Health concerns should be a buzzkill for pot-happy politicians

By Mark Bonokoski,

If the Trudeau Liberals were Boy Scouts, they’d be miserable failures in living up to the troop’s famous motto of “Be Prepared.”

Anyone who still thinks the Liberals have all the pieces in place in their rush to legalize the recreational use of marijuana by Canada Day 2018 has being smoking the drapes.

Health concerns?

Hmmm, perhaps it would have been best to have gotten onto this long before now, seeing as how sucking in THC-laced smoke into the lungs just might have some health repercussions for the burgeoning toker crowd.

But that is not the case.

While Ottawa’s parliamentarians were enjoying their last week of summer recess before returning to the partisan fray, an all-party Commons health committee began meeting only this Monday to question medical and legal professionals on the looming legislation.

Pot producers were scheduled to be there, as well, over the five days of proposed uninterrupted meetings.

And coppers, too.

“We have a lot to learn, and a lot to listen to,” said committee chair Bill Casey, a Liberal MP from Nova Scotia.

No kidding.

In a rather obvious attempt to deflect attention away from two corruption trials — one in Sudbury involving alleged byelection fiddling, and a criminal trial that commenced Monday in Toronto regarding the alleged erasing of damaging e-mails in the premier’s office — the Wynne Liberals of Ontario last week dropped their plan on how they would handle wacky tobaccy’s availability in the country’s most-populated province.

Come on, sing along with country star Toby Keith, and the hit single off his new album, The Bus Songs, complete with a video of pot aficionado Willie Nelson firing up a supportive spliff.

“That old Wacky Tobaccy/When you feel it creeping up on you/That old Wacky Tobaccy/Kick back and let it do what it do.”

Trials? What trials? Let’s talk and sing about pot instead.

Ontario, after all, is planning on ramping up the sale of pot by having 150 stand-alone unionized stores in place by 2020, and making 19 the legal age for cannabis use among its citizenry.

It’s as if the feds have everything in place, which is far from the truth when health concerns are only now being addressed.

If there is a boondoggle lying in wait, this is it.

NDP MP Don Davies, vice-chair of the fed’s health committee, is one of many concerned about the Liberals’ push to legalize pot, accusing them via the CBC of “cramming” in witnesses in order to displace proper parliamentary debate and public engagement.

“I’m concerned,” he said “(that) they’re trying to rip the bandage off and move to the next stage without getting really varied and diverse input from Canadians.”

The Canadian Medical Association, for example, has been like a loop tape in repeating its concern about the health risks of cannabis, particularly when smoked rather than ingested as edibles.

It has also been urging the Trudeau Liberals to set the legal age for cannabis consumption at 21, which the Ontario Liberals obviously chose to ignore last week when they threw their pot doors open.

The Liberal chair of the health committee, however, has concerns he evidently finds more serious than the hauling in lungs full of THC-laden smoke from a combusting weed.

As far as Bill Casey is concerned, his committee’s key policy issues should centre on preventing the contamination of pot-growing facilities, the four-plant allowance for personal use, and setting the minimum age of access at 18.

Other than that, everyone needs to chill.