With recreational cannabis set to become legal in Canada in less than a month’s time, supporters and opponents of the change remain widely divided.
Supporters have long argued that controlling and taxing cannabis in Canada will be a major improvement over the current situation where both the seller and buyer of pot are lawbreakers.
Supporters also believe that legalization will free up vast police and court resources that instead of being spent on pot cases can be focused on tackling hard drug trafficking and other serious criminal activities.
On the other hand, those concerned with the legalization say there are many questions outstanding about the long-term health impacts of pot use, and in particular on the mental health of users.
Les Hagen, the executive director of Action on Smoking and Health, says another potential problem with legalization of cannabis may be that it could lead to tobacco use.
“Cannabis legalization has the potential to renormalize smoking and to undermine decades of progress in reducing and preventing tobacco use,” said Hagen. “We cannot allow cannabis legalization to renormalize tobacco use especially if the goal is to prevent harmful drug use among children and youth.
“It would be inexcusable if the progress made in creating smoke-free places over the past four decades came to a screeching halt with cannabis legalization.”
Hagen argues that young people who witness adults smoking cannabis may end up "modelling" those behaviours, normalizing all smoking activities, including tobacco use.
“When kids are involved, smoking and drug use is truly a matter of monkey-see, monkey-do,” he said. “Behavioural science tells us that by modelling healthy behaviours to kids, we are more likely to produce healthy kids.
“This modelling extends to behaviours and activities that children witness in public settings and even on Hollywood films.”
The legalization of cannabis has been a long time coming in Canada. Time will tell if one of the results of this major change will be an increase in youth tobacco use, to the long-term detriment of the community at large.
Dan Singleton is the Mountain View Gazette editor.
