I've made my case, but thank you for your expert critique. I would hate to be seen as 'falling flat'. It does amount to 'we have to appease a bunch of people'. Compromise is something we do all the time. Weed has been sold, very lucratively, as a black market commodity , and now as a medicine for a long time . It has also been demonized for just as long.To think that we can demand that government now have zero control is fool hardy and a pipe dream.That is never going to happen. What one wants and what one can reasonably expect to achieve are, sometimes, very different things. Prohibition on alcohol ended 100 years ago, but the government still heavily controls it's sale. Why don't you start with changing that? I mean allowing the gov to control booze is cowing, isn't it? Is it not cowing to allow the government to have the exclusive ability to protect me? Should we not all be allowed to mine uranium and build nuclear bombs? Where do you draw the line?
My case is clear. There will be rules, just like there are rules for everything else. It's part of life. I'm good with reasonable rules, as are most. My scenario of mj being treated like booze is the most plausible and palatable to both users and the non using public.
What do you expect our gain will be if there are no controls put on pot? How would your life be so much better with no government oversight than with the dirty old legalization? I really do not see what difference it would make. Like I said, you go on fighting the good fight, I will stay firmly planted in (cannabis enhanced) reality.
I voted Libertarian.
Thanks.
You're good with rules that make your life definitively worse. I'm not. You're willing to just stop there. I'm not. You call me an extremist for this. Your position is actually the extreme one - giving government the power to control what we can and cannot do (including growing plants) even when we harm no one else.
Legalization is here. It's simply how it is implemented now. And those in favor of a free market are the only ones that do not have a dangerous position (like the Liberals). You keep saying the Liberals haven't announced their position... actually they have.
We will remove marijuana consumption and incidental possession from the Criminal Code, and create new, stronger laws to punish more severely those who provide it to minors, those who operate a motor vehicle while under its influence, and those who sell it outside of the new regulatory framework.
We will create a federal/provincial/territorial task force, and with input from experts in public health, substance abuse, and law enforcement, will design a new system of strict marijuana sales and distribution, with appropriate federal and provincial excise taxes applied.
Notice how they don't mention removing penalties for production (only 'incidental' possession and consumption.. read: small amounts) and instead suggest those who sell outside the regulatory framework will be harshly penalized. Sounds a bit like Washington State.
I already explicitly stated what could be gained. We could fucking get off petroleum based products. We could lead the world in hemp production innovation. We could setup secondary industry perhaps too if we made it easier to do it. Pot would cost less than pennies a gram. There would be a material revolution as we moved from toxic petroleum based products to recyclable hemp based. We'd also be able to stop mining various resources instead opting to use hemp based composites. You can even make incredible batteries out of hemp. But right now hemp production is quite expensive THANKS REGULATIONS!
Regulatory capture is a form of political corruption that occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or political concerns of special interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating.
^^^^ This is what happens 100% of the time with regulatory bodies. In the case of our hemp regulations it's the monopolist oil companies and other interests who hate hemp which have captured it and made it very expensive to grow compared to what it should cost.
And you can't say it hasn't happened here either with some of the incredibly bullshit things they have approved. More over things like GMOs wouldn't happen in a free market because there would not be a regulatory body to protect them from liability (crop contamination et al). And you better believe our plant is ripe for the GMO picking (and our plants pollen is incredibly easy to spread too). There'd be no patent law to protect the innovation either, not that it's even very innovative.
You know how they keep fracking in Alberta despite the fact that anywhere that lives near an oil patch has massively increased cancer rates and other diseases due to the contaminated water table? Hide behind government again. Patent law protecting trade secrets. Regulations say what they're doing is OK too. Right on!
Because everyone else wants it that way has never been a good argument for anything... not since I was a kid. It was one of the first fallacies I learned about as a kid. Most kids do.
Legalization isn't going to stop if you advocate for a more free market. In fact your voice will likely be heard. And if a lot of others say the same... well... you know how it's supposed to go in a Democracy.
