Marijuana Laws

Hi everyone, I hope you had a great Easter long weekend. Mine flew by as I did some Good Friday skiing, visited with friends and family and promptly flew back to Calgary.

Over the last 15 years or so, the debate about the legalization of marijuana has drifted in and out of the public discourse, depending on what is going on at the time. In the late 1990's, while Jean Chretien was finishing up his third term there was serious discussion of a change in marijuana laws and a senate report was commissioned to study usage patterns and the effects of marijuana on people. I am not going to discuss this report in great detail, but it is available with a simple google search and is a very interesting read.

When Chretien left power and the conservatives in Canada began to regain power the debate effectively disappeared from the discourse. In the United States, which was much tougher marijuana laws then we do in Canada, the debate started with medicinal marijuana when Bill Clinton was in office. It continued with George W. Bush's administration, but only in a very limited fashion because of larger events such as the war on Iraq, 9/11, and the general right wing ideals of that administration. Recently, the debate has started to enter the public discourse again in the United States.

Often, this discussion gets clouded and dismissed by people who believe that all people advocating for marijuana legalization are simply frequent users who don't want to break the law anymore. Indeed, many people on this side of the debate are frequent users and want the laws changed for basic personal reasons. However, many people advocating for softer marijuana laws are people who are not active users and look at it from a soceital perspective instead of
a individual perspective (like your's truly).

First thing, I am not going to use the term "legalization" further in this discussion. In reality, there are two plausible forms of marijuana law softening - decriminalization and regulation. Decriminialization takes the criminal component out of the personal usage of marijuana. For instance, if a person gets caught smoking a joint, or growing a small amount in her home for personal consumption only is only a summary offense with a fine (similar to a speeding ticket or an open liqour ticket). Selling or growing marijuana for the purposes of sale would remain
a criminal offense. If the laws ever get softened, my guess is this would be the first step in the process as it is the safer option politically.

Regulation is the model that is used in the Netherlands. The government tightly regulates the production, import and sale of marijuana. It can only be purchased in "coffeeshops" in the Netherlands, and can only be consumed within the establishment it was purchased from or (I believe) in a private residence. Many people tout make an argument that it is unfair to group marijuana with other hard drugs such as cocaine, heroin and meth and is more analogous to legal drugs such as alcohol and tobacco. While this may be true, I do not believe that any progress in softening marijuana laws will be made using these "it's not that bad" or "it's no worse than
alcohol".

Ultimately, the argument must be made with reference to the one thing everyone pays attention to - money. Currently, the marijuana trade is worth tens of billions of dollars annually in North America alone. The majority of this money goes to underground organizations such as street gangs and drug cartels and the government does not receive any tax revenue from this. However, Canadian and American governments spend large sums of money annually to
combat the marijuana trade through imprisonment, law enforcement, and any adverse effects on the health care system. That money comes out of the taxpayers pocket. Bringing the marijuana industry "above-ground" will give the governments additional revenue and would help greatly in funding programs and enforcement of other "harder" drugs that are mentioned above (which should still remain illegal).

With the marijuana trade being underground, criminal organizations such as street gangs have a large part in keeping the trade moving. Like any organization, criminal or not, they require money to pay their people and various expenses they incur. By taking the marijuana trade out of street gangs and cartels hands you eliminate a key source of revenue for the gangs. By doing that, the gangs may decrease in size and we also may see a crime rate drop. I'm speculating of course, and I don't think anyone knows for sure what the impact on street gang and drug related crime would be.

My prediction would be a short-term uptick in gang violence followed by a reduction over the long-term. The reason is that the various gangs would find themselves "over-staffed" and under increased competitive pressure for less money in the drug market. The gangs would then start battling over turf, and their membership would dwindle to balanced levels more in line with the illegal drug market without marijuana.

One example of this happening was an short-term upswing in gang related violence in Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton in early 2009. Although there is never one single factor for these types of trends one contributing factor was the decreased market for drugs in Western Canada as the economy went into a major downswing. In the years leading up to the recession, the Western Canadian economy was red-hot and there was a strong market for recreational drugs, primarily cocaine. A lot of people in the drug trade started migrating West to help keep up with the demand. When the economy slowed, so did the market for cocaine. The gangs started encroaching on each others' turf to gain more of a reduced market, and violence starting occuring.

Anyways, a long rant for today.


Cheers.