacco. In fact, it will be right next to the tobacco. In my liquor store that means there will be packs of blunts right next to the packs of cigars. It would be easy to set up.
When do you think we can expect legalization to take effect?
This will take years. I think Esox has put forward a reasonable guess.
Is the distribution system likely to resemble provincial liquor boards?
That seems reasonable. I don’t think we’ll see them in 7-11s or gas stations initially.
Will production be fully legal in the same way that beer production is?
I doubt it. I think production will be pretty tightly controlled to start with. Lots of regulations around security, limiting public access and other safeguards. I can imagine some small volume of home production being allowed - like five plants or something. I wonder about imports? Would Dutch weed be allowed in?
What drug(s) might be legalized next?
I can see other ‘agricultural’ drugs that are solely grown and distributed being legalized at some point. Mushrooms jump to mind. Anything that needs to be manufactured like heroin or cocaine or meth will take much longer.
I think the first step will be decriminalization of small quantities.
Incidentally, I saw something recently (I think it was in the Science Times last week) that suggested that pot does not have an negative influence on driving. On the other hand, it may be very bad for minors whose brains are still under development.
Already in Canada, magic mushroom spores are legal but making magic mushrooms is illegal. Mushroom spores can be ordered online. I’d think it would be rather easy for the police to catch people who’ve ordered them since it’s likely that very few of them are using the spores for research purposes. Yet, as far as I know, it’s not a problem at all to order spores and grow them.
I do wonder if concentrated versions of pot will be legal. Like, say, THC pills. That would be marijuana in a way yet, being manufactured, it would suffer from the opprobrium associated that the drugs you mention.
I suppose pot brownies and such will sound innocuous enough.
Why? You folks spend nearly as much money locking up drug users as we do. Decriminalizing or legalizing marijuana potentially fixes or reduces budget problems, prison overcrowding, juvenile depency and all sorts of other issues more or less overnight.
We do? If we look at the prison population rate (which I admit isn’t the same as spending) the US is at 698/100 000 and Canada at 106/100 000.
Is it common for first time, small scale pot possession alone to result in prison/jail time in the US? If I remember correctly, in Canada it’s usually a fine and some non-prison element.
I doubt it ever will in the next ten years, it seems more like a provincial thing than a Federal issue. So I can see something like the Feds won’t put up a fuss if the Province ( insert province) wants it, and just rake off the taxes, or not wanting it. So BC might make a stab at it, but can’t see Ontario pushing for it any time soon.
Possibly more like those wine shops , I see in Grocery stores, definitely cannot see Ontario in particular putting too many sins in one basket
I would expect that unlike Colorado and Oregon, it would be something that the tobbacco companies would take the lead on.
It would be a guess only, but I dont see anything else legalized.
Wrong! Unlike the US, all criminal law is federal. A province cannot legalize it. Although Quebec and Ontario (which have their own provincia police forces) could decide not to enforce the laws.
Although I can imagine that even if the Federal gov’t legalizes it, some provincial gov’ts could use health & safety pretexts to make it a pain to buy. If they did, that would arguably be unconstitutional because they’d be trying to effectively forbid something which is not theirs to forbid. Then it would take a few years until it got to the Supreme Court which would rule against the provincial gov’t but in the meantime, the provincial gov’t would have succeeded in acting like a cunt.
Come on - how much of our prison population is made up, specifically, of people convicted for weed? Is that really why prisons are overcrowded? Weed is so common now it can barely be considered criminal as it is; personal use, possession and even small times sales is legal in any sense that matters. Nobody really cares about weed anymore.
Every now and then a small time guy-you-know gets a slap on the wrist. You can’t be seriously punished for it unless you’re smuggling in bales of it or get caught with a grow-op.
It’s not that people who are sent away only for minor cannabis offenses are overcrowding prisons. It’s that people who commit other minor crimes but would normally get a fine or probation or whatever wind up serving custodial sentences because they also have pot on them when they’re caught.
I don’t know of anyone who has been charged with possession of a small personal amount of marijuana in the last 20 years or so in Canada. The courts refuse to even waste time on it.
I’m going to guess that you’re a conservative. Not that I want to turn this political, but it strikes me as typical conservative reasoning. “I don’t know of anyone who has been charged in the last 20 years”, therefore “the laws are just fine the way they are”.
My son and his friend were caught with a miniscule amount a couple of years ago. When they went to court, there were about fifty others in the same boat. The judge ran them through the process like an assembly line and made it as easy as he possibly could for them. They all got the choice of paying a fine, about $100, or doing minimal community service which everyone took, and got nothing on their record. In all, it seemed like a waste of money and time for a system that’s already clogged up. I think the laws could do with a change.
I don’t know what province you’re in, but my daughter got caught at school a couple of years ago when she was 15. The school suspended her, but the cops had very little interest iin bringing charges. In Ottawa people openly smoke at music festivals and even in the downtown core. No one that I know of has ever been approached or charged.
You will find a woeful difference between how these rules are enforced away from major metropolises. The unevenness of the enforcement across the country is one of the cruellest things about our marijuana laws. A young man it Ottawa gets away with a heavy fine and probation, but North of Sudbury there is a kid doing six months, now a convicted criminal, for less than an eighth of an ounce.
Coupled with the fact that we could not build jails fast enough to hold all the people who use it, the laws simply MUST change, I’m afraid.
Not that I want to turn this political, but it strikes me as typical conservative reasoning. “I don’t know of anyone who has been charged in the last 20 years”, therefore “the laws are just fine the way they are”.