If we legalize in a free market way, striking the root of cannabis legalization, who is worse off? Civil servants, who must now modify their actions to changing conditions without a stable mandate from above?
What is this — an argument for government bureaucracy?
Everyone will be affected by cannabis legalization. Call it six degrees of separation. Having government mediate risks like an insurance company is a gross mischaracterization of what government is and what it’s capable of accomplishing.
No doubt, cannabis legalization will create unintended consequences across the board. Everyone wins from positive externalities since the market is not a zero-sum game, but, as for negative externalities, we can look to current laws on the books.
From natural health products, intoxicated driving, fraudulent advertising and promotion — there are already rules in place governing human action.
Our tradition is in English common-law. Unlike crackpot dictatorships around the world, Canada is founded on a judicial tradition that builds off the settlement of actual disputes.
Tort law, property law, contract law, commercial law, and criminal law should be enough to regulate cannabis effectively.
Politicians don’t need to be involved in every little thing. They certainly shouldn’t be issuing licenses.
In the western legal tradition, laws were procedural and not preemptively created by politicians. In this way, laws — which restrict human activity — only arose when they were needed.
So, before we “right-wing nuts” are expected to adhere to the idea of the benevolent state, the advocate for Justin’s legalization must account for an unprecedented rise in taxation, bureaucracy, and a ballooning of debts and deficits left for taxpayers, including the young and unborn.
Have we seriously learned no economic or ethical lessons from the statist regimes of the 20th century? Do you really think the problems in America start and stop with Donald Trump? Do you really believe the Liberals are responsible for legalization and therefore should be praised?
Before we can grow sophisticated plants that get us medicated, we must have sufficient capital. To focus on Justin and cannabis is to miss the forest for the trees. We need a functioning free society before we’ll ever see a functional legalization model.
Shame that Anne McLellan thinks cannabis legalization will cost Canadian taxpayers money. She’s right, it will, but it doesn’t have to.
In fact, the free-market liberalization of cannabis-hemp is crucial if the reallocation of our economy toward more environmentally-friendly practices is going to be successful.
Look at Ontario’s example: higher taxes and government control of wind turbines and hydroelectricity is anything but sustainable.
In addition to the freedom to get stoned, cannabis legalization must mean a free hemp industry that replaces petroleum-based goods, deforestation, and other destructive environmental acts. The only way to make that effective is by unleashing entrepreneurs and restraining bureaucrats.
I suggest a shift away from fossil fuels and a murderous post-modernist Marxist philosophy.
To where the contributions of the “Austrian” school of economics, along with their strange but persuasive concept of “praxeology,” are finally recognized for their real-world predictive powers.
Cannabis incorporates all these important themes, and so I find Liberal Legalization to be severely lacking. It is yet another short-sighted blunder in an already failing democratic system.