The USDA Economic Research Service downplayed hemp’s potential when Canada sought to begin legal production in 2000.
This was the raison d’être for Health Canada’s regulations. Hemp only needed to be regulated for American markets, everything else remained illegal.
So instead of saving the world, hemp has been delegated to produce textiles and seeds for American markets.
Strangled by capital requirements imposed by government bureaucrats, entrepreneurs are prevented and discouraged from entering the trade.
Instead of human ingenuity deciding of the factors of production, the state bureaucracy mandates capital requirements.
And these aren’t based on any real market realities. Success means conforming to whatever political climate is regulating the decisions of the bureaucrats.
Health Canada is destroying the potential for an authentic middle class of producers, innovators and investors. They are also slapping any notion of environmental sustainability in the face.
But why?
Why would Health Canada do something so destructive? Are they incompetent? Are there nefarious motives?
Or is this just the inevitable result of government bureaucracy?
After all, Health Canada would seek legal action against anyone violating their hemp laws. Laws written by a team of bureaucrats and corporate partners.
They claim, without evidence why, free markets must be regulated by them. They define and determine the offences that they must solve and interpret.
Many mainstream economists and policy analysts praise federal regulators, giving off the notion that if it weren’t for our wise overlord civil servants, Canada would resemble something from Mad Max.
Whatever threat hemp poses to consumers and Canadian residents in general, you can be sure that Health Canada is there to squash it. Unfortunately, they’re using napalm on a simple bug infestation.
Insomuch that Health Canada encourages innovation and competition, it’s the kind where major competitors resort to political lobbying rather than trying to compete honestly in the market.
Most people would agree that ending world hunger, finding renewable energy sources and reversing environmental destruction are valued goals.
Now if only people would agree that the means — taxation, crony-capitalism, independent central banks, and a political-celebrity culture of little substance — are severely flawed.
Hemp can literally save the planet but Health Canada is destroying the industry before it can really get started by imposing all these needless regulations.
While Justin Trudeau flies to Paris and signs more treaties, making promises about taxing carbon and reducing emissions, how much has the government actually done to solve anything?
Pollution is, after all, a property rights issue, and the state is the largest violator around.
As Murray Rothbard wrote, “No one has a right to clean air, but one does have a right to not have his air invaded by pollutants generated by an aggressor.”
What good are higher taxes and crony-capitalists building inefficient wind turbines and solar panels?
Hemp saves the planet, and business licensing by the government is antithetical to liberty.
The answer should be clear. “Free the weed” also means a free hemp market.
In the meantime, Health Canada is literally destroying the planet.