With the recent announcement of the final composition of the government’s Task Force, the corresponding discussion paper revealed the nature of the upcoming consultations, including the Task Force’s...
-Jamie Shaw
With the recent announcement of the final composition of the government’s Task Force, the corresponding discussion paper
revealed the nature of the upcoming consultations, including the Task
Force’s objectives. As stated in the document, these objectives are to:
1 – Protect young Canadians by keeping marijuana out of the hands of children and youth.
2 – Keep profits out of the hands of criminals, particularly organized crime.
3 – Reduce the burdens on police and the justice system associated with simple possession of marijuana offences.
4 –
Prevent Canadians from entering the criminal justice system and
receiving criminal records for simple marijuana possession offences.
5 –
Ensure Canadians are well-informed through sustained and appropriate
public health campaigns, and for youth in particular, ensure that risks
are understood.
6 –
Establish and enforce a system of strict production, distribution and
sales, taking a public health approach, with regulation of quality and
safety (e.g., child-proof packaging, warning labels), restriction of
access, and application of taxes, with programmatic support for
addiction treatment, mental health support, and education programs.
7 –
Continue to provide access to quality-controlled marijuana for medical
purposes consistent with federal policy and Court decisions.
8 – Conduct ongoing data collection, including gathering baseline data, to monitor the impact of the new framework.
The
government record on each one of these objectives is abysmal, not only
under Stephen Harper, but under the Liberals before him as well. While
these objectives seem fairly common sense, many of them are
inconsistent, either within themselves, or when in the context and tone
of the government representative’s sound-bytes.
1 – Protect young Canadians by keeping marijuana out of the hands of children and youth.
We have
data that, while correlational, certainly disputes the ‘facts’ touted by
the opponents of Cannabis, and of dispensaries in general. Those of us
older than dispensaries in Canada usually encountered cannabis for the
first time in high school.
This is becoming less the case in
jurisdictions with dispensaries. While opponents of dispensaries have
decried that dispensaries make it easier for youth to obtain cannabis,
the facts do not bear this out. With an almost two-decade long
experience with dispensaries in Vancouver (a hundred of them for the
last few years) there have been 2? 3? raids on dispensaries due to
complaints of selling to minors.
The last time, Don Briere (often cited
as an example of an irresponsible potrepeneur) fired the employee
immediately. This has been a serious issue for most dispensary
operators, and they have done an effective job of addressing it.
In 2009,
the McCreary Institute began its Adolescent Health Surveys in British
Columbia. While it noted that cannabis use among youth had already been
declining for a decade before the survey, the results showed that 30%
of youth in BC had used cannabis, and the most common age of first use
cited as 13-14. In Vancouver however, the youth was lower, at 24%.
In 2013,
with the number of dispensaries in BC well into double digits, that
number had dropped to 17% in Vancouver, where youth were waiting a whole
year longer to first try cannabis. While one could argue that this data
does not prove the decline was due to the proliferation of
dispensaries, it certainly shows that that proliferation did not lead to
an increase in youth use. Of 17% of youth in Vancouver that tried
cannabis, the survey did not specify authorized medical use, so the
number of rec users may have dropped even lower.
Despite
that, the Liberals have not sounded too friendly towards these
dispensaries, and no offence to the country’s liquor stores, but most of
us from coast to coast to coast tried alcohol both before we were
legal, and before we tried cannabis.
2 – Keep profits out of the hands of criminals, particularly organized crime.
Organized
crime is the highlight here, and this again is something that early
dispensaries in particular have been very conscious of. What isn’t
distinguished here is criminal records for cannabis offences, nor is
there any attempt to compensate those that have been unfairly targeted
by the war on drugs.
It may be a separate point, but part of keeping
profits out of ‘particularly’ the hands of organized crime first means
you have to identify those organizations. This objective appears to skip
that step. Instead, it lumps organized crime, and anyone with any
record, into a group that will be excluded from what will be a legal
industry. This is a nuance of Vancouver’s dispensary regulations that
many missed: the security checks were not criminal record checks, they
were police information checks.
They weren’t looking for charges (which
might have included cannabis ones) they were looking for known
associates. Without this distinction, those groups who have been overly
targeted during prohibition will continue to be unfairly treated because
of it.
3 – Reduce the burdens on police and the justice system associated with simple possession of marijuana offences.
This is
something some police have been asking for for a long time, and is a
welcome change. Later in the paper though, the issue of possession
limits is raised, and what those limits are may have a profound effect
on the government’s ability to meet this objective. Regulations yet to
be seen around personal cultivation may also impact the success of this
point. In addition, while possession arrests decrease, there may well be
an increase in public smoking tickets.
4 – Prevent Canadians from entering the criminal justice system and receiving criminal records for simple marijuana possession offences.
The
government is already failing this objective, and they’re not even out
of the gate. As has been the case all too often, of all our authorities,
it is the courts that have provided the sanest voice on cannabis
regulations. Their record holds on this issue, with some judges simply taking matters into their own hands.
5 – Ensure Canadians are well-informed through sustained and appropriate public health campaigns, and for youth in particular, ensure that risks are understood.
This
might be serious a problem area. While it sounds fairly reasonable, the
Harper messages on cannabis could have been summed up the same way. The
devil is in the details, and given the Honourable Bill Blair’s confusion
between cannabis and tomatoes (the tea of one will kill you, and it’s
not the one that’s currently illegal), it may not be an easy one to gain
consensus on.
Cannabis is often compared to alcohol and tobacco, but
very selectively. The harms it can cause are typically closer to caffeine,
as is its addictive potential, and yet, the tone of these discussions
usually continues to treat cannabis as tobacco and alcohol, and this
discussion paper also does so expressly. This does not represent
evidence-based policy, but selective-evidence-based policy.
6 – Establish and enforce a system of strict production, distribution and sales, taking a public health approach, with regulation of quality and safety (e.g., child-proof packaging, warning labels), restriction of access, and application of taxes, with programmatic support for addiction treatment, mental health support and education programs.
When
they mention addiction treatment, it sounds like they are speaking of
cannabis addiction. Mental health and education all focused on cannabis,
and it seems to be missing the point.
While there are no similar plans
in place for dealing with coffee addiction (or sugar for that matter),
there is a real fear that the task force may miss the boat on this.
Cannabis has been used as treatment for serious addictions to truly
dangerous substances, and this fear of its own addictive potential may
put a serious crimp in any plans to more fully benefit from this
knowledge.
This
also raises the question of where the line on medical will be drawn.
Does it remain the same so as to maximize tax revenue? Or will we truly
put public health first and take full advantage of all the therapeutic
benefits cannabis has to offer us? And what does this do for non-medical
research?
Canada’s hemp industry has been severely hampered by
prohibition, and if we want to reap these benefits as well, this also
needs to be addressed. Would education programs include cannabis skills
training for underemployed sections of the workforce?
7 – Continue to provide access to quality-controlled marijuana for medical purposes consistent with federal policy and Court decisions.
The
phrase ‘consistent with federal policy and court decisions’ is an
oxymoron. Federal cannabis policy has only ever been consistent with
court decisions between the time it is introduced, and the time the
court first gets to decide on it. That’s it. In 2013 when the Liberals
unveiled their legalization position paper, it was missing any discussion of medical cannabis.
Given
that the rules around medical cannabis can make or break any restrictive
legalization plan, this inconsistent advice appears to reflect a
failure to understand the importance of this issue.
8 – Conduct ongoing data collection, including gathering baseline data, to monitor the impact of the new framework.
Review.
Okay…Not much of a point on its own, but… yes please, check to see how
whatever you came up with actually works. That would be nice.
Missing
completely from these objectives is any mention of other Liberal
campaign platforms. Will they discuss how cannabis legalization fits
with their “New Plan for a Stronger Middle Class“?
Will they discuss how cannabis can help them achieve some of their
stated goals, such as ‘opening the door to prosperity’, ‘a more
compassionate Canada’, and ‘expanding exports and opportunities’?
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