Pubdate: Fri, 09 Nov 2012
Source: Province, The (CN BC)
Copyright: 2012 Postmedia Network Inc.
Contact: http://www2.canada.com/theprovince/letters.html
Website: http://www.theprovince.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/476
Author: Jon Ferry

HIGH TIME TO LOOK AT LEGALIZING THE SALE OF POT

Unlike some passionate B.C. potheads, I don't think marijuana is a 
gateway-to-heaven herb that will usher in an era of peace, harmony 
and brotherly love. Nor do I think it's harmless. In fact, I find its 
link with schizophrenia, well, troubling.

But neither is marijuana an evil, reefer-madness-inducing weed that 
we should fight a demonstrably futile, decades-long war to eradicate.

As Washington state and Colorado voters now have shown, measures for 
legalizing the recreational use of pot increasingly appear to make 
sense. They may even help turn some young people off the drug.

How then to proceed? Well, we obviously have to sort out the various 
federal/provincial jurisdictional niceties. And we have to find a 
workable means of licensing, distributing and selling cannabis.

Actually, we in B.C. already have one - our provincial liquor-store 
system which, for all its faults, appears well-suited to handle the 
drug and ensure it isn't sold over the counter to kids.

Vancouver pot activist Marc Emery, serving a five-year term in a 
Mississippi jail for selling marijuana seeds to U.S growers, says 
he's all for trying this.

"Liquor store locations are usually discreet and not near schools and 
don't have the product in window displays and have age-restriction 
protocols in place (B.C. photo ID required)," Emery said via email 
from his federal prison in Yazoo City.

"It would be the simplest business model that currently exists to 
use, so I'd recommend it and then gain consumer feedback over three 
years and see what changes the consumers would like, balanced with 
any public safety concerns."

Emery added there's a liquor store right by his downtown Vancouver 
apartment, so it would be "extremely convenient" for him and his wife, Jodie.

Darryl Walker, president of the B.C. Government and Service Employees 
Union, which represents liquor store workers, said Thursday he thinks 
it's too early to have anything to say on the matter.

But former B.C. attorney-general Geoff Plant pointed out that B.C. 
liquor stores have secure distribution systems and the right "moral" 
balance: "I think something like the government-run, liquor store 
model is the right model."

Plant, however, cautioned that this couldn't be done until Ottawa 
repeals marijuana prohibition - though he noted the Supreme Court of 
Canada recently upheld an exemption from federal drug legislation for 
Insite, Vancouver's safe injection site.

And he believed a "creative lawyer" could at some point develop a 
constitutional argument that avoids the problem of federal control 
over criminal law.

The aptly named Plant said he himself is no pot advocate. But he is a realist.

"I acknowledge the reality that there are 400,000 or 500,000 British 
Columbians who do want to continue to use cannabis, and I think that 
the criminal law has proven to be a singular failure in dealing with 
that," he told me. I agree. We need to correct that extremely costly 
failure - if only because it continues to serve as an extremely 
tiresome distraction to the far more important issues our society 
needs to address.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom