Have you heard about the decline and fall of Canada? Perhaps not, because it hasn’t happened quite yet, even though cannabis consumption in any and all forms for purely recreational reasons was legalised countrywide way back in 2018.
Since the turn of the 21st century, certain cannabis products had been legal for (ostensibly) ‘medicinal purposes’, sold in pharmacies and a few other shops, rather as they are here in Spain nowadays.
Nothing to make you high, no THC, just CBD products that can have a calming effect. The whole topic was much more in the air, out in the open, than it had been since the 1960s, and in a country where some prominent figures, along with many stand-up comedians, had long spoken about their use of weed, and the smell habitually wafted over bar zones and many corners of university campuses.
I myself had for years been finding the dissonance between overt general acceptance and legal prohibition quite disconcerting, to say the least. And now the same thing is happening to me again, as to many others, here in Spain, or Catalunya if you will.
A quick history of the formation of my attitudes. Not only was I a child of the sixties, but in Ottawa where I lived, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, then seen as the coolest leader in the world for many reasons (youngest, handsomest, and above all, decidedly boldest), had in 1969 formed the Le Dain Commission of top government scientists to investigate the effects of the use of cannabis.
Their 1972 report found it non-addictive and all round innocuous, and recommended it be legalised and quality-controlled. But of course the weightier neighbours to the south were having none of it at that early stage, and much less under President Nixon! The word was out, however, and I was often asked about it, as about many aspects of the regime of Monsieur Trudeau, when I first came to Barcelona in the still-grey days of the early 1970s.
So now here we are, many years later, in a Europe still somehow wary of outright cannabis legalisation. Holland has long allowed consumption inside coffee shops and possession of a small amount. Germany enjoys recent legalisation with, according to their more liberal parties, too much Germanic red tape.
Nowhere in Europe is there anything like the total permissiveness of Canadian laws, with purchase permitted for all adults, locals and visitors, and numerous cannabis shops selling a wide variety of products, from drinks to edibles to pre-rolled joints, of different strengths and with varying effects. Similar situations now exist in many US states, though not yet on a national level.
Moreover, the tremendously useful role of cannabis products in relieving a range of afflictions, from everyday anxiety to the extreme strain and pain of cancer treatment or withdrawal from addictive drugs, is being much exploited and continues to be explored.
Meanwhile, here, it seems incredibly contradictory to encounter so much obvious consumption and generally laissez-faire attitudes certainly around Barcelona as well as in parts of Andalusia that I know well, in parallel with the constant coast guard pursuit of boats bringing hashish from Morocco or police pursuit of street dealers.
Wouldn’t their resources be far better used in pursuing dangerous drugs and serious crime? Wouldn’t it be far better for everyone if cannabis products were available in shops where, moreover, we knew exactly what quality and dosage we were getting? The in-between measure of the cannabis clubs of Catalunya is all well and good, but still so hidden and restricted, so cloak-and-dagger, and the law allowing people to grow a few plants at home is also a nice measure but once again, leaves people unable to carefully regulate the strength of what they consume.
So I say, legalise it, once and for all. The world will not collapse around us. In fact, I venture to predict it will be a jollier place!
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