Ontario is set to introduce legislation that would regulate the sale and distribution of recreational marijuana. The province was the first to announce detailed plans last year for cannabis once the federal government makes it legal in July 2018. Marijuana—also called weed, herb, pot, grass, bud, ganja, Mary Jane, and a vast number of other slang terms—is a greenish-gray mixture of the dried flowers of Cannabis sativa. Some people smoke marijuana in hand-rolled cigarettes called joints; in pipes, water pipes sometimes called bongs, or in blunts marijuana rolled in cigar wraps.
Marijuana can also be used to brew tea and, particularly when it is sold or consumed for medicinal purposes, is frequently mixed into foods or edibles such as brownies, cookies, or candies. Vaporizers are also increasingly used to consume marijuana. Stronger forms of marijuana include sinsemilla (from specially tended female plants) and concentrated resins containing high doses of marijuana’s active ingredients, including honey like hash oil, waxy budder, and hard amber like shatter. These resins are increasingly popular among those who use them both recreationally and medically.
As how legal marijuana will work are up to the provinces but these things to look for in the proposed bill. The excerpts have been taken from Canada press.
Marijuana as brand loyalty
The debate is to have a stricter system for selling recreational pot and want of an austere system of marketing and advertising it closer to what now is in the form of cigarettes. But others, including marijuana producers, want recognizable brands more of a marijuana version of what you now see in a liquor store.
Implicit in this argument is a divide over to what extent marijuana use should be normalized under legalization. Is cannabis a barely tolerated vice, or a fairly benign substance that needs a few controls? Who wins the argument will have a major influence on what the consumer experience of legal pot will be like.
The area where smoking or pot be allowed
Under a strict version of legalization, marijuana would only be allowed behind closed doors in private. But looser rules would allow licenced establishments for marijuana, regulated more or less as licenced establishments for alcohol now are.
According toJenna Valleriani, a University of Toronto PhD student who is studying dispensaries, that’s going to be a really big deal the idea of whether or not it’s going to be restricted to private residences, or if they’re going to be allowing licenced establishments like vapour lounges to exist.
Selling of marijuana
Ontario has announced that only government-owned stores will be allowed to sell pot personally to consumers, a move that pleased the province’s public-sector employees union. However, no other province has formally said it will go that route, and Ontario’s approach is seen in some circles as extreme.
With an election coming up, it feels like a risky move for them to stick with that model, because people are saying that they are already decentralizing the LCBO more broadly, and pulling that into grocery stores, so is that the model that Ontario wants to see.
The way B.C. has responded, and other jurisdictions have responded, has really been that they’re looking at Ontario, kind of gauging the response, and trying to build something slightly different.
The minimum age to buy marijuana
The federal Cannabis Act sets a minimum age for possession at 18; Ontario has said it will set a minimum age to buy pot at 19, and will penalize 18 year olds found with pot under provincial law, like a traffic ticket.
How this will work in the real world is open to question. Will selling pot to an 18 year old be illegal enough to deter anyone from doing it, for example? What stops 18 year olds from ordering marijuana by mail order from Alberta or Quebec, where the cannabis age will be 18? Can Ontario stop 18 year olds from growing their own which federal rules will allow them to do without facing a constitutional challenge?
Marijuana retail not nearby a school
The province has said that marijuana retail will not be “located in close proximity to schools” Will provincial law set a distance in metres, or will that be left to local governments? The number and kinds of things that pot stores can’t be near schools, daycares, community centres, parks and what ‘near’ means will matter quite a lot when it comes time to choose sites for them.
Toronto, for example, has nearly 700 elementary schools and over 140 high schools. If a 250-metre circle was drawn around all of them, it would radically affect where marijuana retail stores could be sited in the city.
Well, the above things will become more transparent and clear when the bill is proposed in coming months. But the basic question that comes to mind is why do people after all want marijuana? The users have clear cut answer that this relaxes them and changes their mood and helps them in perceiving their daily activities in more easy way.
But the main thing that they forget is the side effects of using marijuana which the medical experts believe are feeling of well-being, talkativeness, drowsiness, loss of inhibitions, decreased nausea, increased appetite, loss of co-ordination, bloodshot eyes, dryness of the eyes, mouth, and throat and anxiety and paranoia.
The long term effects are more dangerous which include increased risk of respiratory diseases associated with smoking, including cancer, decreased memory and learning abilities and decreased motivation in areas such as study, work or concentration. So before using think twice.
