Reform in Canada Pretense & Perils

warnings and failed to react until the extent of harm reached epidemic levels (Ivison,
2015).
Despite the existence of reasonable cause, alternative models to the commercial one
are rarely discussed in the literature. Accordingly, they have received little attention in
the transition of recreational cannabis use from a prohibition framework to a legal
commercial one. Of particular concern is the emergence of another drug industry that
will have high ambitions for expansion beyond the much more contained medical
market.
The private commercial model has been the default choice in recent US cannabis law
reform initiatives and appears to be the favoured path in Canada for expansion into
recreational use of cannabis. In response to public concerns about the safety of
legalizing cannabis for recreational use, the government’s response, notably in its preand
post-election press statements, and in its Discussion Paper (Task Force on
Marijuana Legalization and Regulation, 2016) and Final Report (Task Force on
Cannabis Legalization and Regulation, 2016), has been to foster complacency by
extolling the virtues of a legal, government-regulated industry over an unregulated
contraband trade. This claim possesses inescapable surface-level logic. However,
sections 2.3 through 2.6 of this report have demonstrated that the perils of the
contraband cannabis trade have been significantly exaggerated and fabricated in the
prevailing, government-engineered narrative on cannabis law reform. This section of
Pretense & Perils will complete the process of assessing the veracity of the
government’s narrative by examining its claim that a legal, government-regulated,
commercial regime is an adequately safe approach for recreational cannabis.
3.4 Impact on the Contraband Cannabis Trade
One of the initially-proposed goals of cannabis legalization was that criminal activity
“should shrink significantly and potentially disappear.” (Crepault, 2014, p.11) In the Task
Force’s Final Report (2016), the less ambitious intent to simply “curb the illicit market”
emerged (p 38). The more modest goal is advisable given that anything more ambitious
is inconsistent with actual experience related to other long-established legal drug
industries and their contraband counterparts. Despite having had legal and regulated
regimes for tobacco and alcohol for many years in Canada, contraband product remains
widely available for both drugs. Even contraband pharmaceuticals can be ordered over
the internet - with unwitting home delivery by the Canadian government’s postal service.
The magnitude of contraband sales is sufficiently significant that tobacco, alcohol,
pharmaceutical producers and retailers, government regulators, and enforcement
agencies have all expressed concern, and in some cases, lobbied government for
tougher controls on the trade of counterfeit drug products (Task Force on Illicit Tobacco
Products, 2009; NCACT, 2016, Lockington, 2016; Hansard, 2015; Hamilton, 2015;
Rubin, 2011; Smithers, 2012; RCMP, 2014; Health Canada, 2010; Burns, 2006;
Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology, 2015).
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