Marijuana legal in Canada - Progress or Reefer Madness?

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Canada on Wednesday became the first major world economy to legalize recreational marijuana, beginning a national experiment that will alter the country’s social, cultural and economic fabric, and present the nation with its biggest public policy challenge in decades.

On Wednesday morning, the government announced that it would introduce legislation to make it easier for Canadians who had been convicted of possessing small amounts of marijuana to obtain a pardon.

While the government is not offering a blanket amnesty, Ralph Goodale, the public safety minister, said at a news conference in Ottawa that as “a matter of basic fairness,” the government would seek to end the minimum waiting period of five years to apply for a pardon as well as waiving the fee of 631 Canadian dollars.

“We will make the application process as simple as it can be,” Mr. Goodale said, adding that details would not be available for several weeks.

Newfoundlanders became the first Canadians to be able to smoke pot legally on Wednesday, when retailers there opened in the country’s easternmost province at midnight.

Across the rest of the country, government-run stores were preparing to greet consumers, who will be able to choose among pre-rolled joints, fresh or dried marijuana flowers and cannabis oil — all of which are permitted under the new federal law.

At a government cannabis store in eastern Montreal, a line stretched across a long city block on Wednesday morning. Hundreds of people, some of whom had been waiting since 3:30 a.m. for the store’s 10 a.m. opening, waited, some smoking joints, filling the air with the pungent smell of marijuana.

As the first customers left the store with dried cannabis in brown shopping bags, the crowd cheered.

“I have never felt so proud to be Canadian,” said Marco Beaulieu, 29, a janitor. “Canada is once again a progressive global leader. We have had gay rights, feminism, abortion rights — and now we can smoke pot without having to worry police are going to arrest us.”

In a stinging editorial published on Monday, the Canadian Medical Association Journal called the government’s legalization plan an “uncontrolled experiment in which the profits of cannabis producers and tax revenues are squarely pitched against the health of Canadians.”

It called on the government to promise to change the law if it leads to increased marijuana use.

In early trading on Wednesday, though, after several months of rising to dizzying multibillion-dollar heights for the biggest companies, Canada’s marijuana growers saw their stock prices fall. Many analysts said the value of legalization had long ago been worked into their prices by investors.

I can see it now...

Bob & Doug MacKenzie, in "Strange  Brew  Weed", eh?

Exactly. "Who horked my spleef, eh?"

I feel it is something of my "destiny" to educate Americans and other people about Canada and its culture. As the posters above me have clearly shown, that was yet another one of my dismal failures.

I feel it is something of my "destiny" to educate Americans and other people about Canada and its culture. As the posters above me have clearly shown, that was yet another one of my dismal failures.