{"id":45108,"date":"2018-09-29T03:00:06","date_gmt":"2018-09-29T07:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=45108"},"modified":"2018-09-28T10:48:59","modified_gmt":"2018-09-28T14:48:59","slug":"the-ontario-governments-amazingly-sensible-approach-to-legal-cannabis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/09\/29\/the-ontario-governments-amazingly-sensible-approach-to-legal-cannabis\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ontario government’s amazingly sensible approach to legal cannabis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Selley<\/a> expresses what a lot of surprised people must be feeling after Premier Doug Ford’s government introduced startlingly mature and sensible rules for the distribution and sale of cannabis products in the province after the federal government’s legalization is enacted:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Ontario government tabled its cannabis retail framework in the legislature on Thursday, and it only further repudiates the Frightened Communist model envisioned by the Liberals. The government will sell pot online, as before, and will maintain a monopoly on wholesaling. But the rest will be up to the private sector, under the control of the Alcohol and Gaming Commission. As it stands, there won\u2019t even be a cap on the number of licences; a government official said Thursday they expect 500 to 1,000 applications right off the bat.<\/p>\n

In response, OPSEU president Smokey Thomas beamed out a furious press release on behalf of his spurned members \u2014 er, sorry, on behalf of Ontario\u2019s \u201cmunicipalities and communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUnlimited stores and unlimited places to smoke will cause unlimited problems,\u201d Thomas averred. \u201cIt\u2019s outrageous. We\u2019re going to become the wild west of cannabis and Sheriff Doug Ford is going to skip town, leaving communities and municipalities holding the dime bag.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas predicted Premier Ford would hand out retail pot licences to \u201cConservative insiders\u201d and \u201ccorporate donors.\u201d (Corporate donations are illegal.) He accused Ford of funnelling what by rights should be public profits into \u201cprivate pockets.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Ontario\u2019s finances are truly as bad as Ford wants us to believe, why is he giving away the millions, maybe even billions, in revenue we\u2019d get if cannabis sales were public?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

Does the government make money on cigarettes? On alcohol sold in bars and restaurants, at privately run LCBO agency stores and, of late, in supermarkets? Of course it does. Scads of it.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s all quite ridiculous, as OPSEU press releases tend to be. But Thomas is not wrong when he argues the new approach is remarkably permissive. Perhaps most notably, whereas the Liberals\u2019 proposed rules banned using marijuana in public, the PCs\u2019 would allow you to smoke or vape it anywhere you can tobacco (though not in cars or boats). But it\u2019s far less permissive than one might expect in other ways as well.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Selley expresses what a lot of surprised people must be feeling after Premier Doug Ford’s government introduced startlingly mature and sensible rules for the distribution and sale of cannabis products in the province after the federal government’s legalization is enacted: The Ontario government tabled its cannabis retail framework in the legislature on Thursday, and […]<\/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":[831,6,9,10],"tags":[1188,83,87,661,392],"class_list":["post-45108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-cancon","category-law","category-liberty","tag-dougford","tag-marijuana","tag-ontario","tag-regulation","tag-unions"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bJy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45108","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=45108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45109,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45108\/revisions\/45109"}],"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=45108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}