Many Canadians took Justin Trudeau on his word and elected a Liberal MP.
A year later, we’re still waiting for “incidental possession and consumption.”
The voters of California, Nevada, and Massachusetts, on the other hand, at least knew what they were voting for on Tuesday.
For example, even though you have to pay fees to the state, Californians will be able to grow their own cannabis.
Massachusetts and Nevada also legalized six plants for personal use.
The people of these states realized that legalization means more than just incidental possession and consumption. Legalization means growing your own medicine, like brewing your own beer, or harvesting your own fruits and vegetables.
But dialogue in the apparent True North, strong and free, isn’t as welcoming.
Here’s what Cannabis Canada, the association of licensed cannabis producers, sent the federal Liberal Task Farce:
“Home cultivation and designated growing, whether for medical or non-medical marijuana, need close oversight and regulation to prevent past abuses from reoccurring.”
What past abuses? The ones already discredited by the Allard ruling?
The LPs of this association say the government must make a “thoughtful and careful approach” to the cultivation question.
You mean, legalization doesn’t already imply personal growing?
Must only government decide whether cultivation “adds value to the system in contrast to the risks it presents?”
What are the risks of growing a cannabis plant?
Are the time and energy spent regulating personal growing worth the cost of having people do it?
Couldn’t these “necessary” make-work projects be provided in the private sector, where wealth is produced?
If “home cultivation and designated growing are complicated and costly to implement and to oversee,” then what can government do about it?
Coerce people into acting a certain way? It worked so well with prohibition.
What common denominator are “policy-makers” using to judge whether personal growing will “add value” to the system?
Of course, personal growing will add value to the system. Or, is state engineering vis-à-vis the rights of Canadians who consume cannabis the desired outcome?
Balancing Charter rights with the legislation? Sure, there are plenty of lawyers ready to pounce on any infringements.
But there are also property rights inherent in our humanity as a species. A priori truths independent of the scientific method synthesized by Karl Popper.
If LPs can grow but Ottawa prohibits private-property owners from growing for private use, they are asking for populist backlash.
The kind Señor Trudeau saw from trying to nationalize Alberta’s oil.
So when LPs and governments ask whether home cultivation “adds value to the system,” they better also ask themselves whether a conflict with BC Bud can be averted.
Otherwise, they’re asking for a Trump—Brexit style response. Cannabis connoisseurs are quite literal about freeing the weed.
After all, it’s all got a bunch of medical and industrial uses, and if the campaign cry of democratic governments are “jobs, jobs, jobs!” — like some Soviet central plan — then best to free the hemp market entirely.