There are sins of commission as well as omission that can be laid on prime minister Justin Trudeau. The silliest was his choice of cannabis tsar. The very fact that illegal pot is winning the marketing war tells us that having a cop do the marketing planning was a lost cause.
We always need to remember that the illegal marijuana you can buy in back alleys across the country is there because our ballyhooed red coats and various police forces could not stop it. The only justification for legalizing marijuana that ever made any sense to me was to stop the criminals from profiting from it.
Let’s be serious here. Smoking anything is bad for you. It is carcinogenic. Why do you want to risk lung cancer?
Eating the cannabis is an alternative. I hate to mention it but brownies can be fattening.
I am all in favour of medical marijuana. If it helps, it should be free.
But what the hell does a former cop like MP Bill Blair know about marketing pot? How would he have any concept of the needs of an efficient distribution system? In Ontario we have this silly, ill-planned boutique system of marketing that makes a mountain out of a molehill—if it every comes together.
If I had a say, I would have made a deal with Shoppers Drug Mart (Pharmaprix in Quebec). That would just leave you with the street vendors as competition. You could probably eliminate most of the competition in time by stressing the purity of the controlled product. After all, when was the supply of the criminal element ever tested by government laboratories?
As a knowledgeable street vendor once told me, “You know, they call this stuff ‘shit’ for a reason.”
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Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry
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