April 15, 2023
Opinion
This week the Supreme Court of Canada upheld Québec’s laws against home grown cannabis. Manitoba stands out as the only other province to prohibit home grown cannabis. This decision by the Supreme Court has probably put an end to any effort in Manitoba to fight these laws on Constitutional grounds.
A Brief Background
When Cannabis became legal for recreational use in Canada in 2018, the federal rules allowed individuals to grow up to four plants. The federal law includes restrictions on how much of the product from those plants can be shared, that the product can’t be sold, that they can’t be grown in public view, that the seeds or starters must be purchased from licensed growers.
The federal law also allows the provinces to place further restrictions on growing your own. And this is where we get into (ahem) the weeds. Manitoba and Québec have both chosen to outlaw the growing of plants by an individual.
Interestingly enough, the Québec Supreme Court ruled against the provicinal government in 2019, deciding that citizens of Québec could, indeed, grow their own cannabis in accordance with federal law.
The Québec Case
Québec fought that decision to the Supreme Court of Canada and, with yesterday’s ruling, Québec will remain home grown free until their government decides otherwise.
It would seem that Québec’s intent, and I assume Manitoba’s, is to ensure the quality of the product that is being consumed legally by their citizens. I’m not sure under what mechanism the legislators believe that growing a plant could somehow introduce foreign pathogens in to the resulting product. If the seeds or seedlings are sourced, as per federal laws, from a licensed grower, the THC and CBD content would be reasonably well known ahead of time.
The provincial legislature was of the view that, by contributing to the creation of a single market, the absolute prohibitions against possession and cultivation at home would serve to limit trafficking in cannabis from unauthorized sources
Chief Justice Wagner quoted in CTV News
Prohibition has never stopped people from acquiring drugs via trafficking.
One of the downsides of the legal cannabis market, if I understand from my friends who use it, is that it is still more expensive than street cannabis. If the primary goal is to reduce harm then wouldn’t encouraging home grown cannabis be compatible with that strategy?
Reducing harm also includes unnecessarily criminalizing people. The simple act of growing your own (whether that be cannabis or tomatoes) should never be the cause of someone facing criminal charges. The fact is, people are out there growing their own, and the laws are criminalizing them.
The court said the prohibitions under Quebec’s law are meant to ensure the effectiveness of the state-run cannabis monopoly, which is designed to prevent and reduce harm from marijuana by limiting consumers’ options.
Chief Justice Wagner quoted in CTV News
Limiting consumer’s options has rarely produced better results for the consumer. It does, however, tend to improve cash flow for the people who are invested in those monopolies.
Unintended Consequences
Forced to choose between a monopoly’s overpriced controlled substance, criminalization for being caught growing your own, and buying cheap street-sourced product, it may just seem like a less expensive, easier, and, ironically, safer choice, to keep buying it on the street.
Who gets caught by this? The people who can least afford to go the fancy government sanctioned cannabis boutiques that dot our communities. The people most vulnerable to being preyed on by bad traffickers selling laced substances.
Producing the exact opposite of what Québec and, I assume, Manitoba, claim they are trying to to do.
Let’s give people a bit of room to make their own decisions.
Thank you so much for this thoughtful piece Blair. I will be happy to post a link to it on my new website thinkgreen.nationbuilder.com