With a new majority Liberal government now ensconced in Ottawa, the discussion about marijuana legalization has begun in earnest.
For me, the most important thing here is to separate two issues that are unfortunately intermingled, but should not be, recreational versus medical use of the plant.
I will deal with recreational first. This needs to be done as quickly as possible for two main reasons, neither of which are political, but there are plenty of those as well.
The first, obviously, is that governments need the money. Canadians are among the heaviest users, and most skilled producers of top quality weed. The tax spin-offs could be enormous.
The Green Party, who along with the Liberals, promised legalization in the recently completed general election, estimated the potential windfall to the federal government would be more than $5 billion. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said that, like alcohol, regulation of pot distribution would fall under provincial jurisdiction so the provinces have a lot to gain as well. And that does not take into account all the savings to the justice system.
That brings me to the second point. Every single day the law remains unchanged approximately 200 Canadians are being busted for marijuana-related offences. I am not entirely sure what kind of mechanisms are available to Parliament, but surely while they are drafting the bill, they could put a moratorium at least on simple possession.
It is simple, people want to use tetrahydrocannabinol (THC, the psychoactive ingredient in pot) and will continue to do so regardless of the law. Adults should have that choice just as they do with alcohol, nicotine and caffeine.
The recreational question, however, pales in comparison to the complexity of the medical marijuana issue.
Legalizing its recreational use will solve some of the medical problem because a lot of the so-called “medical” users are just stoners seeking a way around the possession prohibition.
Legalization may also open the door to the proper medicalization of cannabis. Right now, mainly because of its nebulous legal status I contend, nobody is doing the proper kind of research to turn the medicinal components of marijuana into properly refined, regulated and dosed prescription drugs.
There are so many problems with using pot for medicinal reasons, but let’s start with the most obvious. If you sat down and tried to design the worst possible delivery mechanism for a plant-derived drug it would be smoking it. There are so many negative side effects to smoking weed—mainly the same ones as smoking tobacco—it makes one wonder if the alleged benefits are worth it.
In fact, for those who may legitimately benefit from marijauna’s potential medicinal properties, one of the unwanted side effects can be getting high. For example, people swear it reduces pain. There is some evidence that the compound cannabidiol is effective in reducing pain without the psychoactive effects of THC. There is also some evidence that THC does not reduce pain, but makes it more bearable by altering the user’s emotional state.
Cannabidiol may also be an effective therapy for epileptic seizures. Proper clinical trials of this and other ingredients in marijuana are required.
As I said, marijuana currently exists in this weird legal limbo that does not do justice to either recreational or medicinal users and damages society at large.
Perfectly productive members of society keep getting criminal records for simply using a relatively benign substance while organized crime flourishes bringing violence along with it.
Meanwhile, there is little incentive for pharmaceutical research because there is no requirement to prove its efficacy as there is with all other prescription medication.
In short, the solution to the marijuana problem is legalizing recreational use while cracking down on medicinal use by properly regulating it as a pharmaceutical product.
Of course, there will always be some people you can’t stop from self-medicating, but that’s the same issue we have with alcohol. It is time we started treating them the same way.
