Pubdate: Tue, 21 Jun 2016
Source: Toronto Star (CN ON)
Page: A7
Copyright: 2016 The Toronto Star
Contact:  http://www.thestar.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/456
Author: Martin Regg Cohn

ONTARIO COULD PLAY ROLE IN POT REGULATORY VACUUM

There is a hallucinatory quality to the way intoxicating substances 
are bought and sold in Ontario these days.

Choose your alcoholic poison - beer, wine, spirits - mindful that 
robust government regulation (not to mention revenue) remains on tap.

But choose your leafy medicine - marijuana, whether truly medicinal 
or merely recreational - knowing that government enforcement has gone 
up in smoke.

Antiquated drug laws that once dispatched small-time dope dealers and 
tokers to jail never made any sense. But in our haste to 
decriminalize and legalize marijuana, we have opened up a regulatory 
vacuum that looks increasingly dopey.

Now, all three levels of government are messing up while missing out on money.

First, federal plans to liberalize marijuana usage, while 
well-intentioned, are sending mixed signals across the country.

Second, Ontario is moving slowly on its plans to profit from 
marijuana usage while safeguarding public health.

Third, municipal enforcement, by police and zoning inspectors, has 
become so haphazard that a marijuana free-for-all is taking root.

More than 100 pot dispensaries have magically mushroomed across 
Toronto, like so many pop-up stores smoking out the latest retail 
trend. This isn't the first time governments have been caught 
flat-footed by fleet-footed entrepreneurs - Uber is expert at 
flouting laws for profit - but there are broader public and fiscal 
health considerations at play.

While booze and tobacco are legal, they remain controlled substances 
sold only in licensed establishments. The Ontario government made a 
deliberate policy choice to limit expansion of beer and wine to 
selected supermarkets while pointedly excluding corner stores, 
motivated by social responsibility concerns and, yes, profitability. 
Sales of spirits, however, were kept out of supermarkets - restricted 
to the LCBO because of their much higher alcohol content and social concerns.

All those considerations apply equally to marijuana. Yet since Prime 
Minister Justin Trudeau's public pledges before and during the 2015 
federal election, a once-banned substance has become commonplace in 
corner stores - not the mom and pop variety, but those pop-up stores 
selling pot.

Decriminalizing dope has always been the right thing to do, given how 
the social and policing costs of prohibition were prohibitive. But 
just as alcohol transitioned from prohibition to regulated 
distribution, so do marijuana sales cry out for enforcement. If one 
of the goals of decriminalization was to reduce lawlessness in an 
underground market of dope dealers, why reward and legitimize the 
network of uncontrolled sellers that arises in its place?

In recent weeks, police have belatedly cracked down on these 
storefront operations, whose suppliers are unregulated and unknown to 
us. But like pop-up stores anywhere, they will crop up again and 
again as long as the legal ambiguity and commercial opportunity remain.

It is more than a game of cat and mouse. We now know that the 
marijuana sold today is far stronger than in the past, and its higher 
potency risks greater abuse. All the more reason to move quickly on 
controlling dope as we do cigarettes and alcohol.

Medical marijuana requires a prescription from a medical doctor and 
can be supplied only by federally licensed producers. Like other 
controlled substances, it lends itself to distribution through 
pharmacies whose trained personnel have experience in dispensing narcotics.

Recreational marijuana, on the other hand, could benefit from a 
pre-existing retail channel that has experience in provincewide 
distribution. No, not the Beer Store.

The LCBO remains reasonably popular with customers despite (or 
possibly because of ) its old Holiday Inn character - no surprises, 
for better or for worse. Its unionized staff are well-trained and 
primed for the task.

Just as they recommend fine wines, LCBO workers would doubtless rise 
to the occasion when called upon to suggest a particular strain of 
grass highly regarded for its distinctive highs.

With its 650 outlets across the province, the LCBO also has the 
virtue of being government-owned - ensuring any weed windfalls flow 
into the treasury at the very time its revenue base is being diluted 
by the encroachment of supermarkets into its erstwhile wine monopoly.

An interdepartmental working group of government bureaucrats is 
mapping out future marijuana sales to "legalize, regulate and 
restrict access," Finance Minister Charles Sousa told the Star's 
Robert Benzie last week. At least there are no foreign-owned cartels 
to deal with . . .

Common sense in the distribution of dope means shutting down 
Toronto's pop-up pot stores. And rebranding the once-liquor-focused LCBO.

Perhaps the ICBO - Intoxication Control Board of Ontario?
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom