Close X
Friday, November 29, 2024
ADVT 
National

Pot should be legalized, regulated and sold like alcohol, says addiction centre

Darpan News Desk The Canadian Press, 09 Oct, 2014 11:01 AM

    TORONTO - Canada's largest mental health and addiction treatment and research centre is calling for the legalization of marijuana, with strict controls that would govern who could buy weed, from where, and in what quantity.

    In a policy statement released Thursday, the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto said cannabis should be sold through a government-controlled monopoly and with limited availability and an age limit, possibly through outlets similar to provincially operated liquor stores.

    "Legalization means that we remove all penalties for cannabis possession and use by adults," said Jurgen Rehm, director of social and epidemiological research at CAMH.

    “Canada’s current system of cannabis control is failing to prevent or reduce the harms associated with cannabis use,” he said Wednesday. “Based on a thorough review of the evidence, we believe that legalization combined with strict regulation of cannabis is the most effective means of reducing the harms associated with its use.”

    Those harms include respiratory diseases such as lung cancer, the risk of death or disability from motor vehicle accidents, and deleterious effects on cognition, particularly among pot-smoking adolescents because their brains are still developing.

    Cannabis use also can also become habitual, said Rehm, noting that about 30,000 people are treated for pot dependence each year in Ontario alone.

    Given its potential harms, legalizing and controlling the sale of marijuana in Canada is an important public health measure, Rehm stressed.

    Although possessing pot is illegal, a significant proportion of Canadians still use the herb. In fact, Canada has one of the highest rates of cannabis use in the world, with 40 per cent of Canadians having used it at least once in their lifetime.

    In Ontario, for instance, a survey showed about the same percentage of people aged 18 to 29 reported having smoked pot in the previous year.

    "We have a lot of our adolescents smoking marijuana, so it does not do what it's supposed to be doing," he said of criminalizing cannabis. "We push our youth, our adolescents into an illegal market, and where other drugs are sold from the same dealer."

    "And we cannot control all of this unless we legalize the substance ... plus we can control the potency and the quality too."

    Part of that control would include restricting sales to consumers over a certain age — such as 19, 20 or 21 — similar to age rules in place for those buying alcohol.

    Ian Culbert, executive-director of the Canadian Public Health Association, welcomed the call for legalization by CAMH.

    "The war on drugs has failed and it has done more damage than any possible good," said Culbert. "So we have to take a different approach."

    "Canadian society isn't overnight going to embrace this idea of legalization and regulation, so it's a conversation that we have to have."

    In May, the association issued its own policy statement saying that "Canada needs a public health approach to managing illegal psychoactive substances that de-emphasizes criminalization and stigma in favour of evidence-based strategies to reduce harm."

    Benedikt Fischer, an addictions expert at B.C.'s Simon Fraser University, said the federal government's insistence on criminalizing marijuana possession and use has led to "hundreds of thousands" of Canadians over the years carrying a criminal record, which can have a far-reaching impact on their lives, including being unable to qualify for certain jobs.

    "And we're not effectively deterring cannabis use nor are we effectively preventing harms," said Fischer, adding that pricing of a legalized product is also a key element of regulation — high enough to prevent too much use, but not so high it would send people to the black market looking for a less expensive product.

    "The objective is not to make cannabis as cheaply available to as many people as possible, but really to make sure that people who want to consume cannabis have a safe and regulated and controlled supply that they choose over the black market," he said.

    Fischer said the federal government already has a model in place for a legalized and regulated industry in licensed growers of marijuana for medical purposes. Recreational pot is no different than medicinal weed, he said, and there are purportedly hundreds of applications by other growers seeking licenses.

    Rehm said a legalized system would need to be designed at the federal level and given the blessing of Parliament, but CAMH does not advocate following the somewhat wild-west example of Colorado, which has legalized pot but has few constraints on who can sell the product or to whom.

    "That's exactly what we do not want."

    MORE National ARTICLES

    Four Arrested After Five People Shot In Toronto: Police

    Four Arrested After Five People Shot In Toronto: Police
    TORONTO — Four people have been arrested in a shooting in northwest Toronto that sent five people to hospital, one with life-threatening injuries, police said Thursday.

    Four Arrested After Five People Shot In Toronto: Police

    National Farmers Union to speak against omnibus agriculture bill in Ottawa

    National Farmers Union to speak against omnibus agriculture bill in Ottawa
    SASKATOON - The National Farmers Union says a new omnibus agricultural bill should be broken up into manageable parts.

    National Farmers Union to speak against omnibus agriculture bill in Ottawa

    Cop Who Watched Women have Sex in BC Jail Found Not Guilty of Breach of Trust

    Cop Who Watched Women have Sex in BC Jail Found Not Guilty of Breach of Trust
    KAMLOOPS, B.C. - A senior Mountie accused of watching two female inmates have sex in a jail cell in Kamloops, B.C., has been found not guilty of breach of trust by a public officer.

    Cop Who Watched Women have Sex in BC Jail Found Not Guilty of Breach of Trust

    Alleged human smugglers from Cuba, Sri Lanka take cases to Supreme Court

    Alleged human smugglers from Cuba, Sri Lanka take cases to Supreme Court
    OTTAWA - The Supreme Court is set to examine the country's human smuggling laws.

    Alleged human smugglers from Cuba, Sri Lanka take cases to Supreme Court

    MP Wants Kinder Morgan to Register With Elections BC as Third-party Advertiser

    MP Wants Kinder Morgan to Register With Elections BC as Third-party Advertiser
    BURNABY, B.C. - A Vancouver-area member of Parliament believes energy giant Kinder Morgan should register with Elections BC as a third-party advertiser because of firm's pipeline expansion ads.

    MP Wants Kinder Morgan to Register With Elections BC as Third-party Advertiser

    German witness grilled as Luka Rocco Magnotta murder trial enters Day 8

    German witness grilled as Luka Rocco Magnotta murder trial enters Day 8
    MONTREAL - The jury in Luka Rocco Magnotta's first-degree murder trial is hearing again this morning from the German man who housed the accused in the days preceding his June 2012 arrest in Berlin.

    German witness grilled as Luka Rocco Magnotta murder trial enters Day 8

    PrevNext