Canadian Marijuana Legislation: Benefit or Misfortune?

"Effectively what they're saying is, we don't trust police officers to make the right decision when it comes to reporting for work fit for duty. And I just find that to be an offensive approach."
"You want to create policies that are relevant and effective and that apply to the vast majority of your members, not policies that are designed to cater to the exception rather than the rule."
"It's effectively an outright prohibition."
Tom Stamatakis, president, Canadian Police Association

"We are aware the draft policy may contain a 28-day waiting period before a member can report for duty after consuming cannabis."
Mike McCormack, president, Toronto Police Association

An employee collects cuttings from cannabis plants at Hexo Corp.'s facilities in Gatineau, Que.

CHRIS WATTIE/Reuters

Canadian authorities are becoming ever more jittery with the October 17 date of marijuana legalization approaching in Canada. The medical community foresees insurmountable problems not only in prescribing marijuana for pain alleviation and medical condition symptom treatments, but with the wider likelihood of young people whose immature brains can be subject to cannabis having the effect of stunting maturity and younger children being admitted to hospital suffering aftereffects of cannabis consumption, a worrying concern.

Police are uncertain how they will be able to monitor cannabis use when drivers under the influence thinking nothing should impede them from driving as they ordinarily would, pose a threat to public safety. There is anticipation that the demand, as soon as legalization takes effect, will be greater than the product's market availability, leading people to turn or to continue to turn to the illegal marketing of marijuana, exacerbating an effect that legalization is meant to defeat.

And policing agencies across the country have written up rules limiting the use of cannabis for their officers just as the RCMP and Toronto police services consider rules to bar cannabis use by its members within 28 days of any shift. For the Calgary police service, it is forbidden to consume marijuana during down time entirely. Whereas the Ottawa and Vancouver police services are more permissive, allowing off-duty cannabis use with the expectation that officers will present themselves in a condition capable of performing their professional duties.

Then again, it is not only those in law enforcement who have large employee bases concerned with  how their staff will react to in-house rules. Everywhere workplaces in Canada have been confronted with the need to have rules on cannabis use, including those in the transportation industry for which the need for sober, uncompromising action and reaction is paramount to public safety. Correction Service of Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency are in the throes of finalizing employee rules.

Municipal by-laws in anticipation of having to contend with the unexpected and in the interests of conforming to common-sense precautionary measures in the outcome of a public released by legislation to use recreational pot, have produced a mixed brew. In the Province of Ontario it will become legal to smoke a joint strolling on a sidewalk or visiting a park or beach. Municipalities can override that permissiveness, however, just by treating marijuana the same way that smoking is treated.

Ottawa, the nation's capital, for example, will not permit smoking in city parks, at beaches and on municipal property, a bylaw which applies to smoking cannabis. "I believe that cannabis should be treated like alcohol and it should not be consumed in open, public spaces", stated the incumbent mayor, Jim Watson. The patchwork of municipal rules to emerge may turn out to be confusing for an issue that is itself complex. Owners of rental properties who don't permit smoking on their premises will certainly not wish to be open to smoking marijuana.

Health authorities will also look closely at homes where children live, while being exposed to their parents smoking cannabis. As well, the province, even at this rather late stage, has rolled out a public awareness campaign highlighting the danger behind the use of recreational cannabis in an effort to promote social responsibility. "Our message will remain clear. We will plainly tell Ontarians how our children, communities and roads will be protected, and how we will work to combat criminals", stated Attorney General Caroline Mulroney.

"It should go without saying that these ads do not promote cannabis use or the cannabis market. [The ads] will focus on social responsibility, including the serious health and addiction risks of short- and long-term cannabis use. If I could be frank, we concluded that such a system [public retail shops] was incapable of seriousl competing with the illegal market and in turn would leave our communities more vulnerable and susceptible to the underground market".

Which explains why it is that sales are to be turned over to private interests, the province through the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario tasked with regulating the marketplace, has the power to grant, and if necessary revoke, marijuana sales licences, authorizing hundreds of privately owned marijuana sales operations to be opened to serve what is believed will be a large and enthusiastic market of cannabis consumers.

There will be a limit of 30 grams sold per-transaction at cannabis stores. (CBC)