Last year I was contacted a few times by some AM Talk radio stations after Justin Trudeau made his audacious announcement about legalizing pot. The reason they contacted me was that I am a type of expert on this topic. (Interestingly, they all seem to think I smoke the stuff.) And they all have this tendency to want me to have a strong opinion for or against legalization. Then they want me to make big predictions based upon my research in drug and alcohol history about what might happen if it were legalized.
Below I’ve put what I normally tell them. But before that I want to make sure we’re on the same page.
Legalization is significantly different than decriminalization. You’d think they’re the same, because if something is not criminal, how can it not be legal? But decriminalization basically reduces the weight of the legal system that comes down on you if you’re found to possess or be smoking pot.
Think of it like driving a car. If you speed and are caught, you might get a ticket and a fine, and lose a few “points” on your record. You don’t get a criminal record; you don’t normally go to jail.
If you speed, drive recklessly through a city, and smash into a building, you will likely go to court and if convicted, it won’t be for speeding, but for reckless driving, or something more severe.
Decriminalizing pot has its conditions. Normally it’s something like a possession of a certain small amount of pot for personal use will result in perhaps a fine and confiscation, but no criminal record. That punishment is saved for those who might be selling it. (All they assume when you have pot on you is you’re either going to use it or sell it.)
Legalization makes pot legal. Normally, these days it also requires a system of legal distribution to be established. Legalization usually means it’s not illegal to grow it, sell it, or use it. The product is legal. However, any of these activities may require a license. Just like making booze, or running a casino
After voters in Colorado and Washington State agreed in a referendum to legalize, not just decriminalize, pot, the states had to create some kind of system of control.
This is where I come in. At least in the eyes of the radio stations.
Since I study post-prohibition liquor control, and also study drug regulation, the radio station producers and interviewers want to know what it would look like when and if pot were legalized. Wouldn’t it just be like the end of alcohol prohibition?
I usually say: not entirely. Alcohol prohibition and drug prohibition have their similarities. Both were made illegal to possess at some point. Both were resisted by a certain group of people. Both were considered by many people to be immoral and a harbinger of social doom.
But alcohol was illegal only for a few years, relatively. In the USA, national prohibition was in effect from 1921 to 1933. In Canada, national prohibition began in the First World War, but since it was a provincial matter, prohibition was deployed differently, and didn’t last very long. (Except in Prince Edward Island, which kept prohibition in effect in some form until the 1940s). Although it is true that a massive temperance movement was pushing for several generations to see alcohol as bad, immoral, and a social scourge, the law took a long time to satisfy the urges of the prohibitionists.
Pot has been illegal in Canada since the 1920s. It was prohibited under national legislation. It was generally not even very popular until the 1950s, and in the 1960s of course its popularity really took off. A lot of people wonder why it was even made illegal in the 1920s, given that so few people were even using it.
Yet its illegality was not just a matter of being illegal or not. Illegality creates all sorts of myths and contexts for a substance. If you want it, you need to conspire with criminals. Criminals need to use certain methods that are sometimes less than savoury to do their business. Whereas other businesses use patents and copyrights to protect their product, criminals might use intimidation and violence. Whereas other businesses, competing in the open market, might try to strategically place their products so as to undermine competitors, criminals might establish their turf and violently remove competitors. At the same time, if you are hooked on it (the addictive nature of pot is highly debatable) criminalization also makes it more difficult to seek help. Because you’re a criminal and ostracized or risk conviction if you admit it. (I wrote about this in one of my first posts, by the way).
Criminalization, then, creates a sort of ripple effect of crime and criminality.
At the same time, such a system, which is in fact embedded in an underground system of crime, also creates some stereotypes and impressions of immorality. Not only does taking illegal drugs mean, to an observer, that you are now flaunting the law (what other laws might you flaunt?) but also it can be seen as an indication of some kind of depraved moral state. You’re an anti-establishment type, who can trust you?
(Of course this works both ways. People who want to be seen as anti-establishment might start smoking weed precisely because it’s anti establishment. I wonder what will happen when it’s made legal).
One question I was asked on a Niagara radio station, which is pretty conservative, is “well, if someone is making a lot of money selling booze in prohibition, what would stop them from continuing to sell when it’s legal. So wouldn’t we have many nefarious characters selling pot if it’s legalized.”
At the time, I had a flip and dismissive answer, and I regret it now. That answer was “Hey, there are a lot of nefarious characters in the banking industry!” (Full disclosure: my dear elder sister works in that industry)
What I should have said was more historically grounded. The short answer is yes. But the longer answer is this: many people who ran hotels or hospitality services of some kind really just wanted to make money. They did it with booze, but when prohibition ended, at least in Ontario (where I do my research), many of these people continued to run hotels, and opened up legal beverage rooms. Some of them had some trouble at first, selling after hours, selling spirits (which weren’t allowed) selling to people who were not allowed to buy it. And I’m sure some of them continued to break the laws.
But more of them just began to follow the law. It was lucrative, and even with some pretty tight restrictions on what you could do in a beverage room (couldn’t play music, couldn’t lean on the bar, couldn’t buy whisky, couldn’t go in alone as a man looking to hook up with women unless you came with a woman) many people, for the sake of order, or money making, or just because it was legal, began to do the right thing.
It is partly for this reason that I called my book “Try to Control Yourself” because it was about instilling self control on citizens. And it was about asking them to try their best to control themselves. It was not, as some argue, a stalinist state. It was an attempt to control something that was in fact considered very socially problematic, and politically dangerous, too.
So in response to the “nefarious characters” comment, I could have given a more nuanced answer: for many people, it was the law that made them nefarious, not some kind of inner moral corruption. When that law changed, they could then profit legally from selling what people wanted to buy. They were no more nefarious than, well, bankers. Maybe even less so.
How will legalization of pot unfold? Well, it’s tough to say. But although it might take on the characteristics of early alcohol legalization, there are enough differences, and our society is technically and culturally different enough to create a whole different context for this process. Keep an eye on this. It will be fascinating.
(c) 2014 Dan Malleck
Drug History Canada 