Category: Cannabis

At the initiative of Moralea Milne, Councillor in the Municipality of Metchosin, B.C., a resolution at this year’s UBCM conference called on the government to decriminalize marijuana and research its regulation and taxation. As you may have noticed, you can’t stumble over a newspaper or a radio report without hearing that the resolution passed. Media headlines like “Municipal leaders join call to decriminalize pot,” announced the success of this resolution at B.C.’s annual conference of municipal elected officials in Victoria. Even now as I write, the CBC morning show is debating regulation of cannabis.

It looks like these municipal officials have joined the chorus of voices expressing their disapproval for current laws that prohibit cannabis. Due to the efforts of Stop the Violence BC, former mayors and former Attorney Generals have spoken out against current cannabis laws.

While the motion supports the decriminalization of marijuana, it also pushes higher levels of government to research legalization and taxation. At Monday’s study session at UBCM, city officials were tangibly frustrated with the current state of affairs. Municipal officials continually find themselves shouldering the burden of prohibition, including rising police costs and complaints from citizens that run the gamut from concerns about the grow op next door, to the lack of accessibility of medical cannabis.

At the same time, estimates of the value of the underground economy usually settle somewhere between 6 and 7 billion dollars and 44.3% of B.C. residents have used marijuana, with 46% of 16-18 year olds trying marijuana at least once.[1] Clearly this lucrative industry continues to attract customers.

Lurking in the background of the conversation are the same old concerns about the health and other effects of this drug. It seems to me that while we should acknowledge this concern, we need to remind ourselves that we currently regulate harmful substances like alcohol and tobacco. The question is this: are we achieving what we want from prohibiting cannabis? The statistics above suggest that we are not achieving our goals – and we haven’t included policing and other criminal justice costs that occur when people are arrested for possession.

As David Bratzer from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition reminded his UBCM audience on Monday, we have three options for the control or regulation of marijuana: leave things as they are, where an unregulated group of people produce and sell an unregulated product; we could legalize it and allow it to be fully commercialized by corporations, a mistake made ad naseum with alcohol and tobacco, or we could consider legalizing and regulating it.

This last option could draw on the best thinking in tobacco control, and combine this with a clear-eyed assessment of the positive and negative effects of this substance. Of course even among advocates of cannabis law reform there isn’t necessarily agreement about what a regulatory model would look like. So coming up with a model won’t be easy.

Sometimes it seems like attempts to legalize and regulate cannabis contradict the growing trend of public health scrutiny towards ingestible products. On Monday the local Medical Health Officer in Victoria, B.C. suggested that a ban on high sugar drinks might be coming. But we need to remind ourselves that this policy move would not ban sugar (try to imagine what would happen if we did) but instead send a clear message that high sugar drinks (and I’m talking about 473 ml drinks that contain as much as 16 teaspoons of sugar) might not be all that great for our health.

Clearly, I’m not a civil libertarian about these matters. I believe there is a role for social policy in regulating cannabis. Imagine a situation where you could buy cannabis products labeled with the THC content, where you knew if the product was organic and where the technologies for ingesting this product without smoke were widely available.

What do you think about a regulated model for cannabis? Let us know. We want to hear from you.

Laws against cannabis in this country are the domain of the federal government. This is because cannabis is currently a controlled substance subject to the provisions of federal criminal law. In the current political climate, Stephen Harper’s Conservative government is unlikely to consider changes to the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act. But this hasn’t stopped activists in B.C. from pushing hard to end cannabis prohibition.

Sensible BC is pushing forward a ballot initiative that would direct the B.C. provincial government to pass the Sensible Policing Act. It would redirect all police in the province from taking any action, including searches, seizures, citations or arrests, in cases of simple cannabis possession by adults. This would apply to all RCMP and municipal police in B.C.

The success of these initiatives relies heavily on the political opportunity created by the intersection of media coverage and police claims about marijuana production in this province. In the past ten years, newspapers in B.C. have routinely covered marijuana issues by repeatedly pointing out the extent to which the production of this plant is controlled by organized crime and beset with violence and general social chaos. In a move sure to have the scholars of social movements talking for years, Stop the Violence BC (STV-BC) has moved into the space created by this media/police spectacle and garnered the support of key politicians, including four former Attorney Generals, to oppose the continued prohibition of cannabis.

Yesterday, one of STV-BC’s founders, Dr. Evan Wood, spoke at a study session at the annual Union of B.C. Municipalities convention in advance of a vote on a resolution on decriminalization scheduled for Wednesday of this week. His presentation emphasized the failures of prohibition and urged the audience to consider regulation as an alternative. This study session featured a debate between Wood and a key opponent of regulation, Dr. Darryl Plecas, RCMP University Research Chair at the University College of the Fraser Valley.

Plecas’ support for municipal programs that crack down on grow ops did not sit well with some members of the audience, especially where these programs have unnecessarily targeted innocent homeowners with intrusive electrical inspections and fines. The comments of his fellow opponents of regulation including Dave Williams, RCMP, and Pat Slack, Snohomish Regional Drug and Gang Task Force in Washington State, also seemed to admit the failure of drug prohibition even as these speakers ardently opposed the regulation of cannabis. This was apparent in their repeated comments that cannabis enforcement usually results in market displacement rather than eradication.

Another speaker at this debate, Geoff Plant, a former B.C. Attorney General, grabbed the attention of his audience by speaking directly to their concerns about rising costs, and emphasizing that current laws are out of step with the social, economic and other potential harms of cannabis use. He urged them to consider that a law that is routinely and widely flouted makes all law a joke. Plant evoked laughter from his audience when he suggested that we need to get over our “multigenerational Reefer Madness” and deal with drugs as a public health issue, rather than through a failed criminal justice policy.

These sentiments were echoed in a public event sponsored by Sensible BC later in the evening. Dana Larson kicked off the ballot initiative campaign with a roster of speakers who again forcefully made the case that current cannabis laws are routinely disregarded and that its harms do not nearly approximate the harms that ensue from continued prohibition, which include a vast underground economy, loss of tax revenue, drug violence, and an unregulated product.

While speakers from both of these events were able to make the case that drug laws need to be changed, the “how” of cannabis regulation still requires further development and some creative thinking.

The CDPC is committed to talking with Canadians about the possibilities of cannabis regulation and helping to build a regulatory framework that takes into consideration what we’ve learned from public health approaches to alcohol and tobacco. Stay tuned for more.