In the United State, cannabis is creating a societal civil war.
In Canada, the country is finally surrendering to cannabis.
For the next several posts here, I will be looking to educate all of you about the just-passed Cannabis Act in Canada, which takes effect October 1. At the rates in which Canadian residents use cannabis, the country has decided to legalize, tax and regulate the product across the country to eliminate the black-market and profit appeal. We’ll start a series of blogs here with some general information about the new Cannabis Act, and we will spend time answering other common questions in the days ahead so you can be prepared for the new world of legal cannabis in Canada.
Tale of Two Nations
While the United States is having internal disagreements between state laws – many of whom have allowed medicinal use of marijuana, and a few have now expanded their legality to recreational use – and federal laws which outlaw all marijuana possession and use, Canada has passed federal legislation to legalize, regulate and tax cannabis in all forms and uses in the name of public safety and “if you can’t beat them, join them.”
Oh, Cannabis!
Canada, to be honest, may have turned cannabis into the national plant. Canadians have one of the highest usage rates in the world, with about 3 in 10 young adults and one in five youth under the age of 18 admitting recently that they had used cannabis at some point iwithin the past year.
That is a lot of black-market canaabis use, and thus a lot of potential revenue not showing up in the legal Canada economy, and a large opportunity to fill jail cells with cannabis users and dealers. As the Cannabis Act will not go into effect until October, the existing cannabis prohibions remain in place until that date, which may make the transition to this new legal cannabis economy take a little longer.
It’s like a speed-limit sign on the highway – while you may see it a quarter-mile down the road, you are not allowed to drive at that speed limit until you pass the sign. It’ the same idea; you can’t ramp up to legalization before the date – you get there after you get there.
The Goals of the Cannabis Act
The Cannabis Act was written in a similar fashion as the Tobacco Act, and it is designed to legalize cannabis use in a safe way by regulating, taxing and restricting access to it in a way that government can monitor it and essentially take away the profit motive from black-market dealers and reduce prison populations by taking out the criminal element of people who possess and use cannabis for personal use.
There is also a belief that organized-crime syndicates use the cannabis black market for profit and control, and the Act is designed to eliminate cannabis as the driver of organized crime activity in Canada be reducing or eliminating the profit motive so that cannabis will not be worth the trouble for these syndicates.
Cannabis vs. Tobacco
Canada has decided to take a similar approach with cannabis as it di with tobacco products, as the legislation regulating cannabis is drawn up with similar language as the Tobacco Act. In this sense, it will mean that the government will regulate and provide restrictions on packaging and promotion of cannabis in a similar way to tobacco products, and will include certain restrictions on the smoking of cannabis, such as on public transit and in workplaces.
That last part is important to safety officers, as it will now become our responsibility to develop cannabis-use codes in our workplace safety protocols which adhere to the federal restriction or prohibition of workplace cannabis use, and have the appropriate no-tolerance rule and consequences in place. For some workers, this will be not just the “what,” but also the “why” – and just to say “because the law says so” isn’t good enough. We have to impress upon them the dangers of cannabis use in the workplace as well as the risks of use upon worker health in general.
Yes, this bill is about education as much as it is about legalization.
Next time, we’ll answer some questions about the legislation, the design process and how it came to be in its current form – because if nothing else, we are here to educate and inform.