After months of waiting, the provincial government has released its provincial framework for legalized marijuana.
Perhaps the province had a little less urgency to complete the document once it became clear that the federal government wasn’t going to meet its rushed deadline of July 1 to have legal marijuana, but still, many municipal governments and law enforcement agencies have expressed frustration with the length of time it took to release the framework.
From the outset, we’ve been predicting that marijuana legalization would largely draw from the laws that govern alcohol consumption and possession, but there would also be some influence from tobacco laws.
So we weren’t surprised when we found out that the legal age for possession of marijuana would be 19, since the legal age to consume alcohol in this province is 19.
The framework also calls for zero tolerance when it comes to impaired driving by marijuana or any other drug, although questions remain on how to detect marijuana in an impaired driver.
Still, it’s good to see that the government is talking tough when it comes to those who will insist on driving while impaired due to marijuana. Once it becomes legal, and more accessible to the public, you can be sure that marijuana consumption will increase, and more people will get behind the wheel while impaired by a drug other than alcohol.
Also worth noting is that the government won’t allow marijuana to be consumed in public places. Does this mean that people won’t be able to toke when sitting out on a restaurant patio, or when sitting in the beer garden of a summer festival?
This is one instance in which the marijuana legislation should have been influenced by tobacco laws. Restaurants get to decide whether people get to smoke tobacco on their patios; perhaps they should also get to decide if marijuana gets to be smoked there as well.
We also found out Saskatchewan will adopt the federal minimum standards around home production, including a limit of four plants per household, which was expected.
Given the lack of surprises in this legislation, one has to wonder what took the government so long. We get that the government wants to make sure they get it right, but this is a province that was biding its time on this issue while other governments were rolling out their legislation.
Did the government need this long to let us know that the legal age of possession would be 19, when most people expected that would be the case?
And we understand that the government needed to sort out how marijuana would be sold, especially after a significant portion of the public voiced support for public retailers, an idea the government ultimately squashed.
Marijuana legalization marks uncharted territory for everyone. Canada’s the second country in the world to do it. Other countries that follow suit will no doubt monitor what has been done right here, and the mistakes. (And there have been mistakes).
It’s good that Saskatchewan has released this framework, and has answered a number of lingering questions.
It just would have been nice if this legislation would have come out earlier.
