-
Hi Guest: Welcome to TRIBE, the online home of TRIBE MAGAZINE. If you'd like to post here, or reply to existing posts on TRIBE, you first have to register. Join us!
It's official: Canada is legalizing cannabis.
- Thread starter alexd
- Start date
el presidente Highsteppa
TRIBE Member
8 to 12 weeks from now?
praktik
TRIBE Member
Miles better than prohibition - time to end the criminalization of Canadians for having something less harmful than legal drugs
Mondieu
TRIBE Member
That depends on whom and when and where...
Legalizing and strictly regulating cannabis: the facts - Canada.ca
praktik
TRIBE Member
Miles better than prohibition.
You can still be charged for making and distributing black market alcohol or tobacco, and such charges happen every year
praktik
TRIBE Member
Nice - also a social benefit.
We want to basically be "out" about our pot use on one side of the family - my side is 420 up and down with the little bro abstaining more than my sis or my parents, so no issue there.
But the other side on my wife's side is more traditional small town Ontario types - they buy into the stigma and that doing it is wrong "cause its illegal"
Soon we'll have the legal change to take that away and bust our shit out at the family BBQ and blow some minds some day....
We want to basically be "out" about our pot use on one side of the family - my side is 420 up and down with the little bro abstaining more than my sis or my parents, so no issue there.
But the other side on my wife's side is more traditional small town Ontario types - they buy into the stigma and that doing it is wrong "cause its illegal"
Soon we'll have the legal change to take that away and bust our shit out at the family BBQ and blow some minds some day....
acheron
TRIBE Member
Something pot smokers are going to need to keep in mind is that pot will now essentially be equivalent to alcohol, legally and socially. So the same social rules apply. There are plenty of situations where alcohol just isn't acceptable and pot will be the same. So getting baked at your family BBQ will be the same as getting drunk - if your family doesn't like people getting drunk, they won't be happy about people getting high, either.
praktik
TRIBE Member
Everyone's drinking at these events I'm considering, so it's not like a little fun isn't happening.
On my side of the family, most social events involve more pot than booze as there are a few family members off alcohol completely. Family friends are hip to it too. In reality - a few tokes or a few beers are equivalent, for us it's just natural (not on her side for sure!)
Anyway, looking forward to doing what I prefer, instead of drinking, more often, and a slow end to old stigma that will come year by year. I hope to be part of that change in my circles
It's a big deal that it's legal now, opens the door to that. I can show people what it's like to meet someone who takes a toke while they drink beer and we're all on the same level.
On my side of the family, most social events involve more pot than booze as there are a few family members off alcohol completely. Family friends are hip to it too. In reality - a few tokes or a few beers are equivalent, for us it's just natural (not on her side for sure!)
Anyway, looking forward to doing what I prefer, instead of drinking, more often, and a slow end to old stigma that will come year by year. I hope to be part of that change in my circles
It's a big deal that it's legal now, opens the door to that. I can show people what it's like to meet someone who takes a toke while they drink beer and we're all on the same level.
Last edited:
workdowntown
TRIBE Member
On backdoor 'free use' mitigating tactics from conservative/prohibitionists, here in NL it is legal to sell but illegal to grow on any kind of industrial scale.
These mierenneuken rules -as a side effect or by design, who knows?- keep the black market absolutely in control and provide a bulletproof pretext for city halls/cops etc to raid any store as and
when they see fit to ensure they're only holding [insert very small amount they're legally allowed to have in store at any one location] and extract fines.
Absolute racket.
praktik
TRIBE Member
Black market is eternal, we can only control its size.
Black market tobacco and booze still happens, and we might remember the linear correlation between the size of the black markets there and the amount of our vice taxes and other restrictions of access. This see sawed back and forth over the years.
We are likely to start legalization with sizeable black markets for pot and related products, but with huge dents taken out, substantial ones. Dents that will grow bigger over time.
Across provinces we will see differences here, and across the decades to come the general trend will be to a smaller black market, on the lines of what we see today for other legal products.
Will take a decade or three to get there, and some provinces will be slower than others to get there.
Mondieu
TRIBE Member
Not gonna happen amigo. You may see a decrease in street level sales of shwag, during business hours - but it won’t make a lick of difference to any other level of the black market. This ain’t booze. It grows where it’s sowed. ...and there’s less than zero chance that Ontario’s version of the roll-out will make the slightest dent in the already existing multi-million dollar market. Folks that know, already know.
Folks who’s curiousty leads them into a government run Cannabis shop will quickly find out that cheaper, higher quality, greater diversity and easier access already exist in the established market.
...and as to “legalization”... Will the minimum wage earning part-timer in your local government cannabis depot face the newly mandated 14 year sentence for providing cannabis to someone underage, with fake ID?
It’s great that nobody will go to prison for a roach anymore but beyond that, this is just an attempt to grab a portion of the proceeds from an existing industry that’s fully embedded, knows the ropes, and has developed mad stealth skill from 100+ asinine years of prohibition.
The government of Canada already delivers a wide array of high quality bud, concentrates and edibles right to my door, across provincial borders, from several sources, within 3 days. Have done for a long time now. No medical license required. How are these clowns gonna deal with that? One down, 3 up. Good luck.
Why would ANYONE bother with this half-baked, ill-thought roll-out by clueless greed-heads? Pure jokes, my friend. A missed boat and squandered opportunity.
Last edited:
praktik
TRIBE Member
No one said it's gonna happen over night, but over next years and decades black market share of the market is doomed to decline significantly down to a rump of what it is today, to less than 25% of sales. All your points just mean it will be slower than it otherwise could be, and province by province results will differ because some provinces restrict access more than others.
Every such percentage gain is a huge boon to our bottom line and tax base.
Writing is on the wall.
Read up on the end of prohibition of alcohol, that also took some decades to settle down and policies were initially very confused.
Every such percentage gain is a huge boon to our bottom line and tax base.
Writing is on the wall.
Read up on the end of prohibition of alcohol, that also took some decades to settle down and policies were initially very confused.
Last edited:
praktik
TRIBE Member
from pg 93 in the Transform Blueprint for Regulation
Daedalus, 1994, 121, pages 87–132
“Illicit vice entrepreneurs seem to respond to decriminalizations and shrinkages in illicit markets in any of four ways. Some succeed in making the transition to legal entrepreneurship in the same line of work. Some seek to remain in the business illegally, whether by supplying products and services in competition with the legal market or by employing criminal means to take advantage of the legal markets. For instance, following Prohibition, some bootleggers continued to market their products by forging liquor tax stamps, by strong-arming bartenders into continuing to carry their moonshine and illegally imported liquors, and by muscling their way into the distribution of legal alcohol. Some also fought to retain their markets among those who had developed a taste for corn whiskey before and during Prohibition. The third response of bootleggers and drug dealers is to abandon their pursuits and branch out instead into other criminal activities involving both vice opportunities and other sorts of crime. Indeed, one potential negative consequence of decriminalization is that many committed criminals would adapt to the loss of drug dealing revenues by switching their energies to crimes of theft, thereby negating to some extent the reductions in such crimes that would result from drug addicts no longer needing to raise substantial amounts of money to pay the inflated prices of illicit drugs.
The fourth response—one that has been and would be attractive to many past, current, and potential drug dealers—is to forego criminal activities altogether.
Relatively few criminal pursuits can compare in terms of paying so well, requiring so few skills, remaining fairly accessible to newcomers, and presenting attractive capitalist opportunities to poorly educated and integrated inner-city youth. During Prohibition, tens if not hundreds of thousands of Americans with no particular interest in leading lives of crime were drawn into the business of illegally producing and distributing alcohol; following its repeal, many if not most of them abandoned their criminal pursuits altogether. There is every reason to believe that drug decriminalization would have the same impact on many involved in the drug dealing business who would not have been tempted into criminal pursuits but for the peculiar attractions of that business. The challenge for researchers, of course, is to estimate the relative proportions
Regulated drug markets in practice of current and potential drug dealers who would respond in any of these four ways. The even broader challenge is to determine the sorts of public policies that would maximize the proportion that forego criminal activities altogether."
E. Nadelmann, ‘Thinking Seriously About Alternatives to Drug Prohibition’,The fourth response—one that has been and would be attractive to many past, current, and potential drug dealers—is to forego criminal activities altogether.
Relatively few criminal pursuits can compare in terms of paying so well, requiring so few skills, remaining fairly accessible to newcomers, and presenting attractive capitalist opportunities to poorly educated and integrated inner-city youth. During Prohibition, tens if not hundreds of thousands of Americans with no particular interest in leading lives of crime were drawn into the business of illegally producing and distributing alcohol; following its repeal, many if not most of them abandoned their criminal pursuits altogether. There is every reason to believe that drug decriminalization would have the same impact on many involved in the drug dealing business who would not have been tempted into criminal pursuits but for the peculiar attractions of that business. The challenge for researchers, of course, is to estimate the relative proportions
Regulated drug markets in practice of current and potential drug dealers who would respond in any of these four ways. The even broader challenge is to determine the sorts of public policies that would maximize the proportion that forego criminal activities altogether."
Daedalus, 1994, 121, pages 87–132
praktik
TRIBE Member
So let's game this out a few decades.
See this as an example of dynamics when business and government look at their revenue vs what is going in the black market:
Big Tobacco urges Canada to ensure legal nicotine competitive with black market
"About 70 per cent of the price of a pack of cigarettes is taxes, he said, and the illegal market in Canada represents 25 per cent of sales and billions a year in lost revenue for governments."
So let's take Mondieus pessimistic view as completely accurate, and for sake of argument, say the proportions are reversed to start with:, 25% legal and 75% black market. To make the math easy let's say the market is worth $100 Billion total
1. Legalization starts with all the bullshit in the policy.
2. Government starts getting millions in revenue from the legal market.
3. Businesses start making millions in revenue from the legal market.
4. Consumers start buying but too many stay with the convenience and benefits they see sticking with black market fly by night dispensaries and neighbourhood guys. Black Market is 75% of the market.
5. Canadian government sees 75 billion in sales not being taxed.
6. Growing new business interests, WeedBO in Ontario, shoppers - see 75 billion they aren't getting.
7. Consumers still aren't happy with legal price and convenience.
Maybe you can see the dynamics that are going to come about?
We are going to have business revenue potential, tax revenue potential, and voter pressure all work in concert to steadily erode the size of the black market. Businesses won't have to lobby too hard when they point out the tax revenue opportunities that are directly tied to their lost business revenue. Studies will show overly restrictive policies keep the black market flush. Provinces with smaller black markets by dint of their less restricted policy mix will show other provinces they are missing out on $$. Also the sky won't fall and the pearl clutchers won't be able to suggest it might anymore.
It's pretty much in everyone's best interest to see the black market shrink and we should see more dynamics pushing for black market erosion than black market growth until a new, tobacco like equilibrium is reached, and then we may see some years in the future when Conservatives want to roll back the pendulum the other way, some scenario where dynamics will lead to future black market bumps, just as tobacco policy continues to do in fits and starts over the decades, as tobacco restrictions and taxes rise and fall.
This is the new game for the next decades, and Canada is better off for reasons of personal freedom and the bottom line and social justice, to be playing this game over the old one.
In the game of Prohibition, everyone loses.
See this as an example of dynamics when business and government look at their revenue vs what is going in the black market:
Big Tobacco urges Canada to ensure legal nicotine competitive with black market
"About 70 per cent of the price of a pack of cigarettes is taxes, he said, and the illegal market in Canada represents 25 per cent of sales and billions a year in lost revenue for governments."
So let's take Mondieus pessimistic view as completely accurate, and for sake of argument, say the proportions are reversed to start with:, 25% legal and 75% black market. To make the math easy let's say the market is worth $100 Billion total
1. Legalization starts with all the bullshit in the policy.
2. Government starts getting millions in revenue from the legal market.
3. Businesses start making millions in revenue from the legal market.
4. Consumers start buying but too many stay with the convenience and benefits they see sticking with black market fly by night dispensaries and neighbourhood guys. Black Market is 75% of the market.
5. Canadian government sees 75 billion in sales not being taxed.
6. Growing new business interests, WeedBO in Ontario, shoppers - see 75 billion they aren't getting.
7. Consumers still aren't happy with legal price and convenience.
Maybe you can see the dynamics that are going to come about?
We are going to have business revenue potential, tax revenue potential, and voter pressure all work in concert to steadily erode the size of the black market. Businesses won't have to lobby too hard when they point out the tax revenue opportunities that are directly tied to their lost business revenue. Studies will show overly restrictive policies keep the black market flush. Provinces with smaller black markets by dint of their less restricted policy mix will show other provinces they are missing out on $$. Also the sky won't fall and the pearl clutchers won't be able to suggest it might anymore.
It's pretty much in everyone's best interest to see the black market shrink and we should see more dynamics pushing for black market erosion than black market growth until a new, tobacco like equilibrium is reached, and then we may see some years in the future when Conservatives want to roll back the pendulum the other way, some scenario where dynamics will lead to future black market bumps, just as tobacco policy continues to do in fits and starts over the decades, as tobacco restrictions and taxes rise and fall.
This is the new game for the next decades, and Canada is better off for reasons of personal freedom and the bottom line and social justice, to be playing this game over the old one.
In the game of Prohibition, everyone loses.
Last edited:
