Editor:
Re: Our View: Cannabis has been a puritanical mess so far, Oct. 25
As you say in “your view,” ending prohibition on cannabis was the right thing to do.
Unfortunately, legality was not achieved. Only more control laws, restrictions and taxes. This is a moralistic view as governments do with booze and tobacco and gasoline. This was the intention all along to collect sin taxes and say what a good boy am I.
It even rubs off on others. The arthritis society says medical marijuana ought to be in pharmacies. Costs rise in every government in the lineup as you say in zoning licensing inspection and bylaw enforcement - as if any of it was needed.
Government revenue all the way down the line has proven to be only a tax cost as the restrictions pile up. Who buys, who sells, who grows.
The right thing to do would be to eliminate any prohibition and leave the rest, as governments and other business minded so often say, to the market since it was already there being tended to and advocated by those already in the business.
Some of those advocates have been forbidden to participate in the business they have built.
Terry Smith, New Westminster
