Posted on 10/10/2014 10:53:02 AM PDT by ConservingFreedom
Canada’s largest mental health and addiction treatment and research centre is calling for the legalization of marijuana, with strict controls that would govern who could buy weed, from where, and in what quantity.
In a policy statement released Thursday, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto said cannabis should be sold through a government-controlled monopoly and with limited availability and an age limit, possibly through outlets similar to provincially operated liquor stores.
“Legalization means that we remove all penalties for cannabis possession and use by adults,” said Jurgen Rehm, director of social and epidemiological research at CAMH.
“Canada’s current system of cannabis control is failing to prevent or reduce the harms associated with cannabis use,” he said Wednesday. “Based on a thorough review of the evidence, we believe that legalization combined with strict regulation of cannabis is the most effective means of reducing the harms associated with its use.”
Those harms include respiratory diseases such as lung cancer, the risk of death or disability from motor vehicle accidents, and deleterious effects on cognition, particularly among pot-smoking adolescents because their brains are still developing.
Cannabis use also can also become habitual, said Rehm, noting that about 30,000 people are treated for pot dependence each year in Ontario alone.
Given its potential harms, legalizing and controlling the sale of marijuana in Canada is an important public health measure, Rehm stressed.
Although possessing pot is illegal, a significant proportion of Canadians still use the herb. In fact, Canada has one of the highest rates of cannabis use in the world, with 40 per cent of Canadians having used it at least once in their lifetime.
In Ontario, for instance, a survey showed about the same percentage of people aged 18 to 29 reported having smoked pot in the previous year.
“We have a lot of our adolescents smoking marijuana, so it does not do what it’s supposed to be doing,” he said of criminalizing cannabis. “We push our youth, our adolescents into an illegal market, and where other drugs are sold from the same dealer.”
“And we cannot control all of this unless we legalize the substance … plus we can control the potency and the quality too.”
Part of that control would include restricting sales to consumers over a certain age — such as 19, 20 or 21 — similar to age rules in place for those buying alcohol.
Ian Culbert, executive-director of the Canadian Public Health Association, welcomed the call for legalization by CAMH.
“The war on drugs has failed and it has done more damage than any possible good,” said Culbert. “So we have to take a different approach.”
“Canadian society isn’t overnight going to embrace this idea of legalization and regulation, so it’s a conversation that we have to have.”
In May, the association issued its own policy statement saying that “Canada needs a public health approach to managing illegal psychoactive substances that de-emphasizes criminalization and stigma in favour of evidence-based strategies to reduce harm.”
Benedikt Fischer, an addictions expert at B.C.’s Simon Fraser University, said the federal government’s insistence on criminalizing marijuana possession and use has led to “hundreds of thousands” of Canadians over the years carrying a criminal record, which can have a far-reaching impact on their lives, including being unable to qualify for certain jobs.
“And we’re not effectively deterring cannabis use nor are we effectively preventing harms,” said Fischer, adding that pricing of a legalized product is also a key element of regulation — high enough to prevent too much use, but not so high it would send people to the black market looking for a less expensive product.
“The objective is not to make cannabis as cheaply available to as many people as possible, but really to make sure that people who want to consume cannabis have a safe and regulated and controlled supply that they choose over the black market,” he said.
Fischer said the federal government already has a model in place for a legalized and regulated industry in licensed growers of marijuana for medical purposes. Recreational pot is no different than medicinal weed, he said, and there are purportedly hundreds of applications by other growers seeking licenses.
Rehm said a legalized system would need to be designed at the federal level and given the blessing of Parliament, but CAMH does not advocate following the somewhat wild-west example of Colorado, which has legalized pot but has few constraints on who can sell the product or to whom.
“That’s exactly what we do not want.”
He was on the pain killers before, the pot was the new ingredient. Besides, what are you gonna do, tell someone they can't take something with something else?
What are you, some kind of Prohibitionist who wants to deny people their freedom?
Perhaps it wouldn't happen to you, but what makes you think everyone has the exact same response as do you? I know people whom alcohol makes belligerent and other people whom it makes happy. Opposite effects, same drug.
We've got enough history on this substance to realize that some people get really whacked out on it. Some people use it to cover up serious mental conditions.
As I mentioned before, we don't have speed limit signs for race car drivers, we have them for average people, among some of which even the posted limit may be too fast.
Liquor is more restricted than beer, and I'm OK with that. (It would be polite to ping me when talking about me, btw.)
When you put poison in someone's hand and convince them that it is harmless so go ahead and try it, it is murder, not suicide.
Drugs are a very slow acting poison, and TELLING ANYONE ABOUT THEM is the HARM. Introducing them to this poison is the HARM.
Far less poisonous that thousands of legal products
Here we go again. You are talking about Alcohol.
"WAAAAAAAAAH!!!! They get Alcohol! I want my WEEEEEEEEEEDDDDDD!!!!!"
That's a silly overstatement - I've corrected a number of your false ideas on the subject.
OMG! You mean those pot dealers are denying people their freedom? Where's the outrage? It's almost as if they are arguing that the stuff is dangerous or something.
"Conservingfreedom" here will tell you that people have a right to take as big of a dose as they want, and nobody ought to be allowed to tell them any differently.
When you put poison in someone's hand and convince them that it is harmless
Who's doing that?
Far less poisonous that thousands of legal products
Here we go again. You are talking about Alcohol.
That's the only poisonous legal product you know of?
"You posted a cartoon graphic, so you must be right. You win the debate! Good job!"
You’ll get over it. Or not, I don’t care.
OMG! You mean those pot dealers are denying people their freedom? Where's the outrage?
Only in your fevered mind. I fully support a business owner's right to not sell to whoever he wants to not sell to.
There is a reason drugs were legal at this nation's founding and for over a century thereafter.
Quintessential liberalism - we elite know better than you unwashed rabble how you should live your lives.
It is not about how people live their lives, it is about how to keep them from wrecking ours because of their irresponsibility.
Any sane person would not continue to allow someone to fire a gun into the air. They would beat them down with vicious force if necessary to stop them from doing that, because any sane person realizes that eventually those rounds are going to come down and hit someone else.
Stopping idiots from using drugs is self defense, it is not about running people's lives.
The socialist state wants you drugged up. Get a freakin clue, will ya?
If that was a good analogy to drug use we'd all be dead already from use of the already legal drugs - but we're not ergo it isn't.
Your loathsome slur demonstrates the moral and factual bankruptcy of your position better than I can do. Thank you!
It's not a slur when it's true. Pushers push. You are pushing in principle, if not in fact.
I should not be surprised to learn that you are pushing in fact as well.
That study mentioned up thread says it is addictive to some people.
Yes, the world would forget all about marijuana if it wasn't discussed on Internet message boards. ROTFLMAO! (And I've never posted a word about "how much fun it is.")
Your every post on a pot thread is as much a reminder as mine.
No society can tolerate people sowing seeds of death in it's midst. Your product leads to death for some people and injury for others.
I know quite a few pot heads. Everyone of them gets a government check. I have a right to not pay for people wrecking their minds to the point where they cannot or will not work.
You aren't about freedom, you are about a destructive indulgence which no society can afford.
Your loathsome slur demonstrates the moral and factual bankruptcy of your position better than I can do. Thank you!
You are pushing in principle
I am "pushing" only for adult legalization - a policy which on the available evidence will do more to keep pot out of kids' hands that criminalization for adults has done.
Of the pot users I've known, not one gets a government check.
That you don't care is obvious by your opinion. If you cared, you would learn what you are talking about.
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