FACE TO FACE: Should Canada (pass the Cheetos) legalize marijuana?
Legalize marijuana? Now that my Led Zeppelin, Retinal Circus generation is in charge, there is more enthusiasm for this idea from far beyond the Cheetos-munching crowd.
While I agree that filling our jails with pot smokers is pointless and that we should immediately stop doing this, it seems to me that legalizing cannabis might be opening a can of Pringles for which we're not prepared.
Weeding (sorry) through the reasons for legalizing marijuana, one argument resonates with most of us: Were pot legalized, governments could tax its sale and control its quality and strength. Sounds good.
But let's think it through.
Who would sell the legalized pot the government would supposedly tax and monitor? Whether sold publicly or privately, we would need assurance that pot sellers paid taxes and that their marijuana met government standards for purity and strength. We would need a cannabis quality control bureaucracy. Pot sellers would need a sales licence and growers a growing licence. We would need a marijuana licensing board. Police would need to sleuth and prosecute unlicensed growers and wait, I don't like where this is going.
We might actually need more laws to legalize marijuana than we currently have prohibiting it. And of course, where one has laws, taxation, licensing and quality control, one has organized crime.
The black marketing of pot wouldn't even skip a beat should we legalize it. Criminals would offer tax-free, higher quality pot for cheaper than one could get in the local legal weed shop, thus maintaining or even increasing the attraction of the illicit drug.
Let's keep pot smokers and growers out of our jails and get organized crime out of our schools.
Don't make marijuana legal; decriminalize it. It's a plant. Stop prosecuting people for possessing or growing it. Let people grow it on their back porch or get it from their cousin's farm in Langley. Unlike alcohol, which takes expertise and equipment to make, marijuana is comparatively easy to produce for oneself.
Unfortunately, decriminalizing marijuana wouldn't make the government piles of tax money. It might, however, stand a chance of reducing pot's illicit cachet - the only way to reduce our reliance on organized crime as cannabis suppliers.
The answer is within our roach, I mean reach. Let's toke, er, take the easy way out.
Face to Face columnist Jim Nelson is a retired Tri-City teacher and principal who lives in Port Moody. He has contributed a number of columns on education-related issues to The Tri-City News.
