{"id":40177,"date":"2017-09-16T03:00:18","date_gmt":"2017-09-16T07:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=40177"},"modified":"2017-09-15T10:15:10","modified_gmt":"2017-09-15T14:15:10","slug":"to-canadian-cops-its-as-if-justin-trudeau-had-just-invented-marijuana-and-the-stuffs-mystical-properties-are-unfamiliar-to-every-police-officer-in-the-land","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/09\/16\/to-canadian-cops-its-as-if-justin-trudeau-had-just-invented-marijuana-and-the-stuffs-mystical-properties-are-unfamiliar-to-every-police-officer-in-the-land\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s “as if Justin Trudeau had just invented marijuana, and the stuff\u2019s mystical properties are unfamiliar to every police officer in the land”"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the old joke had it, marijuana can cause paranoia, confusion, and total loss of reality in people who’ve never taken them. Canadian police organizations are desperate to keep legal marijuana from becoming a thing<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I cannot be the only one who feels the world is a little upside-down after Wednesday\u2019s hearings on marijuana<\/a> held by the House of Commons standing committee on health. The day\u2019s proceedings were essentially broken into two parts. First, high-ranking Canadian police came before the committee to complain that they didn\u2019t have the technical resources or the training to deal with legalized marijuana. They pleaded for the passage of the Liberals\u2019 Cannabis Act to be delayed.<\/p>\n

Then officials and scholars from the states of Colorado and Washington appeared to talk about their initial experiences with legalized marijuana. The contrast was remarkable. Canadian cops are behaving as if marijuana is a new problem for them\u2014as if Justin Trudeau had just invented marijuana, and the stuff\u2019s mystical properties are unfamiliar to every police officer in the land. The general thrust of the American testimony was not in conflict with the police demand to delay the legislation. Indeed, their major messages included going slow, getting it right, and learning from the history of the pot states. But none of the American witnesses, particularly the Washington and Colorado revenue bean-counters, showed any particular appetite for going back to the days of prohibition.<\/p>\n

They could have come to Canada and said, \u201cOh, God, what are you crazy SOBs thinking?\u201d There was little evidence of any such sentiment. I think it is safe to say that committee members who favour legalization, or who are anything other than implacably hostile to it, must have come away from the testimony broadly reassured.<\/p>\n

Washington and Colorado have not descended into a nightmare of chaos because they have legalized \u201crecreational marijuana.\u201d By most social measures these states are about what they were before legalization. Youth use of pot is being watched closely, and it appears to be steady, possibly reduced. The states\u2019 coffers have seen a modest benefit, and some of the money from pot taxation is made available for general drug education and abuse prevention\u2014not just the more intensive outreach to young people about weed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the old joke had it, marijuana can cause paranoia, confusion, and total loss of reality in people who’ve never taken them. Canadian police organizations are desperate to keep legal marijuana from becoming a thing: I cannot be the only one who feels the world is a little upside-down after Wednesday\u2019s hearings on marijuana held […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,66,9,10],"tags":[83,98],"class_list":["post-40177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-health-science","category-law","category-liberty","tag-marijuana","tag-police"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-as1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40177"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40179,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40177\/revisions\/40179"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}