With Ontario’s determination to take over the marijuana enterprise, the drug has joined the listing of previously personal vices, like alcohol and playing, the regular provide of which is now an necessary authorities duty.
Distribution and gross sales of marijuana, after it has been legalized, will likely be carried out through a sequence of special-purpose shops operated by the Liquor Management Board of Ontario and staffed by members of the Ontario Public Service Workers Union, thus fulfilling two key goals of legalization: extra money for the LCBO, and extra members for OPSEU.
The selection of the province’s much-loved liquor monopoly, in line with the federal government, was in recognition of the company’s lengthy document of success in holding alcohol out of the arms of youngsters, or a minimum of offering them with a cruelly restricted choice. OPSEU’s involvement, in the meantime, ensures management of the profitable commerce passes from organized crime to organized labour, who in any case have a greater dental plan.
Between them Ontarians will likely be ushered into an age wherein it’s now not unlawful to buy marijuana, merely disagreeable. The intention is to get medication off the road and into distant, cavernous state depositories the place they belong: some 150 of them, or about the identical because the province has Walmarts.
Nonetheless, it’s odd that Ontario ought to have chosen to promote dope like liquor, somewhat than tobacco. Admittedly it has among the attributes of each. Like tobacco, it’s primarily ingested by smoking. Like alcohol, it’s an intoxicant. Like each, it guarantees to make the federal government a ton of cash — er, that’s, it may be addictive, or a minimum of habit-forming.
In reality, the federal government’s plan is one thing of a hybrid of the 2. Like tobacco, it is going to be offered in plain packaging, from behind the counter. However like alcohol, it is going to be offered solely in authorities shops. And therein lies the issue.
Not one of the actual goals of legalization — getting the mob out of it with out getting children into it; sparing in any other case law-abiding adults from having to take care of criminals or buying felony data themselves — requires the federal government to be within the enterprise. Even in purely mercenary phrases, the federal government might become profitable off it just by taxing it — because it does tobacco.
The tobacco trade could also be a loathsome, amoral bunch, however they serve the very important social function of holding tobacco out of the arms of presidency. Nicely, additionally youngsters and the mob, however principally authorities. As a result of one thing occurs to governments after they get into these companies; their judgment turns into impaired. If the federal government have been within the tobacco enterprise, belief me, it might be operating advertisements telling you to smoke, the way in which it now runs advertisements telling you to gamble or drink — sorry, to drink “responsibly.” (David Frum has commented on the actual odiousness of a authorities that taxes trustworthy labour at punitive charges operating advertisements on TV extolling the get-rich-quick potentialities of lottery tickets.)
If the one strategy to management entry to a socially dangerous product is for the federal government to take it over, maybe prostitution needs to be dealt with in the identical means. Will we quickly see government-run brothels, staffed by dues-paying OPSEU members — open 9 to 4, besides weekends and statutory holidays — with all different practitioners banned?
However in actual fact there are different choices. If a authorities monopoly shouldn’t be the one different to criminalization, neither is the choice to a authorities monopoly a completely unregulated market. There is no such thing as a logical contradiction between legalization of marijuana and efficient measures to discourage its use, or a minimum of abuse.
Once more, the tobacco mannequin is instructive. It combines relative abundance of provide — you should buy cigarettes in any nook retailer — with a slew of measures aimed toward suppressing demand: from training, to regulation, to taxes.
No, we haven’t been capable of hold cigarettes solely out of the arms of youngsters. However we’ve been capable of hold them, principally, out of the arms of criminals (as long as we don’t lean too arduous on the taxation lever, and permit the authorized value to get too far out of line with the black market). And as far as distribution is confined to lawful, regulated channels, the probability of a kid getting maintain of them is lowered, even when it’s not eradicated.
Against this, the federal government’s method to marijuana quantities to stimulating demand whereas proscribing provide. We could but be a way from Colby Cosh’s imaginative and prescient of snooty hempeliers selecting out an appellation for patrons to take pleasure in with their meals.
However there could be little doubt of the normalizing impact when pot shouldn’t be solely authorized, however offered in authorities shops by authorities workers.
Regardless of the preliminary restraints on packaging and the like, furthermore, it’s a secure guess these will likely be discarded earlier than lengthy: if, in any case, pot is not more than alcohol by different means, because the LCBO’s management of each implies, why ought to it not be marketed in the identical means?
However in the meantime the drug will solely lawfully be out there from 150 authorities outlets — in a province of 13 million individuals. That half will show a lot more durable to dismantle: for heaven’s sake, it’s taken 90 years simply to get the province to permit gross sales of beer and wine within the odd grocery retailer. The mix of elevated demand and limits on provide is a positive strategy to maintain a flourishing black market, however the federal government’s vows to suppress it. Ontario will get few of the promised advantages of legalization, however all the prices of a state monopoly.
It’s good that folks will be capable of purchase a little bit of weed with out concern of being charged by the police, however I’m undecided being overcharged by public workers is far of an enchancment.
Twitter: @acoyne
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