For drug czar Bill Blair, legalization “doesn’t mean everybody needs to be in jail.”
According to Blair, conflicting cannabis enforcement across Canadian communities must end. There must be consistency to keep “our roadways safe.”
But that doesn’t mean BC Bud will go to jail, there will be just harsher penalties for trafficking when the Task Farce fails.
For, if the outcome is strict “public health” controls, litigation will continue for personal-use growers, small business owners, and farmers, essentially, British Columbia’s “drug tourism” industry.
In the eyes of the public, enjoying cannabis in moderation is essentially no different from drinking wine or smoking cigars.
In those industries, there are craft connoisseurs, both producers and consumers. It’s a peaceful market that doesn’t require overbearing federal regulation.
Why would cannabis be any different? An appeal to emotion? A logical fallacy about the children or “public health?”
Is this what four years of Liberal rule will bring us?
The Canadian cannabis industry won’t rely on profits, Blair says.
Somebody better tell the licensed producers, their overseas investments are just as crucial as their safe-guarded MMPR regulations.
Provinces won’t have much to say in the final scheme, while their input is valued, Blair says legalization will be a central plan from Ottawa.
This is the most destructive thing about Blair’s vision. The idea that too much provincial power, or the wrong kind of power, will cause a “difficult situation.”
And as per Canadian tradition, arguments for increased federal power are made by comparing ourselves to the Americans.
Some states have legalized, others haven’t, some only have a medical program, but either way, the sky hasn’t fallen.
There has been no repeat of the war between the northern and southern states. In fact, with differences so vast and diverse, and considering that it’s the current year, what could possibly justify governing 300 million people from Washington DC?
Or Ottawa for that matter.
The Liberals can demand the war on cannabis continue in one form or another, but even the judiciary is rejecting prohibition.
What evidence is there that craft producers are selling to minors, or that they are incapable of checking IDs?
How are BC Bud farmers and vendors synonymous with gangs and organized crime?
Rejecting profits is rejecting reality, and so the drug war lingers on as the Liberals waste everybody’s time, money, and energy.
Real resources go into enforcing prohibition and regulation.
On what basis are Blair and the Task Farce exercising this authority? Based on votes for Liberal MPs in an election nine months ago?
Neither you nor I can stop paying for this.
Profit and loss indicate decentralized knowledge about human actors. This economic data is ceaselessly changing, entrepreneurs notice discrepancies and create adjustments in ways state politicians and bureaucrats can’t mimic.
Entrepreneurs determine the course of civilization, central planning leads to ruin. In the free market, the buying public makes or breaks entrepreneurs.
Members of society, through mutual exchange, reappoint scarce resources to more efficient producers. This process is absent in government.
Whether the good is cannabis, wine, toys for children, regulatory and insurance services, or security and legal services — private enterprise hands down beats government bureaucracy.