If Cannabis is Legal, Why the Police Raids?

If cannabis in Canada is legal, why are there still police raids?

Suppose, for instance, you travel back to the 1990s, and you say in the future, cannabis is legal, but police still get funding and make raids on “illegal grow-ops,” you might scratch your head.

If cannabis is legal, how are there still police raids? How are people still growing illegally?

How can the Ontario police make an $8.5 million discovery of 10,000 plants and 113 kilograms of dried flower? Why wasn’t this massive enterprise legal?

A Brief History of Cannabis in Canada

If cannabis in Canada is legal, why are there still police raids? The answer is that not all cannabis is legal. As I correctly predicted, Justin Trudeau never intended to legalize cannabis.

Justin is a shill. A wokester who deserves prison. His plan was to corporatize it.

In late 2012, the former Harper government announced an overhaul of the medical system. Patients wouldn’t be able to grow for themselves anymore. They were going to have to go through a corporate LP system.

Patients sued, won, and now even recreational consumers can grow (unless you’re in Quebec).

All Justin Trudeau did was change the laws so these large-scale medical cannabis producers could sell to the general public. Although not directly. First, they must go through an inefficient and ineffective government wholesale distribution centre.

The only way to grow and sell cannabis or industrial hemp is by receiving approval from Health Canada.

You can imagine the situation if the nation produced food like this. Ontario police raiding local farmers’ markets’ over “illicit” tomatoes.

If Cannabis is Legal, Why the Police Raids?

Recently, the Durhan Regional Police Service’s Drug Enforcement Unit found a massive “grow-op” out on highway 7. As mentioned, an estimated $8.5 million worth of goods and capital were present.

Earlier this month, police charged two senior citizens in Caledon for operating an “illicit” cannabis farm and making concentrates. With over 16.5 kilograms of cannabis oil and 500 plants, police estimated the street value was shy of $5 million.

This past summer, Ontario police raided two greenhouse sites and discovered 45,000 plants, estimated at $61 million.

Ontario police charged three people in May after raiding a farm near Renfrew and finding 7,600 cannabis plants.

In March, another 7,600 plants were seized by the police out in Essex County, near Leamington, Ontario.

And that’s just this year. In one province. And that’s not even all of them, just the large ones.

What’s going on here? If cannabis is legal, why aren’t these people getting proper licences?

The Problem with Cannabis in Canada

Canada excessively regulates its cannabis industry.

From Health Canada’s onerous regulations, asinine licensing processes, federal excise taxes, and provincial wholesalers to the general incompetence of every level of government.

If you want your country or state to legalize cannabis, look to more liberal regimes like Colorado. Canada is not an example for the world to follow.

As part of Justin Trudeau’s pledge for legal cannabis, there was the caveat that he’d make it harder for organized crime to operate.

Now, the people involved in Ontario‘s recent cannabis raids may be pieces of trash. They could have been cutting corners, spraying plants with pesticides, and making solvents unsafely.

But it’s also possible their only crime is producing a plant that government excessively regulates.

Ontario doesn’t have a problem with alcohol bootleggers. There is no black market in craft beer. That’s because the regulations allow anyone to enter the business.

With some start-up capital and ambition, you can make it as a craft brewer in Ontario.

You can’t say the same for craft cannabis.

If Cannabis is Legal, Why the Police Raids?

Cannabis is not legal. It’s been corporatized. Health Canada wouldn’t be the gatekeeper for production licensing if it were legal. Police wouldn’t be raiding peaceful farmers.

In a genuine free market, we wouldn’t even need licensing. Insomuch that accreditation is important, consumers will pay the premiums if that’s something they value.

In the meantime, Justin Trudeau has fulfilled his promise to “legalize, restrict, and regulate” cannabis.

For someone who admires China’s “basic dictatorship,” it’s clear cannabis legalization was going to mean all within the state, nothing outside the state, and nothing against the state.

Justin’s Liberals were clear from the beginning. Police were going to get more funding and powers to fight “the black market.”

Cannabis is legal in Canada, so why the police raids? Because cannabis is not legal. It’s stamped with a barcode and sits under fluorescent lighting, hiding behind opaque child-resistant plastic containers.

Cannabis prohibition is still alive and well in Canada.