The Trailer Park Boys have their own brand of booze. Called Liquorman’s Ol’ Dirty Canadian Whisky, the bottle suggests mixing the drink with a “six paper joint.”
It also suggests you have a right to drink before 10 am.
Ontario’s state-monopoly LCBO is set to start selling it later this month.
But a real-life Mr. Lahey could put an end to it. Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne told reporters that she’ll “look into it.”
“None of that sounds particularly savoury to me — and [it sounds] dangerous,” she said, suggesting that her job is to govern Ontario residents as if they were her children.
After all, the whole point of having the government-owned and operated LCBO is for “public” safety. Evidently, adults are incapable of providing each other booze in a responsible way.
Never-mind what other provinces are doing.
This kind of thinking that has led to discussions about legal cannabis sales exclusive to the LCBO. Wynne is on record advocating the LCBO as “well suited,” for cannabis, that the “distribution network at the LCBO… makes a lot of sense.”
No, it doesn’t.
There’s more to cannabis than making sure IDs get checked. It’s not just retail space, warehouse storage and shelf-life, there’s a knowledge problem only markets can solve.
Supply and demand in a free and fair market can’t be mimicked by government bureaucracy. If it could, the Soviet Union would have long surpassed the West instead of crumbling into non-existence.
Venezuela and North Korea would be socialist paradises.
The “third-way” of government intervention in Canada, the US, and Western Europe would have brought about a new golden age instead of undermining prosperity, protecting a corporate class, and leaving trillions of dollars of debt to future (and current) generations.
People in government lack the mechanisms that reveal knowledge of individual valuations. Civilization is of “human action but not human design.”
We coordinate, not by looking to government authority figures, but by exchanging property and adhering to price signals. Without the ability to patronize and compete against other entrepreneurs — we’re left with inferior goods and services.
When it comes to booze, Ontario residents lack options.
It’s either shop at the government-owned LCBO, the corporate cartel Beer Store, or be lucky enough to live close to the Quebec border where one can easily cross-over to a freer market.
And now Wynne wants the same thing with cannabis.
But, returning to Liquorman’s Ol’ Dirty Canadian Whisky — what Wynne fails to see is the humour in it all.
Anyone who mixes alcohol and cannabis either knows what they’re doing and can pace themselves, or they’re in for a night of vomiting and passing out.
As long as they keep to themselves and don’t hurt anyone, it’s really none of the government’s business.
But, again — it’s a joke.
The label reads: “Roll up a six paper joint, grab a bag of chips, and pour yourself a straight glass of Liquormen’s. Today you’re getting f—-d up and there’s not a goddamn thing Lahey can do about it.”
Indeed, there’s nothing the real-life Lahey can do about it. Even if banned from the LCBO, there are always ways around punitive legislation.
Cannabis is proof.