Is Pot Legal in Canada?
The current answer to the question of whether pot is legal in Canada is no. Canada was among the first countries in the world to legalise medical marijuana, which has had the effect of many people believing that all types of marijuana were now legal. While the country is moving in that direction quite rapidly, so far marijuana is still illegal without a proper medical prescription. Since the legalisation of marijuana for medical usage was nearly two decades ago, there has been a lot of protest from groups which do not see any particular distinction between medical use and recreational use, arguing that as far as relaxation goes, many people use the drug in exactly the same way. Other people have also pointed out that people are buying marijuana anyway – the laws aren’t stopping them. From their perspective, keeping it illegal makes no sense.
If you do have a medical prescription, then you can have access to almost any type of marijuana you could want. Medical marijuana includes everything from the dried herb, which can be put into edibles, to seeds which can be grown from scratch by the patient. The choice available is something which will hopefully also be made available to everybody once the legalisation of marijuana has become a reality.
How Much Does Pot Cost?
The overall cost of marijuana varies according to what you buy. One hundred milligrams of the dried herb costs around ten dollars, meaning that one dollar will get you ten milligrams of marijuana, about one dose for a beginner in using edibles. On the other hand, buying seeds of most varieties of marijuana plants will set you back around one hundred dollars per seed batch, if the seeds are of a mainstream variety. CBD oil is different again, normally being valued at around twenty cents for a milligram of oil. This means that a four ounce bottle, for example, will cost somebody two hundred dollars.
The overall cost is something which obviously changes, and dispensaries quite often also add on a small fee which covers their consulting help, to add to the cost. The cost is also affected by the competition in the area, how popular that type of marijuana is, and whether it is legally or illegally produced, among other things. If more people were able to access marijuana legally, then the prices might be able to go be lowered slightly. At any rate, more people accessing marijuana legally would mean more money coming in legally to be used by the government.
Marijuana Sales Analysis for the period 2015-2020
The latest research says that, as big as the medical marijuana market is, it will get bigger in the years to come, with more money coming in than ever. More and more states are voting to legalise marijuana for medical purposes in the same manner as Canada back in 2001, with an expectation of increased financial intake from those states if they should choose to legalise. From a market which is already strong and robust, with figures from 2015 reaching slightly over five billion dollars, the additional income is likely to come to nearly three billion from each individual market in the year 2018 alone. These markets are expected to grow to eight billion within the next two years.
Economic Benefits to Legalisation in Canada
- The government will produce (or know of all production) the marijuana being used, and so will be able to benefit from taxes and overall costs of the market, as they do for other medicines and other markets.
- Since the market is legal, people will not have to rely on dealers who might cut their product in order to sell more of it. Since drugs can be cut with anything from flour to rat poison, this can lead to people ending up in need of medical treatment, or worse. Having government oversight will mean that fewer people will get ill from their drug use.
- The online market is one which has customers from everywhere in the world. A domain registered in Canada, however, will pay taxes to the Canadian government, allowing them to benefit from the selling of marijuana online in all its forms.
Legal Recreational Marijuana Purchase Limits
While Canada doesn’t have such laws yet, for obvious reasons, many states do, and their laws mainly centre around people who are in-state, and people from out-of-state.
People in-state have age restrictions on when they can buy marijuana, in the same way that these laws exist for the purchase of alcohol and cigarettes. They also have laws concerning how much marijuana can be bought at one time, because there is a limit to the supply, and because the people who sell it would want to try and prevent an overdose, if possible. While medical marijuana comes with the same restrictions that come with certain over the counter medicines, like avoiding driving, or operating heavy machinery, recreational marijuana should perhaps have those restrictions as well. Many people buy Indica strains for recreational use, and just because it is recreational doesn’t mean it won’t have the same effects as varieties used for medical purposes.
Laws restricting people taking marijuana out of state or country would most likely revolve around limiting the amount, and also prohibiting sales to people coming from states and countries where marijuana is still illegal.
Is Legalisation a Good Idea?
There are people on either side of this debate, but generally I find myself in favour of legalisation. Not only will legalisation of marijuana mean that the government now has access to a huge money-making market, it will also ensure that they can oversee the market, and thus bring some law to a previously unregulated industry.
Another argument in favour of legalisation is that people are buying marijuana anyway, so if the government legalises it, it can ensure that people are safe by publishing guidelines on proper use, regulating how much someone can buy in one go, and other practices which will make everyone safer.
