Thursday’s Supreme Court of Canada decision supporting the sale and use of edible marijuana products will not change the City of Vancouver’s declared intention to have them banned for sale.
This according to city manager Penny Ballem despite the fact that the court decision takes effect immediately.
It just adds to the confusion around marijuana use spawned by Stephen Harper’s ideologically driven government in Ottawa. And it reinforces the belief that none of this would be taking place had Pierre Trudeau’s Liberal government of the day almost five decades ago taken the advice of its own Le Dain Commission on the Non-medical Use of
Drugs and decriminalized the use of pot.
This week the court ruled that the federal government’s restriction on patients prescribed medical marijuana to only smoking dried leaves is an infringement on their charter rights regarding the liberty of the person. The court agreed with a B.C. court ruling that smoking is less effective and can be harmful. So patients should be allowed to purchase and consume the drug in its many and varied edible forms as well.
(This all revolved around a 2009 case involving Victoria resident Owen Smith, who was busted for trafficking when he was found to be cooking up batches of goodies containing pot for a local compassion club.)
This decision comes just as the City of Vancouver is in the midst of its public hearing regarding its proposed regulations covering the now more than 90 outlets selling pot for what they claim are medicinal purposes only.
That explosion in the number of shops in this city, as you may know, came when Ottawa changed the regulations a couple of years ago about who could grow pot and how people could buy pot legally.
From folks growing their own or having people nearby with licences grow it for them, the feds changed the rules so that only large-scale licensed growers could produce pot and the only way a person could obtain it, after a doctor filled out a form, was through the mail. And they could only buy and use pot as dried leaves that were to be smoked.
While the feds, most vocally in the person of Health Minister Rona Ambrose, continue to bellow that all those pot shops are illegal, the city, in an attempt to bring some order to the chaos of proliferating retail outlets, began the process of setting up regulations around those businesses.
The city claims that while it has no jurisdiction over the drug itself, it can regulate businesses, including location and who can be served.
So for all intents and purposes selling pot and using it in Vancouver is not going to get anyone charged under the Criminal Code.
The Vancouver cops won’t bust the shops if they aren’t serving adolescents or causing a disturbance in the neighborhood. The city has no interest in who is entering the shops to buy pot so long as they are 19 years of age or older. They could care less whether the person has a doctor’s prescription or got a note out of their cereal box.
The one apparent contradiction is the city’s proposal to ban the sale of edible marijuana products. That is undeniably regulating the drug over which the city says it has no authority.
Both Vancouver Coastal Health chief medical officer Patricia Daly and Ballem explained at council Wednesday that edibles are not regulated as to content by Heath Canada, so purchasers put themselves at risk, and besides, many of the products are attractive to kids in the form or candies and cookies.
The “compromise,” as Daly referred to it, is to all allow the sale of cannabis oil. People can purchase this and cook up their own edible products at home.
That aside, the Supreme Court ruling provides further evidence that folks will continue to flout the law.
Kirk Tousaw, the lawyer who handled the case of Owen Smith all the way to the Supreme Court, notes: “The primary unresolved issue is who can supply patients with these medicines. The law today does not allow anyone to do so.”
But the opportunity missed five decades ago that would have resolved all this is unlikely to be seized upon by the current crowd running the show in Ottawa today.
@allengarr
