It is an end of an era. On Oct. 17, recreational or adult-use marijuana officially became legal in Canada ending a 95-year prohibition.
Will anything really change?
We suspect not.
Quite frankly, whether or not marijuana is legal or illegal, we doubt it will make a large impact on the number of users. For non-pot smokers, it wasn’t because it was illegal or they couldn’t find it that they decided not to partake.
And we don’t think the new marijuana stores are worried if they get these people as potential customers, as they will have enough business if they capture a small percentage of the illicit market.
According to the Canadian Centre on Substance and Addiction, 40 per cent of Canadians have used cannabis in their lifetime and 10 per cent of those used in the last year.
In Alberta, the numbers are slightly higher with 48 per cent of residents admitting they have used cannabis in their lifetime. Ninety-two per cent of them who use marijuana regularly said they first tried it when they were between 15 and 19 years old.
Our point is regardless of whether cannabis is legal or not society, law enforcement, governments already have had to deal with the ramifications that come from this use. Both the Alberta Urban Municipalities Association and the Rural Municipalities of Alberta, as well as councillors in Woodlands County, have all voiced their concerns that the provincial and federal governments are offloading the cost of enforcing the legislation onto the municipalities, saying they are the ones that have to do the heavy lifting.
Municipalities may have a point when it comes to the cost of creating their own land and public use bylaws that will govern where it can be sold and consumed in public, but the rest, not so much. Municipalities say they will be on the hook for enforcement costs, which is true for the larger cities. However, municipalities such as Barrhead, will that be true? It will all depend on the bylaw they create.
Four years ago Town of Barrhead councillors decided against enacting its own public smoking bylaw, for the primary reason that it is unlikely the municipality’s lone peace officer wouldn’t be able to enforce it. Although we are a proponent of a similar public cannabis consumption bylaw, we suspect it won’t be enacted for the same reason. Without the bylaw, it will be up to the RCMP to enforce the legislation and now that it is legalized, they will be spending less time on marijuana enforcement and therefore fewer costs.
And as for the costs of societal issues trickling down to municipalities, certainly, it is a possibility, but we would argue that municipalities have been dealing with these issues for some time.
