Pubdate: Fri, 16 Sep 2016
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2016 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/wEtbT4yU
Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: Marni Soupcoff
Page: A7

ANOTHER BAD IDEA FOR HOW TO SELL LEGAL WEED

People who want the legalization of marijuana to succeed in Canada
should welcome the Ontario Chamber of Commerce's recent suggestion to
Premier Kathleen Wynne that private retailers be permitted to sell the
drug.

Wynne has mused about selling marijuana exclusively through Liquor
Control Board of Ontario (LCBO) outlets, which currently hold a
virtual monopoly on liquor sales in the province. Consigning pot to
this limited, bureaucratic, union-mired distribution method would
negate many of the free-market advantages that are supposed to accrue
from legalization: for example, opportunities for consumers to buy the
product in convenient, varied ways that best suit them.

If legalization offers more choice, a better experience, reasonable
prices and more individually tailored products, it will draw people
away from the black market and send marijuana sales into the safe and
cleansing light of day. On the other hand, if legalization offers
stratospheric price tags, overpaid sales help delivering sub-par
service, limited selection and inconvenient hours and locations, then
many marijuana buyers will stick to the lesser evil of underground
dealers.

Sadly, even though the Ontario Chamber of Commerce made this salutary
point in its letter to Wynne (albeit not quite so directly), the
group's alternative proposal is not far superior to the government
monopoly model: a "licensing system, whereby a fixed number of access
points are auctioned out to both the public and private sectors -
including unions," which it says "may be a more efficient model of
regulated delivery."

It is also very odd that a business-oriented group would endorse
preferential treatment for unions and the public sector by reserving
for them some of the finite licences to print money - er, sorry, some
of the finite licences to sell marijuana - it envisions being offered.
Does the chamber of commerce see a particular advantage to making pot
available from someone drawing a public salary - as opposed to someone
running their own small business - of which we're unaware?

The point has been made, to a mind-numbing degree, that marijuana is
not an entirely harmless substance; it poses real health dangers,
particularly to adolescents, and it impairs a person's ability to
drive safely, among other things. Nobody expects a free-for-all
whereby a 10-year-old can walk down to the neighbourhood corner store
and purchase a dime bag with his Tootsie Roll.

However, if the chamber of commerce really thinks the most effective
way legal marijuana can safely be sold is by a handful of Canadian
Union of Public Employees' members and lottery-winning businesses at
locations dictated by the government, it should look at Colorado,
where the state makes licences to sell marijuana open to all comers
(albeit subject to municipal restrictions), and where crime has gone
down meaningfully - particularly in Denver - since pot was legalized
in 2014. Or at Washington state, where emergency rules had to be put
into place early this year to increase the state's tight cap on retail
pot licences, so that medical marijuana users could access the
products they needed.

It is self-defeating for anyone who wants marijuana legalization to
work to suggest treating the substance to the same over-regulation
that alcohol currently suffers. It is similarly dense to assume that
one can reap the benefits of free enterprise without actually making
the enterprise in question free. It's surprising a chamber of commerce
wouldn't understand this basic rule of commerce.
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MAP posted-by: Matt