Liberal MP Bill Blair called the methods of the LPs “exhaustive and exacting.”
The same methods dreamt up by the Harper regime, which regulates cannabis production as if it were grown in a prison complex, where the product is gamma-irradiated, stockpiled, and sent through Canada Post.
What the hell does Bill Blair know about growing cannabis?
I’m sure he’s well-educated in sketchy dealings, as he used to buy drugs undercover as a former police officer — Wait, he broke the law to uphold it?
Yes, in case you’ve been living under a rock, police often disregard that, “the law is the law” and break it as justification for maintaining security and order.
The courts at least provide some level of fairness, many of them have favoured cannabis users and growers, but the police still have a drug-war mentality.
Because cannabis is illegal, gangs and organized crime enter the market because it is their niche to break the law and profit from it.
The police sometimes break the law — like buying illegal drugs — as an attempt to undermine black markets and provide security.
Insomuch that legalization of cannabis will affect black markets, if the price is right, gangs will shift production to other illegal markets while the other “criminals” enter the newly legal market.
If these former cannabis “criminals” can’t abide by contracts, then there are already legal rules in place that will resolve any violent or fraudulent element of the trade spilling over into the legal regime.
There is very little the federal government needs to do other than remove cannabis from the criminal code, hand the responsibility to the provinces, and begin pardoning the non-violent drug offenders.
Police don’t need to be involved with legalization, their realm is the violent sphere of society.
Appointing Bill Blair as legalization czar is the kind of move only a politician would make.
It appeals to the emotional voter. It says, while cannabis should be regulated and taxed, the process by which this is done must be exhaustive and exacting if it is to be done safely. It’s all about the kids, remember? Who better to appoint than some former drug squad police chief?
Who worse to appoint than the Toronto police chief who preceded over the massive civil rights violation that was the 2010 G20?
Due to politics, the publicly trading LPs have conservative appeal, providing a base the Liberals can play to.
Not to mention the lobbying on the part of the LPs.
British Columbia has a history of push-back against unfavourable federal overreach, a craft market not only means a larger middle class, but entire communities where cannabis is directly or indirectly responsible for the local economy.
Unfortunately, but also as a selling point, a craft market means more money in the provincial coffers, and no doubt municipalities like Vancouver are always looking for their percentage of the loot.
The Justin Trudeau Liberals presume federal authority where there doesn’t need to be any.
The Cascadia region of this continent is shared by cannabis farmers markets, from California to the rainforests of British Columbia, and now, even to legal Alaska.
The iconic “BC Bud” belongs to no single person or organization, and certainly no country or government. BC Bud is a nexus of buyers and sellers, its strains are always changing, its farmers rise and fall in the marketplace, where, absent police raids, the consumer has been sovereign.
For Justin Trudeau and the Liberals to remain ignorant of these facts is to play politics with people’s lives.
Justin is doing to cannabis what his father did to Alberta’s oil under the National Energy Program — destroying an industry by delegating all control to Ottawa.