You can’t have a craft cannabis industry when the rules are written and influenced by federal bureaucrats who have likely never seen a cannabis plant let alone know how to grow one.
Just look at the debates in the House of Commons during the first reading of the bill.
Someone thought you needed a toaster oven to use cannabis. These are the people who are supposed to “represent us” (a silly, impractical idea that barely worked in the 19th century let alone in 2017) and yet they can’t even figure out basic facts.
At any rate, there’s still a case to be made for civil disobedience even after the Liberals legalize.
In fact, the case can be extended beyond cannabis and into the realm of commerce in general. Since when did a nation of free peoples need to apply to the government for business licenses? It may be petty Western-style tyranny, but tyranny it is nonetheless.
There are market means of regulation, insurance, and accreditation. Having government bureaus do this work is both costly and ineffective.
If there’s any lesson from prohibition, perhaps it can be that. If they couldn’t ban it effectively, if human action trumps political decisions, then on what basis do they expect hefty regulation and restriction to work?
For starters, where are all these people going to go?
Billions of dollars are generated in the British Columbian cannabis industry. Is this all going to disappear?
Do the Liberals actually believe their licensed producer (LP) competition will eradicate a billion-dollar grassroots industry?
Where do they expect these people to go? Thousands of Canadians work in the illicit cannabis industry, whether directly or indirectly. Every part of the economy is connected to the other. There are entire towns in BC that have managed to survive on the cannabis trade. When the traditional industries left, all they had was cannabis.
Are the Liberals going to permit this cannabis industry to come out of the shadows and codify their practices into regulatory rules for the industry? That would be the smart decision. But that’s not the way the Liberals plan to go.
Instead, the current large licensed producers will help craft the regulations, along with health and education technocrats.
Meanwhile, police raids will continue lest the BC Bud connoisseurs abandon their illegality and join the federal regulatory apparatus. There is, after all, room for “craft growers” in the Liberal framework.
But that framework is flawed and anyone trying to get into the game now is wasting their time and capital.
The stock market is a bubble, legalization is just another big-government boondoggle. BC’s unlicensed connoisseurs have every reason to refrain from federal regulation.