Judging from poll results, and the amount of business Penticton marijuana dispensaries were doing, there is a large portion of the population supporting — even looking forward to — the coming legalization of pot.
Marijuana and its variants have been in use for up to 12,000 years, according to some claims. It’s certainly been found in burial mounds dating back 5,000 years. Being in use that long, it’s about time we gave up on wasting police and court resources fighting it and instead focused on controlling it.
However, the upcoming legislation may not accomplish some of the goals expected, like making it more difficult for young people to obtain and use the drug. Underage alcohol consumption is illegal, and that hasn’t presented too much of a barrier to teens getting drunk. Smoking among teens may be decreasing, but that is more likely a reflection of trends in society than regulations making tobacco impossible for the under-18 crowd to obtain.
How much easier will it be able to get high when you can grow and dry pot yourself? Likewise, preventing people from driving while marijuana-impaired isn’t as simple as writing a regulation.
A key component of the legislation needs to be education. Not just to point out hazard; that needs to be included, but the point is to establish a baseline of acceptable use, not scare people away from smoking pot, which has never worked anyway.
It took decades to take drinking and driving from socially acceptable to unacceptable. It’s still not at zero, and probably never will be, but how much better if we started legal pot out on the right foot, and made it clear it’s not okay to be stoned behind the wheel of a car, in the office or the classroom.
Sure, everyone knows that, but we all knew that about drinking and driving too. Like drinking and driving, it’s a message that needs to be repeated over and over until being stoned at the wrong place or time isn’t just considered a joking matter.