quietobserver wrote: Liberal cannabis policy.
Dianne Francis:
The legalization of marijuana was cynically rushed into law by the Trudeau government without sufficient medical testing on long-term health effects or adequate controls over the players involved, presumably to court the youth vote.
For a country where governments bear the cost of medical care, it is the height of recklessness to legitimize the sale of weed without the same rigorous testing requirements that pharmaceutical or food companies must endure.
In addition, Ottawa has delivered the worst of all possible outcomes in what amounts to an inept rollout: Black market dope continues to sell for nearly half the price of the legal stuff because bootleggers are obviously able to produce and import with impunity.
This is Cheech and Chong policy
This negates the Liberal notion that legalization will put the drug dealers out of business, make sure the products are not diluted or dangerous, and collect big taxes on an illicit product that people were going to buy anyway.
This is Cheech and Chong policy: Eliminating the black market will be impossible because while unlicensed cannabis cultivation is illegal in Canada, possession and consumption is entirely legal. So, criminals and importers have more customers than ever.
I disagree. What about legal booze? At the end of prohibition I'm sure black market booze was rampent. There was what I'll call a "cooling off period" where it was still profitable for the black market to survive. Once public education on the dangers of illegal booze set in, and prison sentences increased for illegal production, black market booze did fall off dramaticly.
We'll see this soon enough when new laws are enforced with real jail time and personal asset's forfeited.