One Step Closer to Cannabis Regulation

At the initiative of Moralea Milne, Councillor in the Municipality of Metchosin, B.C., a resolution at this year’s UBCM conference called on the government to decriminalize marijuana and research its regulation and taxation. As you may have noticed, you can’t stumble over a newspaper or a radio report without hearing that the resolution passed. Media headlines like “Municipal leaders join call to decriminalize pot,” announced the success of this resolution at B.C.’s annual conference of municipal elected officials in Victoria. Even now as I write, the CBC morning show is debating regulation of cannabis.

It looks like these municipal officials have joined the chorus of voices expressing their disapproval for current laws that prohibit cannabis. Due to the efforts of Stop the Violence BC, former mayors and former Attorney Generals have spoken out against current cannabis laws.

While the motion supports the decriminalization of marijuana, it also pushes higher levels of government to research legalization and taxation. At Monday’s study session at UBCM, city officials were tangibly frustrated with the current state of affairs. Municipal officials continually find themselves shouldering the burden of prohibition, including rising police costs and complaints from citizens that run the gamut from concerns about the grow op next door, to the lack of accessibility of medical cannabis.

At the same time, estimates of the value of the underground economy usually settle somewhere between 6 and 7 billion dollars and 44.3% of B.C. residents have used marijuana, with 46% of 16-18 year olds trying marijuana at least once.[1] Clearly this lucrative industry continues to attract customers.

Lurking in the background of the conversation are the same old concerns about the health and other effects of this drug. It seems to me that while we should acknowledge this concern, we need to remind ourselves that we currently regulate harmful substances like alcohol and tobacco. The question is this: are we achieving what we want from prohibiting cannabis? The statistics above suggest that we are not achieving our goals – and we haven’t included policing and other criminal justice costs that occur when people are arrested for possession.

As David Bratzer from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition reminded his UBCM audience on Monday, we have three options for the control or regulation of marijuana: leave things as they are, where an unregulated group of people produce and sell an unregulated product; we could legalize it and allow it to be fully commercialized by corporations, a mistake made ad naseum with alcohol and tobacco, or we could consider legalizing and regulating it.

This last option could draw on the best thinking in tobacco control, and combine this with a clear-eyed assessment of the positive and negative effects of this substance. Of course even among advocates of cannabis law reform there isn’t necessarily agreement about what a regulatory model would look like. So coming up with a model won’t be easy.

Sometimes it seems like attempts to legalize and regulate cannabis contradict the growing trend of public health scrutiny towards ingestible products. On Monday the local Medical Health Officer in Victoria, B.C. suggested that a ban on high sugar drinks might be coming. But we need to remind ourselves that this policy move would not ban sugar (try to imagine what would happen if we did) but instead send a clear message that high sugar drinks (and I’m talking about 473 ml drinks that contain as much as 16 teaspoons of sugar) might not be all that great for our health.

Clearly, I’m not a civil libertarian about these matters. I believe there is a role for social policy in regulating cannabis. Imagine a situation where you could buy cannabis products labeled with the THC content, where you knew if the product was organic and where the technologies for ingesting this product without smoke were widely available.

What do you think about a regulated model for cannabis? Let us know. We want to hear from you.