Pubdate: Wed, 23 Dec 2015
Source: Guelph Mercury (CN ON)
Copyright: 2015 Metroland Media Group Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.guelphmercury.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1418
Author: Christopher Reynolds
Page: A3

GUELPH RESEARCHER WATCHING APPROACH OF LEGAL POT RETAILING WITH INTEREST

TORONTO - Historians see parallels between repealing the prohibition 
on alcohol in the 1920s and the forthcoming end of illicit pot.

Though Ontario lifted the ban on alcohol sales in 1927, the province 
tightly regulated its availability through a monopolized liquor 
control board that for more than four decades kept track of customer 
history and personal information through permit books and purchase forms.

"In Ontario and most other provinces, they followed this pattern of 
strong government regulation. It legitimized the reintroduction of 
alcohol and allowed it to go forward," said Mark Sholdice, a doctoral 
candidate in Canadian history at the University of Guelph.

Now, after 88 years of being sold exclusively on LCBO shelves and in 
Beer Store backrooms, six-packs arrived in Ontario grocery stores on 
Dec. 15, with wine to follow.

A similar possibility awaits marijuana - eventually: "Essentially 
heavy regulation of production, distribution, consumption ... with 
more liberalization as the decades go on and it becomes normalized."

Premier Kathleen Wynne said Dec. 14 that LCBO outlets are "very-well 
suited" for pot retail, once legalization is dealt with by the 
federal government.

Sholdice cautioned that a state-controlled marijuana agency - LCBO or 
otherwise - may follow incentives not just to allow consumption, but 
to encourage it over time, along the same lines as provincial lotteries.

"Governments by the 1980s had become dependent on these 'vices' to 
raise revenue, so they become much more comfortable with actually 
promoting these activities, whereas before the government was much 
more interested in controlling the behaviour and in educating the 
consumers," Sholdice said.

The prohibitionists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries sought 
to eliminate problems like workplace accidents, public drunkenness 
and "social deterioration," said Dan Malleck, associate professor of 
history at Brock University and the author of books on Canada's drug 
laws and Ontario's post-Prohibition booze rules.

Those issues aren't necessarily linked with marijuana, though Wynne 
stressed the LCBO's ongoing corporate policy of "social 
responsibility." Recent research on the drug's effect on the 
adolescent brain makes youth consumption an ongoing concern, Malleck noted.

Sholdice highlighted the possible hindrances of a self-sustaining 
public agency, should the province want to loosen or decentralize the 
process further down the line.

"It's not just tradition, or that people are afraid of change, but 
employees at the LCBO and the Beer Store are members of public 
unions. Generally, the labour movement is really against change that 
would see their members lose their jobs," he said.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom