Canada primed for pot legalization
Pot stores across much of Canada were poised to throw open their doors Wednesday as the sale and recreational use of cannabis is made legal for the first time by a major Western country.
Stores in St. John's in Atlantic island province of Newfoundland will be the first to open their doors to pot enthusiasts as of 12:01 am local time on Wednesday.
"I'm going to have a lot more variety than the black market dealers, so you have a lot more choice at our store. The prices are very comparable," Thomas Clarke, owner of THC Distribution store, told public broadcaster CBC.
On the eve of legalization, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau defended the historic but controversial change, which has been welcomed by entrepreneurs but sharply questioned by medical professionals.
"We're not legalizing cannabis because we think it's good for our health, we're doing it because we know it's not good for our children," he said as he arrived in parliament.
"We know we need to do a better job to protect our children and to eliminate or massively reduce the profits that go to organized crime."
Canada's Cannabis Act, which fulfills a promise Trudeau made in the 2015 campaign, lifts a 95-year prohibition, and makes Canada only the second nation after Uruguay to legalize the drug.
Demand is such that retailers in Manitoba and Nova Scotia retailers are expecting to quickly run out of product, citing a supply shortage.
In Ontario, buyers will have to wait for their pot to arrive in the mail, after it is ordered online -- until the opening of retail storefronts in 2019.
- 773 tonnes of cannabis -
Canadians consumed 773 tonnes of cannabis in 2017.
Despite the government's hopes, the black market is not expected to disappear overnight. To make that point, the CD Howe Institute noted that the federal government has licensed enough producers to supply only 30 to 60 percent of demand in the first year.
Bill Blair, a former police chief in Toronto who is Trudeau's pointman for pot legalization, remains optimistic, however, that the legal market can grab as much as half of share of the market from illicit dealers within the first year.
Fully shutting down the black market will likely take up to four years, according to Justice Department documents cited by Canadian media.
All will depend on the selling price of legal weed being lower than the street price. According to Statistics Canada, black market prices have fallen in the past year to an average of Can$6.79 per gram.
That prompted some licensed retailers to drop their expected pricing schemes to better compete, such as in Quebec where it will sell for Can$5.29 per gram including taxes, officials said Tuesday.
"There is no doubt that Canadians are in unknown waters," Brian Palmer, president of the Canadian Police Association, said Monday, while assuring citizens that police are ready to stop drug-impaired drivers.
Opposition parties accuse the government of having rushed legalization, saying municipalities, police and doctors are struggling with health and law enforcement implications of legalization.
According to a recent Abacus Data poll published on Monday, a majority of Canadians (70 percent) accept or support legalization.
If anything goes wrong, however, the Trudeau administration is likely to suffer for it in next year's general election, Abacus president Dave Colletto told Canadian media.
