Four months have passed since the federal government legalized the possession and recreational use of cannabis. Have you noticed a change?
I ask, because I suspect that most of us are averse to change, which we believe will inevitably have an impact—a negative one, presumably—on our personal lives. Remember the fear that rose to fever pitch near midnight as the clock ticked resolutely toward the third millennium? Remember the outrageous claims and millions of dollars that were spent in readiness for what turned out to be a bogeyman? We rung in 2000 with friends, and I don’t think any of us really expected anything to happen when the clock ticked into a new day, new month, new century and new millennium, something only happens, well, every thousand years. Still, there was probably just a smidgen of relief in the room when the power didn’t go out and, when we eventually checked, our computers were just fine.
We typically prefer the status quo, as much as we like to complain about it. There just might be something to the old saw about the devil you know.
As I re-read through the Town of Creston survey to get public input about cannabis retail shops, I found it interesting that most responders must have wanted only one storefront to be licensed, as the preferred number indicated in the charts was 1.64. Factor in those, like me, who didn’t want to see any limit and you will see where I am drawing that conclusion.
Personally, I was happy when Town Council didn’t make any move to restrict the number of shops, preferring to restrict the locations to a handful of areas within Creston’s boundaries. No doubt some think that the more stores there the larger the market will grow, but I am quite certain there is no evidence to back that up. The simple issue for me was that I don’t want the Town of Creston bylaws and policies to push more people into shopping out of town. Apparently some BC municipalities have made that choice, but I think it is one made out of emotion, not logic. We don’t restrict the number of eateries because they contribute to obesity and we don’t cap the number of hairdressing businesses so that a smaller number can thrive. So why restrict the number of cannabis retailers?
Marijuana has been readily available since I was in my teens, and the decades-long “War on Drugs” has accomplished almost nothing. So I think it is a good thing that Canadians finally have legal options, and that at least some of the organized crime business will fade away.
What little opposition there has been locally to the three proposed cannabis retail shops has been mostly of the NIMBY sort, based on the same fear that any sort of change engenders in any neighborhood—“OMG, my property value is going to go down!” It is a fair enough concern, even though it almost never happens.
I am not advocating for change at any cost, but I think there needs to be some practical considerations behind upsetting the apple cart. Look to the south and see what a country gets when it elects someone they thought would bring change. Or look overseas to see what is happening in Great Britain after the majority of voters voted to leave the European Union. In both cases, the commonality was a growing distrust of government (fed generously by a very well planned and decades-long campaign by big business), and now it is quite likely that neither Trump nor Brexit would succeed if another vote was held today. The very people who supported the change are likely to be the biggest losers in the changes now being made.
The big differences come from how distant we are from the decision making process. The further away we are, the less trust we should have that change will be in our best interest. While the legalization of recreational cannabis was made in Ottawa, the feds played it safe by allowing provinces and communities a say in how, when and where the stuff can be sold. I suspect the federal regulations are more restrictive than they needed to be but still, the ability for municipalities to make their own decisions has gone a long way to making the change more palatable to the general public. It’s easy to buttonhole a town councillor to voice your opinions. Not so with a prime minister.
With the big picture in mind, legalizing marijuana was never going to be the earth-shattering event many predicted. It didn’t take an overly active imagination to picture a cannabis store within a few blocks of your house. But who but the most rabid supporters of Trump or Brexit could have envisioned exactly what their votes have led to?