Legalizing pot will be a process of trial and error, U.S. expert warns Trudeau

Legalizing marijuana in Canada will be “a lot harder to implement ... take a lot longer to do ... and cost more than you think,” says the director of Colorado’s Marijuana Enforcement Division.

Thestar.com
Oct. 25, 2015
By Ben Spurr

A U.S. expert in marijuana policy has some advice for Justin Trudeau as the prime minister-designate prepares to grapple with the thorny issue of legalizing pot: “You’re not going to get everything right the first time.”

Sam Kamin, the Vicente Sederberg Professor of Marijuana Law and Policy at the University of Denver, said that in Colorado - the first North American jurisdiction to allow recreational cannabis sales - ending the prohibition has been a process of trial and error.

“We’ve been willing to revisit and admit it was imperfect to start, and that is really important for the public to see,” Kamin said.

Those words of caution were echoed by Lewis Koski, director of Colorado’s Marijuana Enforcement Division. “It’s going to be a lot harder to implement than you think. It’s going to take a lot longer to do it. And it’s going to cost more than you think,” he told The Canadian Press.

By some measures, legalization in the U.S. has been a success. In Colorado, where the storefront sale of recreational pot has been legal since Jan. 1, 2014, the state has reaped $141 million in tax revenue from sales of the drug.

According to the pro-legalization Drug Policy Alliance, a year after Washington state’s first pot retailer opened in July 2014, low-level marijuana offences for adults were down 98 per cent and the state had saved “millions of dollars” in law enforcement resources.

But the states that have fully legalized recreational marijuana - Colorado, Washington, Alaska and Oregon - are also grappling with problems that include stopping children from accessing pot, regulating potentially potent edible forms of marijuana and preventing people from driving while high.

Keeping weed out of the hands of children has been Trudeau’s main rationale for legalization since he announced he was in favour of regulating pot sales in 2013.

But according to Kamin, there’s only so much the government can do to prevent youngsters from consuming the drug.

“I think most licensed businesses have too much at stake to sell to children or teens,” Kamin said. “The real problem is children either intentionally or unintentionally getting their hands on something that their parents or guardians bought legally.

“The state can be as responsible as it can, at some point it comes down to what happens in individual homes.”

The problem is most pronounced with edible marijuana. The products, which can come in the form of cookies and brownies, can appear especially appealing to children.

There are also concerns about adult use of edibles. Because the psychoactive effects of marijuana take much longer to take hold when the drug is eaten instead of smoked, there is a risk that adult users will accidentally ingest too much. According to the Denver Post, the family of 22-year-old Luke Goodman blamed edible pot for his suicide in March, when he shot himself after consuming five times the state’s recommended dose.

In February, Colorado introduced new rules requiring producers to put more explicit warnings on edible products.

According to Rob Patridge, chair of the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, his state is intent on learning from Colorado’s experience. Retail marijuana stores are expected to start opening in Oregon by the end of 2016, and Patridge said the state plans to compel manufacturers of pot products to submit their labels for government approval before they hit the shelves “rather than try and deal with those issues after the fact.”

Another concern that could accompany legalization is drug-impaired driving. After prohibition was lifted in Washington, fatal accidents didn’t increase significantly. But the proportion of drivers involved in deadly collisions who tested positive for THC (the active chemical in marijuana) doubled, to 12 per cent in 2014 from 6 per cent in 2010.

Getting behind the wheel while high is already a worrying phenomenon in Canada. According to a 2013 study by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 10 per cent of Ontario drivers in Grades 10, 11 and 12 reported driving within one hour of using pot.

Catching offenders is complicated by the fact that there is no widely accepted equivalent to the breathalyzer for marijuana.

But according to Dr. David Hammond, applied public health chair at the University of Waterloo, legalizing cannabis might actually make it easier to prevent people from driving high.

“When the message is just, ‘don’t do it - full stop,’ ” authorities aren’t educating people on the risks of using pot and driving, Hammond said.

“I think this is potentially an opportunity to talk a lot more about the risks of driving while high, and talk about it with kids at the age that we know it’s an issue - junior high and high school - like we do with drunk driving.”

If the experience in U.S. jurisdictions is any indication, it could take until at least the second half of Trudeau’s term as prime minister to implement legalization. Between now and then, the new Liberal government will have to make key decisions on issues such as how much tax to levy on drug sales and how old Canadians will have to be to legally buy weed.

Asked about how the government will approach legalization, Dan Lauzon, a Liberal spokesman, referred the Star to the Liberal campaign platform.

The document offers few specifics, but states that in addition to removing marijuana consumption and incidental possession from the Criminal Code, the Liberal government will “create new, stronger laws to punish more severely those who provide it to minors” as well as “those who operate a motor vehicle while under its influence.”

“As for the specific details of the implementation ... the government will be sworn-in on November 4,” Lauzon wrote in an email, “at which point we will begin implementing our platform commitments in a responsible way.”