Liberal Legalization is a textbook example of Orwellian newspeak in which assigning the same name to two different concepts narrows the range of thought.
If legalization is identified with this new form of prohibition, then no one will seriously ask whether legalization results in the end of prohibition.
BC Bud’s craft community still faces prosecution, police continue to raid dispensaries, municipal politicians arrogate authority where they have none.
And Justin Trudeau was clear about this well before the election. The reason the Liberals are “legalizing” cannabis has nothing to do with your right as an adult to control what you put in your own body.
It’s about “protecting our kids,” and “getting organized crime out of the trade.”
But what justifies this? Cannabis isn’t meth, it’s not even tobacco, which people are free to grow in their own homes.
The Liberals believe they can prevent teens from smoking cannabis.
Forgetting that teen rates have diminished in recent years, assuming the government can actually follow through on this promise implies that prohibition works when we apply it to people under 19.
Not only is this a flawed idea, contrary to the index card of allowable opinion, smoking cannabis as a teenager won’t make you stupid.
The study the thought-police like to reference didn’t isolate other factors, such as alcohol and cigarettes.
A follow-up report concluded that cannabis could not be used to predict negative impacts on cognitive development.
In fact, indicators point to cigarette smoking as more likely to reduce IQ points than cannabis use.
A study that examined cannabis use in twins, where one twin is a connoisseur and the other is not, found no evidence that lower-than-average intelligence had anything to do with smoking cannabis.
But when it comes to government, facts don’t matter.
Consider the “organized crime” bit.
University of Toronto PhD student Jenna Valleriani isn’t the only one predicting a regime where those with cannabis records are barred from entry.
She told the media that dispensaries and others will be out of luck “because they have pre-existing trafficking charges or possession charges for cannabis. That alone is going to bar a lot of these dispensaries’ access to that market.”
I’ve heard this sentiment from others as well, off the record.
Forget the fact it’s a semantics issue. That gang-related activity only makes up five per cent of the illegal market, that the rest of the industry is peaceful and non-violent.
Legalization is supposed to mean that cannabis production and consumption is no longer a criminal act.
Forget any notion that the government has been wrong for all these years, and therefore, has no reason to be involved with the legalization scheme, other than removing the plant from the criminal code and pardoning all these non-violent “criminals.”
Liberal Legalization is about handing the keys to a select-few and using “our kids” as a propaganda punching bag.
All the government had done is co-opted the word ‘legalization’ and redefined it to mean what they want it to mean.