British Columbia’s NDP government is promising a Community Safety Unit to enforce cannabis legalization.
How Orwellian.
A new whole bureaucracy to enforce cannabis laws. So much for the argument that prohibition was a waste of taxpayers money. Somehow, governments in Canada have made legalization a boondoggle as well.
These people really do deserve to be locked up.
What exactly is a Community Safety Unit?
Since it won’t be police knocking down the doors of houses and apartments with 6 plants in view instead of 4 hidden from the windows… since it won’t be bylaw officers issuing tickets to “illegal” dispensaries that predate the fascism of the Harper/Trudeau era of cannabis… since it won’t be the RCMP prosecuting those who refuse to buy into the crony-capitalist legalization scheme, the BC NDP have decided we need a whole new enforcement unit.
As the head of the federal Task Farce and all around crony-capitalist Anne McLellan said, there are “upfront costs” to legalization that taxpayers “are going to have to absorb.”
The Community Safety Unit will have the power to deal with illegal sales of cannabis outside the federal and provincial framework.
Didn’t we warn you about this? Did you think a big-government “progressive” Trudeau would legalize a free and fair market? We had a better chance at convincing Conservatives to adopt cannabis legalization than to persuade Liberals at not taxing and regulating everything in sight.
This new cannabis enforcement bureaucracy will be able to enter illegal cannabis retailers without a warrant and seize all their products and records.
They will have the ability to impose monetary penalties on their uneducated guess on the value of the cannabis stolen from the “illegal” retailers.
On what basis can this be justified? Is there a special enforcement unit for alcohol? No, it’s a matter for the police. Is there a special enforcement unit for tobacco? Gambling? What about fentanyl that is actually killing people?
We shouldn’t trust politicians. We shouldn’t outsource our social problems to them. Once upon a time, civic problems were civil responsibilities. Groups like the Odd Fellows and Rebekahs, the Kinsmen Club, or the Lions Club stepped up to provide comfort and relief to the poor and downtrodden.
Mutual aid societies and churches were much more efficient at social justice than the heavy hand of the state.
This is the result of outsourcing our problems to politicians who have no financial cost to their actions, who only have the single goal of reelection.
This is the result: A Community Safety Unit for a plant that has never harmed anyone.