Legalizing Weed or Getting into the Pot Business

This post is about my country's angle on marijuana. I live in Canada. My prime minister is a guy named Justin Trudeau. If you've read my posts before you already know that I'm NOT a fan.

The long standing issue of what to do about pot has entered most governments by now. Not too many years ago, smoking pot could get you fined and even jailed right here in Canada. I myself was almost busted for smoking a joint not too many years ago by an over zealous young cop in Toronto. He held me up on at side street in Toronto for hours until I finally told him to either arrest me or let me go. Eventually he let me go but not after hassling me and my friend for half a day.

The many years of research show that smoking pot is by and large not a healthy habit. For young children, it's down right dangerous while for others it might render us silly. There are definitely some very useful benefits to weed as well. But this post in not about the good vs bad points regarding weed.

I've told my children at a young age that smoking pot is not good. I also told them that there are many  other things in this world that we do that if we do extensively, are not good. Ie. watching too much TV, eating too much, playing too much, studying too much (yes you read that right), etc.

All that said, I and most Canadians wanted our government to simply decriminalize pot. Our prisons are crowded enough with real criminals (murderers, robbers, etc.) that we don't need to put people in jail for smoking a joint or possessing small amounts of pot. But now Trudeau has unilaterally decided to not only decriminalize pot but to get into the post business! Soon they will be growing it, distributing it, selling it and regulating it. Like any enterprise most governments get into, they can't compete with the private sector. Their employment policies generally make it difficult if not impossible to fire bad employees. Their overhead is through the roof. So for those pot smokers who think this will drive the cost of pot down, think again. I predict that perhaps for the first few months the cost will go down simply because all the illegal, non government producers/sellers will think that they need to drop their prices in order to compete with the government. But soon thereafter the prices will level out.

Will pot usage increase? Most experts think so. Until now our government told us explicitly how dangerous pot was for us. Some of us (quite a few in fact) believed them. Many of us simply like to follow the law. After all, most of our laws are designed to keep us safe so we, for the most part here in Canada are law abiding citizens. Now our government has done a 180. They went from putting pot users in jail to selling pot to the public. If I was a child, I'd be very confused. Not too many years ago, police were regular visitors at public schools with the job of teaching children about the dangers of pot, how to identify it and how to call the cops when you see someone dealing it. Now our government is all about pot. Today they are not saying that it's good for you. But the implication that it is, is simply staring us in the face, after all they are getting into the weed business big time.

The message is clear. When our PM has a choice to make, it will most likely be the wrong one.