Kim Derry of THC Meds Ontario Inc., along with George Smitherman, a former Ontario politician, will lobby Bill Blair, the point-man for Liberal legalization, to keep cannabis production in the hands of the licensed producers.
Derry said the government should “get rid of the goons” who are currently in the business, meaning us, the largely British Columbia-based cannabis community.
The last thing Derry wants is a free and fair market.
He said “If you just open it up and allow everybody to grow this stuff and distribute it however they want, it will be an absolute mess.”
That’s quite the conjecture considering the opposite is true.
I think he meant to say “if you just open it up and allow everybody to grow it will cut into my profits and possibly bankrupt me.”
Entrepreneurial spirit and respect for private property fosters authentic growth of the middle class.
Derry suggested that crony-capitalist cartels, protected from competition by government contracts and law enforcement, is the superior model.
Plenty of peaceful individuals in the cannabis community would likely disagree that economic fascism must be implemented or else, “it will be the wild west.”
Perhaps Derry needs a little history lesson.
The “wild” west was not so wild and his idea of regulation is akin to Mussolini’s idea of how an economy should be run.
“If liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government.”
If there are a few licensed producers with restrictive or monopolistic influence on the production and sale of cannabis, then they will produce less and demand a higher price.
All producers of any good or service have incentives to produce less and ask for a higher price, but in a free and fair market, where consumers are sovereign, producers are subject to market forces, like competition, that keep prices down.
Government-protected cartels undermine what it means to live in a free society.
What are the odds Derry will trump the interests of an entire BC Bud market economy?
“He [Bill Blair] and I have been friends for 40 odd years, so I’ll certainly give him my opinion, whether he asks for it or not,” Derry said.
Oh.
What about that other guy, Smitherman? Surely he is less of a hawk.
“I don’t think we are going toward a model where legalization means you should grow some stuff in your backyard.”
If you can’t grow your own, then it’s not legalization.
Ontario politicians are dictating to western Canada on legalization.
We literally have a licensed producer and a former cop, openly calling for the destruction of the current BC Bud economy, and admitting that he will be lobbying the government to achieve this end.
Is this what Liberal Party supporters in the cannabis culture voted for? Because this is what politicians do — they work for their financial backers and bow to special interests.
Legalization is shaping up to be merely a new form of prohibition.