Canada To Legalize Marijuana by July 2018
Oh Canada! It’s official, man. Marijuana will be legal in Canada as early as July 2018. According to the AP Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government will introduce legislation to legalize recreational marijuana the week of April 10th and it should become law by July next year.
Trudeau has long promised to legalize recreational pot use and sales. However he’s allowed popular activists Marc Emery (#98 on the Periodic Table of Stuff Stoners Like) and his wife Jody to be jailed and terrorized over marijuana sales. The couple who run Cannabis Culture magazine and a franchise of stores selling weed under the brand name. In fact it was the Emery’s who helped get him recently elected. Apparently Trudeau doesn’t care and has justified the arrests and raids in Toronto, Vancouver and other cities earlier this month by saying that current Canadian cannabis laws should be respected. Police in raided stores earlier this month and made arrests.
Anyhow Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould declined to confirm the dates provided by Canadian officials who announced the news, but he did say a statement the government is committed to introducing legislation this spring that would “legalize, strictly regulate, and restrict access to cannabis. This will be done in a careful way to keep it out of the hands of children and youth, and to stop criminals from profiting In order to meet our commitment to legalize, the legislation will need to pass through the parliamentary process in a timely fashion.”
When marijuana prohibition ends in Canada next summer adults will be allow to posses up to 30 grams of weed for recreational purposes and will be able to grow up to four marijuana plants each. Of course these regulations were guided by a marijuana task force headed by former Liberal Health Minister Anne McLellan and former Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair—the parliamentary secretary to the justice minister.
Along with regulating the amount of weed Canadians can procure and grow the task forced also recommended that higher-potency pot be taxed at a higher rate than weaker strains and that recreational marijuana should not be sold in the same location as alcohol or tobacco. However they did say that they would allow alcohol-free cannabis lounges.
This news puts Canada way ahead of the United States in terms of pot politics. Next to Uruguay in South America who legalized marijuana a few years ago, Canada is the largest country to end a nationwide prohibition of recreational marijuana. Sure we’re looking forward to legal marijuana sales starting next year here in California who legalized marijuana along with Massachusetts, Maine and Nevada—joining the ranks of Colorado, Washington, Oregon and Alaska who legalized herb years ago. However with such weed hate from the White House who knows what’ll happen here in the states.
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