{"id":21537,"date":"2018-10-20T09:12:38","date_gmt":"2018-10-20T13:12:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/?p=21537"},"modified":"2020-03-26T03:14:14","modified_gmt":"2020-03-26T07:14:14","slug":"conformity-and-legal-haziness-typifies-the-first-days-of-legal-cannabis-in-canada","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2018\/10\/20\/conformity-and-legal-haziness-typifies-the-first-days-of-legal-cannabis-in-canada\/","title":{"rendered":"Conformity and legal haziness typifies the first days of legal cannabis in Canada"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Outside Centre Block on Parliament Hill on the day cannabis became legal in Canada. Nothing to see here. Photo; James Morgan<\/p><\/div>\n

Just another Wednesday<\/h3>\n

When I began to write this, cannabis possession had been legal in Canada for 38 hours and 18 minutes.\u00a0 To most people, that period of time seemed like any other mid-week in mid-October.<\/p>\n

This bold move, with consequences we may not understand for months or years, unfolded with the predictably banal public order and conformity that typifies so much of Canadian life.\u00a0 I was anticipating a bit of a reefer free-for-all on day one, even though smoking anything is largely banned in most public places.\u00a0 I drove into downtown Ottawa and parked the car in the By Ward Market. Along the sidewalks, all I could smell was whatever was being deep fried or grilled in nearby restaurants.\u00a0 I spotted several people smoking, but it was just boring old tobacco cigarettes they had between their fingers.\u00a0 A walk along Rideau and Wellington Streets to Parliament Hill revealed similar results.\u00a0 Tobacco, and diesel fumes from passing trucks and buses.<\/p>\n

On Parliament Hill, it looked and smelled like any other Wednesday.\u00a0 I expected to see people cheekily lighting joints from the Centennial Flame.\u00a0 Nothing, just the odor of natural gas that always wafts from the monument.\u00a0 Nobody was sneaking a patriotic puff outside the building where the legalization law, The Cannabis Act<\/em> was passed.\u00a0 Portly politicians and their slim-suited underlings walked about among the dozens of tourists.\u00a0 The only offensive social behaviors I saw were too much selfie-taking and a man who spit on a sidewalk.\u00a0 The only joints on Parliament Hill were joint committees.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"

Objects for smoking cannabis can be sold now in private stores, but the actual cannabis cannot be sold yet. Photo; James Morgan<\/p><\/div>\n

Lineups and cookies<\/h3>\n

Media reports from across Canada indicated there were only minor issues at cannabis retailers involving enthusiastic customers.\u00a0 Canada has six time zones.\u00a0 In Newfoundland, where private retail stores sell pot products, people excitedly waited until just after midnight to be the first legal purchasers of cannabis in Canada.\u00a0 An Alberta contact told me there was quite a lineup outside a private cannabis store in downtown Edmonton.\u00a0 By Thursday evening, CBC viewers were treated to photos of a Girl Guide (that\u2019s Canadian for Girl Scout) in her uniform, who had anticipated many people would be getting the munchies and sold out her entire stock of mint chocolate Girl Guide cookies outside another Edmonton cannabis store.<\/p>\n

In Qu\u00e9bec, legal cannabis can only be bought online or at outlets of the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 Qu\u00e9b\u00e9coise du cannabis (SQDC), a government-owned chain of stores similar to the Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 des alcools du Qu\u00e9bec (SAQ), which sells retail liquor.\u00a0 There are only six SQDC retail outlets right now, so in Gatineau, there were no doobie door crashers there, although a CBC report did say people from Gatineau had traveled to one of the SQDC stores in the Montr\u00e9al area.<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

Retail reefers in Ontario are only legally available online right now, from the government-owned Ontario Cannabis Store (OCS).\u00a0 The previous Liberal government had planned to open actual OCS locations, but the new Conservative government decided free enterprise was the way to go and have private stores instead.\u00a0 However, the announcement came too soon before the federally-imposed legalization day and private pot purveyors won\u2019t open for a few months.<\/p>\n

Laws and confusion<\/h3>\n

The biggest sources of confusion on and around legalization day are the potpourri of laws that change from province to province and depending on the local jurisdiction.\u00a0 The basic federal law allows for any adult to legally possess up to 30 grams of cannabis for personal use.\u00a0 Green-thumbs are allowed to have up to four plants in their home for personal use too.\u00a0 However, provinces are already trying to make changes.\u00a0 The legal age to have weed in Ontario is 19, in Quebec, it\u2019s 18.\u00a0 Quebec is trying to stop people from having their own plants and is considering raising the possession age to 21.\u00a0 Ironic for a province where bars stay open until 3:00 a.m.<\/p>\n

The smoking laws are inconsistent too.\u00a0 In Ontario, marijuana smoking will only be allowed in the same places where cigarette smoking is allowed under provincial law.\u00a0 The same goes for Qu\u00e9bec, but its law is less restrictive than Ontario\u2019s.\u00a0 So, many Qu\u00e9bec towns and cities have responded by passing their own cannabis smoking ordinances.\u00a0 In Lachute, where the town council went a step further and decided to ban public puffing in all places, even on sidewalks.\u00a0 Other towns and some Montr\u00e9al boroughs have passed similar laws.<\/p>\n

Reports on the efficacy of roadside screening for high drivers have been inconsistent as well.\u00a0 News stories have been inconclusive on what testing equipment police forces are using, if that equipment is reliable, and if all police forces are enforcing the new laws on driving while high, or the old ones.\u00a0 The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), known for their RIDE (Reduce Impaired Driving Everywhere) program of roadside checkpoints for drunk driving, recently Tweeted that their Eastern Region wants everyone to help them \u201cWeed out impaired drivers.\u201d\u00a0 The OPP wants to make sure nobody behind the wheel is one toke over the line.<\/p>\n

The old law prohibiting cannabis possession and the illegal trade of it was being enforced right until the very end.\u00a0 According to Twitter (which is always right), on October 10, provincial police in Qu\u00e9bec arrested a man for allegedly growing cannabis for the purpose of trafficking in a town north of Montr\u00e9al.\u00a0 The federal government is considering offering pardons for people convicted of possessing minor amounts of marijuana many years ago, but how easily those pardons will be offered and how accessible they will be is still unknown.<\/p>\n

I finished writing this 71 hours and seven minutes after cannabis became legal in Canada.\u00a0 The whole country hasn\u2019t gone to pot, but there are still many details to emerge from the haze.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just another Wednesday
\nWhen I began to write this, cannabis possession had been legal in Canada […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[880,17314,17315,5638,1124,17316],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21537"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/112"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21537"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21907,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21537\/revisions\/21907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}