Liberal Marijuana task force roundup

The good - and the mostly negative 

Ottawa announced yesterday they were announcing the members of their task force to legalize Marijuana. From reading the comments around the internet, it seems as most didn’t find this announcement to be substantial. However, within this announcement there does lie some pretty solid information. This article will break down some of the positive points of the task force, but it will more importantly focus on a few areas the task force seems to have made up their mind on, and taken entirely the wrong side on.

Firstly, lets talk about the good. The people who have been picked for the panel seem to be a pretty balanced, and qualified bunch. Here’s a quick sum up of them from reddit user /u/supervillainO_o

• Dr. Mark A Ware (Vice Chair).
• Ware, who grew up in Jamaica and is now a Canadian-based world-renowned expert on cannabis use for pain.

• Dr. Susan Boyd.
• Susan Boyd teaches courses on drug law and policy, theory and research methodology. Her research interests include drug law and policy, maternal-state conflicts, film and print media representations, women in conflict with the law and research methodology. She is a community activist who works with harm reduction and anti-drug war groups.

• George Chow. 
• Vancouver City Councillor

• Marlene Jesso -
• superintendent of the RNC, Royal Newfoundland Constabulary

• Dr. Perry Kendall. -- 
• As provincal health officer in BC and oversaw "insite" safe injection sites established (wiki)

• Rafik Souccar.
• Mr. Souccar was a Deputy Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) from 2008 to 2011, an Assistant Commissioner of Federal and International Operations from 2005 to 2008, and Chief Superintendent and Director General of Drugs & Organized Crime from 2002 to 2005. He has been a Director of Canadian Air Transport Security Authority since June 2015. He is a member of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Law Society of Upper Canada, the International Bar Association and the American Society for Industrial Security

• Dr. Barbara von Tigerstrom.
• she worked at the Supreme Court of Canada, the University of Alberta Health Law Institute, and the University of Canterbury School of Law. She holds a PhD in law from the University of Cambridge. Professor von Tigerstrom’s main areas of teaching and research are health law, public health law and policy, food and drug regulation, and tort law.

• ​Dr. Catherine Zahn.
• Dr. Zahn was appointed President and CEO of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in 2009

This seems like a pretty solid bunch. Lots of legal minds, people who have been in the law enforcement fields, activists for marijuana, as well as academics well versed in various areas of marijuana research. They also have Dr. Barbara von Tigerstorm who has one of the most bad ass names i think i’ve ever heard. This is all good news, but after reading through the governments extensive document of the commissions mandate there appears to still be remnants of hardliners like Bill Blair. 

Blair, former top cop for Toronto has been strongly against Canadians having the right to grow their own marijuana. Blair has been inundated by his long time friends and lobbyists to restrict growing the only big business, creating a virtual monopoly on the product. This would be similar to the stringent regulations formerly on alcohol production that are only now being challenged as the public demands more local, and craft/small brew beers. To reverse this ideology from the get go and create massive corporate bodies controlling marijuana, is anti free market, and reeks of the patronage previous Liberal governments got in trouble over. The reasoning is also flawed, in the areas where marijuana has already been legalized, there has not been a massive expansion in home growing. Growing marijuana at home is hard, time consuming work, and often nets far less than most imagine. Not only this but running the sort of light that produce decent marijuana is a massive investment initially, and increases power bills massively. This is why people don’t really tend to do it very much, after all tobacco has been legal to grow for personal use in Canada for some time. 

There are websites dedicated to growing your own cheap tobacco, but no one really cares. Home brewing hasn’t started a massive rise in dangerous alcohol on the streets, or kitchen still explosions. Producing beer, liquor, wine, tobacco (up to 15kg of dried tobacco per person) part 3 - number 3 section ii), or marijuana at home are all difficult time consuming hobbies, which nicely keeps them from ever expanding to a point where they pose a public risk. Blair being the top man on pot, while having friends who lobby for the biggest corporate growers in the country, is a pretty gross conflict on interest, especially considering the misinformation regarding the dangers. This is why I am glad to see Mr.Blairs omission from this new panel and consider it good news. That being said there still seems to be some hesitance leftover from his time as pot czar, for home growing, which I hope this more educated panel will move past. 

There is another negative to the information the government has so far put forward. As well as being sceptical of home growing, there is serous language implying a dislike for high THC content products, knows generally as concentrates (shatter, wax, oil, honey etc are grouped under the general term “concentrates), and a hesitancy to allow their sale at all. There are a couple of reasons I feel this is in direct contrast to the aim of the commission, which is harm reduction methods. 

Firstly, there is misinformation surrounding high potency marijuana products is not based in reason. There have never been any example of a THC overdose, and limited study to the half-life of active THC (ie that THC that effects decision making etc) so suggestions that higher potency marijuana being consumed is more dangerous are unlikely to prove true. Furthermore the manner, of consumption dictates that smoking large amounts of marijuana concentrates is difficult, and its dangers physically are non existent as a result. The price to produce concentrates also set their price high, making it unlikely consumers will purchase large amounts when compared to herbal marijuana. 

The most important thing missing from the report is any mention of price setting to combat organized crime profits.

Take Uruguay's model, a country that fully legalized marijuana in 2014, set the state controlled price for pot at $1 a gram to ensure it would not be a profitable crop for those in the illicit market, even if it meant slower profits at first for legal growers. I believe Canada should mimic this model and set the price of marijuana low enough that there is little to no incentive for organized crime to produce marijuana in the large scale. This is crucial to keeping the drug out of the hands of youth, one of the main justifications for the move from the liberals. Illegal retailers do not check ID's, but regulated sellers will - taking away the profit takes away the incentive for anyone to produce and supply the black market. Setting the price at half, or less of the current street price of $10 a gram is imperative for minimizing the harm of use to Canadians, and language suggesting this is the plan is entirely missing from this report. 

So there’s my take. We get some positives with the choice of committee members, Chair Anne Maclellan absent from the above list, but her record is well known. Another positive with the exclusion of Bill Blair, even if we get a negative with the remnants of his un-based opinions surrounding home growing. However, we then get into the real negatives in the form of misinformation around marijuana concentrates, and no information around, price setting. 

So all in all a mixed bag, The Liberals have made their second real move in the road to Legalization and although there are some serious negatives, hope is not lost among a few gleams of positive hope. 

The NDP are just flat wrong on decriminalization

Do you want organized crime ? Because that's how you get organized crime...

I don’t necessarily think that the Liberal move to legalize and regulate marijuana will go well. With that said, I do think it will go a lot better than any move to decriminalize marijuana. Unlike most ambiguous questions around the legalization of soft drugs, there is some evidence to attest to decriminalization’s poor record. I am of course talking about the world’s foremost marijuana mecca, Amsterdam. 

To give a brief positive view, the Dutch policies have done a lot to reduce drug use among addicts, reduce soft drug use by youth, and have proved true a lot of the other harm reduction principles purported by supporters of both legalization and decriminalization. That’s about where the good ends. Turning Amsterdam into the number one destination for global stoners and European stag parties is a move that surprisingly is not appreciated by the majority of residents. After all Amsterdam is home to the Van Gogh museum, the Anne Frank house, and countless other austere cultural landmarks - but that’s not what most people think of. This is …

(A very subtle fan of Dutch Cannabis)

I can see why this rather dim view of a diverse cultural region might annoy some. I grew up in Nova Scotia after all and we have a similar situation.

(A Proud piece of N.S. Culture)

So the tourism benefits are at best a mixed bag, and would probably annoy the crap out of anyone who was a resident of the area effected. 

Now we get to the straight up bad. The Dutch laws when they were written in 1976 attempted to decriminalize personal soft drug use, while keeping traffickers out of the equation. Through a variety of loopholes, and eventual tolerance through public support, the coffee shop evolved out of these polices. Now this is where stuff gets really weird. The laws strictly forbid large-scale production. People are only allowed to buy 5g at a time, and can technically only carry 5g. Coffee shops themselves are only allowed to keep a stock of 500g of product. Now if we ignore the fact that anyone transporting the 500g a coffee shop needs is already breaking the law, how do the shops restock, because 500g of product at 5g a sale will last 100 transactions. I can tell you from experience that most shops serve far  more than 100 customers a day.  What am i hinting at here? Well because the laws are only designed to protect the individual and don’t really facilitate large scale production and sale, there is an awful lot of cannabis production that occurs on the grey market. This is produced in mostly unregulated illegal ways, then put into legitimate businesses that plead the 5th on where they got it and continue to sell it unabated. Here’s a quote from the website of one of Amsterdam’s premier seed producers:

The policy of tolerance was intended as a first step towards complete regulation. However, further steps were never taken, and the consequences have taken their toll. The biggest problem is that it is tolerated for coffeeshops to sell via the front door, while it is illegal for them to purchase via the so-called back door. Professional production is not permitted either. Thus, the system has created an operational business practise that is partly dependent on an illegal production and purchasing process that obliges coffeeshop owners to do business with criminals.

So if I didn’t explain it well enough, there it is from the horses mouth. Having a system where personal possession is decriminalized means people will demand somewhere to buy and consume the product they are personally entitled to use. 

This is what has been happening on the West coast, where simple possession has been de-facto decriminalized with various municipalities refusing to prosecute personal amounts. Coffee shops have quickly flooded in, and medical retailers are offering Skype sessions with a nurse where you can get a medical card in about three hours.  Since Canada’s dedicated medical suppliers can’t possibly be filling the west coast demand this means that there is very likely a lot of grey market growing going on. Vancouver and Toronto have begun to crack down and regulate this budding industry (Victoria has as well to a lesser extent), but the flood gate have opened and people are unwilling to comply. In the case of Amsterdam it took a while for the grey market to evolve, it was after all 1976 that their laws were changed,and ideas took a little longer to spread then. However, today  the Dutch marijuana business is by best estimates selling 265,000 kg of marijuana and its byproducts with an annual gross revenue of about $3.2 billion USD. Not only that but they are able to pass on all the experience they gained building up this hidden industry to anyone who has an internet connection. 

This is why the NDP is flat out wrong on its suggestion that the Liberals should decriminalize marijuana ahead of next March’s announced release of marijuana legislation. This will lead to a possible last hold for organized crime groups, and may give them the fuel they need to legitimize their businesses when full legalization comes. If it’s anything like Amsterdam it will also lead to a massive spike in production of hard drugs by these organized crimes groups, looking to diversify their interests. This is exactly the thing that the move to full legalization is trying to combat. 

Uruguay, a country who interestingly never actually  criminalized marijuana, tried to shut out drug producers by regulating government pot shops, that set the price at half of the black market average. This move undercut the black market so much that many experts speculate illegal cannabis production has all but ceased in the country. All thanks to the market, not heavy handed enforcement. 

Whats the summation here? Back off NDP, unless you want to help create the next great crime syndicate, the Liberals actually seem to be navigating this as best they can. Let’s not turn Canada into one big Amsterdam.

The Big Problem with High Driving

One way Ottawa will likely screw up Marijuana legislation

I’m taking a pretty safe bet here, but i’m going to make the prediction that when Ottawa  releases its long awaited marijuana legislation not all parts of it will be perfect. I’m sure your saying to yourself, “Wow he’s really going out on a limb here.” I know, generating controversy all over town. To make things more interesting though, I have a more precise prediction. Ottawa will likely make a total mess of the legislation concerned with marijuana-impaired  driving, why? Because they have no idea what they’re doing. Frankly, no one really does. 

(An illustration of Canada's police competency re: marijuana)

Firstly I want to talk about the tests that are currently on the market. Well, “tests” might be a bit strong as there’s basically one that seems to be employed in the handful of European countries and Australia that do roadside drug testing. The test is about as blunt as can be. You basically lick what looks like a home pregnancy test and in 3-5 minutes the  registers whether there is any trace of a range of sbutatcnes. This costs about $1.5 million dollars a year in Australia, which adjusted for Canada’s population and currency means a similar effort would cost Canada $2.17 million. This doesn’t sound like that much money on a whole, but the problem is in the amount of drugs these test can register in ones system. By all accounts the tests can find traces in people who have used a drug in the past two weeks. Even for those who haven't used drugs, this probably seems blunt.

(A Dutch traffic jam - the new reality
in Canada if alcohol were treated the same as pot)

If we applied this sort of a test to alcohol and any Canadian who had drank a beer in the last two weeks was an “impaired” driver, well Toronto might start to look a bit more like Amsterdam than anyone could have predicted.

Some closing thoughts on this oral testing before I move on to the next part of this argument, courtesy of Australian national university visiting fellow and health&justice expert David McDonald 

"Our system breaches human rights and is a gross waste of public funds," he said. "It's an infringement of our rights ... because, unlike roadside breath testing, there is no body of scientific evidence that shows this roadside oral fluid testing actually improves road safety”

This moves us on nicely to the next problem with testing:

Its really, really, hard to figure out how much marijuana effects a persons driving. 

Now the obvious statement at this point is, if you feel high, or impaired from any substance you shouldn’t drive. Hopefully this post will date itself in a few years once self driving Ubers rule society - but until then I want to make it clear that in no way do I condone driving under the influence of any substance that may impair a person in any facet. With that being said I can move on. 

As early as 1995 studies were presented that showed the component functions needed to drive (tracking, motor coordination, divided attention, and visual function) were impaired by marijuana. This isn’t surprising, but the fact is these studies merely measured the component parts of driving, not the act itself. When tested on simulators in various studies, high drivers preformed certain tasks worse, like weaving within their own lanes, but overall, drove slower than controls, overestimated their own impairment, and didn’t weave into other lanes or speed like more traditionally impaired drivers were prone too. Furthermore, in a 2013 study researchers found that in several areas where medical marijuana laws were instituted  traffic fatalities actually fell, specifically evening accidents, and drunk-driving accidents.

What this seems to suggest is that as well as being next to impossible to reasonably determine if someone is currently high, high drivers may not pose nearly the same danger as their alcohol consuming compatriots, and further than that, people that  drink alcohol and driven might opt to smoke marijuana instead reducing the overall traffic fatalities during peak periods. 

Setting no legal limit for marijuana impairment is obviously not an option, and that’s not what i’m arguing for. Considering the above argument however, combined with the fact that there is no evidence to suggest marijuana legalization increases consumption rates, here’s what I think: be prudent. Wait a little. Part of the reason there’s no good answer is because due to the ongoing war on drugs it’s pretty hard to study the effects of illegal drugs en masse. 

Since the preliminary research suggests that testing for high driving is at best blunt, and at worst a complete violation of civil liberty, that high drivers may not be as dangerous as some would believe, an that there won’t be a boom in either marijuana users, or traffic fatalities, why wouldn’t one wait? In my opinion, Ottawa should pass the bare minimum legislation, reaffirming/making it illegal to drive while impaired by marijuana, and leave the police with the same powers they currently have - to preform roadside assessments of a drivers impairment. Once we have some data and statistics to work with, as well as reports from police actually dealing with this issue, we can begin to generate some forward thinking legislation. 

However, if we rush things, as Ottawa likely will, what could be Canada’s first opportunity in some time to gain prominence as a progressive power on the world stage, could end up looking like a stoned boondoggle. At least that's the bet i'm hedging.