Better late than never.
Canada is leading the G7 towards more progressive policy that seeks to reduce the detrimental impacts caused directly by the failed prohibition.
Last Tuesday, June 19, the Senate passed Bill C-45, the Cannabis Act, by a 52-29 vote. The bill controls and regulates how the substance can be grown, distributed and sold, and legal sales are expected as early as October.
Provinces and territories now have eight to 12 weeks to set up the new marketplace, while individual municipalities may also add tighter restrictions in terms of retail store setbacks from institutions such as schools, hospitals and public spaces such as parks. This time frame will also allow industry and authorities to get ready for the new legal framework.
While many nations have modified their drug policy with approaches like decriminalization such as in Portugal, Canada is only the second country on the planet to fully legalize recreational cannabis. The first was Uruguay in 2013.
Meanwhile, south of the border, numerous states have legalized medical and recreational cannabis, but the plant — which does not have one single recorded overdose fatality — curiously remains at the state level compared alongside deadly substances such as heroine.
Canadians largely supported the federal government’s move, but some have concerns.
My prediction?
Daily life will continue along much as it has over the past few decades. Canada a few years from now will largely resemble the Canada we all know today.
Except otherwise non-violent, law-abiding, tax-paying citizens will no longer be deemed criminals and taken away from their families to clog up space in jails at the taxpayer’s expense. They will no longer drain police resources and tie up already overwhelmed court proceedings that should be dealing with actual criminals such as thieves, murderers or sex offenders.
Additionally, the government will generate much needed revenue that can be funnelled towards awareness as well as addictions outreach programs.
And of course, a new industry will flourish, creating legitimate jobs — not altogether unlike the liquor industry.
The War on Drugs has only succeeded in empowering and driving countless billions of dollars into the coffers of criminal cartels on the black market and by extension exporting the associated violence for control of the illicit trade throughout Latin America.
Never mind the fact that the U.S.-led prohibition never had anything to do with protecting society and children from the perils of substance abuse to begin with, but rather controlling and subjugating minorities.
“The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people,” said John Ehrlichman, who served as Nixon’s domestic policy chief when the so-called War on Drugs was declared in 1971, during a 1994 interview.
“You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or blacks. But by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Ehrlichman, who was among those imprisoned in the Watergate scandal fallout, died just a few years later in 1999. Perhaps he wanted to clear his conscience first.
There is nothing wrong with admitting a policy was flawed or an outright failure — or in this case even worse, corrupt to the core.
There is, however, everything wrong with stubbornly forging ahead anyway for fear of admitting error.
Drug addiction should never have been treated as a criminal issue — substance abuse always has been and remains a health issue.
So Canada should be applauded for showing its peers that we are committed to improving social policy and correcting past mistakes.
— Ducatel is the editor of the Sundre Round Up, a Great West newspaper
