Marijuana advocates’ dream to see cannabis legalized in Canada could soon be coming true, thanks to Justin Trudeau’s sweeping election victory.
The day after Trudeau’s win, medical marijuana stocks surged and pot-smokers rejoiced in the hopes the Prime Minister-designate will make good on his promise to start legalizing and regulating the drug “right away” once in office.
Dana Larsen, who led a failed campaign to force a referendum on pot legalization in B.C., said he believes Trudeau will keep his word – and the average Canadian will reap the benefits of increased tax revenue and decreased policing costs.
“It’s a wonderful day for everybody in Canada, especially those who use cannabis,” Larsen said.
“We’re not going to be criminals anymore.”
Trudeau hasn’t set a firm timeline for when legalization could happen, but on Monday newly-elected MP and former Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair re-affirmed the Liberals’ promise.
“The criminal sanction hasn’t worked and frankly, an ideological commitment to maintaining a system that doesn’t work doesn’t make sense,” Blair said. “There’s a better way.”
Not everyone is keen to seen pot go mainstream, however.
Marijuana prohibitionist Pamela McColl said legalization would inevitably have an impact on the way Canadian children perceive the drug.
“It’s the normalization of it,” McColl said. “Making it appear an OK thing for an adult to do is an attractive advertisement to a kid who wants to be more adult-like.”
Larsen disagreed, and argued it's up to parents to make sure kids stay off potentially harmful substances.
“There’s plenty of things that are legal for adults to do that we don’t encourage youth to do,” he said.
“Alcohol and tobacco, driving a car, having sex, those are all things that adults can enjoy and do and that we discourage minors from doing, and cannabis can be the exact same way.”
There have also been concerns that legalization will make marijuana easier for children to access. Larsen believes regulating pot like alcohol and tobacco will actually make it harder to get, by putting some of Canada’s drug dealers out of business and decreasing the availability of cannabis on the black market.
Ensuring that illegal markets for pot do shrink will require smart decisions, he added.
Larsen urged the Liberals to learn from the mistakes made legalizing pot in Washington state, where he warned the taxes initially imposed were too sky-high, sometimes making it more expensive to buy legally than illegally.
“If you want to have legal marijuana work, it’s got to be better and cheaper than what’s currently on the market,” Larsen said.
With a report from CTV Vancouver’s Kent Molgat
