Olympic Rings BC Marijuana Party
As we enter the final week before the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics I can’t help but wonder how many tourists are hopeful that they run into some of BC’s top cash crop while they’re here.
I have no doubt that they will run into BC Bud if they want to. The streets of Vancouver are going to be awash with the cannabis that BC growers have been preparing for this event. It’s simple economics. When there’s a high demand for something that offers huge profit margins you’re going to have lots of suppliers offering as much product as they can. And lets face it there’s always a high demand in Vancouver, let alone when you add 100,000 more Olympic tourists to the mix.
So, the only question is, how hard is it going to be for tourists to find marijuana in Vancouver?
Not very. Just last night I was walking down Granville street and right beside a nightclub and 6 feet from a group of foreign tourists some locals burned a pungent spliff that could be smelled 30 feet away. And that’s with all the Olympic surveillance camera’s turned on, busy Friday night on the Granville strip, people all around, police station a block away. And then on my way home later that evening, I heard the familiar hushed whispers of “”bud”", “”want bud”", “”weed”". So it doesn’t look like the street level weed dealers are going to be going anywhere. Just keep your ears open and you’ll probably find what you’re looking for.
And don’t worry about the cops. The police in Vancouver said they weren’t changing their attitude towards marijuana. In most cities that means be careful, but not in Vancouver. The Vancouver police have a policy of don’t waste resources on cannabis offences. As it should be. Last week they announced that their cannabis policy would go unchanged during the Olympics. They did say that they would be reminding tourists that what they’re doing is technically illegal in Canada but likely no charges would be laid. Just don’t push your luck!
Also, I don’t think that the Olympic security forces (plus 4500 military and navy personnel) are going to be that focused on marijuana use either, as long as it isn’t blatant and overly obnoxious. After all, they wouldn’t want to have to explain why they were busting foreigners for blazing while a terrorist was setting off a bomb in an Olympic venue. They certainly don’t want that, so I doubt they’ll be busting pot smokers.
Not to mention that by letting tourists smoke our pot we get their money and that benefits BC. All that foreign money goes directly into the pockets of BC residents. Tax free. That injection of cash can be used to buy cars, build houses, buy jewelry, buy clothes, etc etc. That’s good for the economy.
Unfortunately though, a big chunk of that cash is going to go to gangsters and not Mom and Pop operations. An outcome that we could change if we legalized and regulated cannabis like we do alcohol and tobacco. We could remove the profit incentives from cannabis sales that are currently enriching gangsters. Cannabis plants are cheap to grow and pot could be cheap to buy if it wasn’t for the risk premium built into the black market pricing. That risk premium would be removed from the price in a legal marketplace making it unattractive to criminals. This would leave room for the introduction of a tax on cannabis sales which could then be used towards social services that benefit everyone. And by not having gangsters sell pot to whomever they like, I suspect less children will end up smoking it.
I guess the point I’m trying to make is that we could turn what is currently a negative…
- gangsters getting rich
- tax dollars being wasted trying to prove the law of supply and demand wrong
- innocent people getting caught in drug war cross fire
- police being viewed as the enemy by simple pot smokers
- drugs being unsafely grown in our neighborhoods
- access to hard drugs at point of sale for cannabis
- police, judicial, penitentiary costs incurred by tax payers for non violent pot smokers
into a positive…
- gangster finances drastically cut
- tax coffers filling
- street violence reduced
- better social services
- Government control over cannabis sales/distribution
- quality controls on cannabis products
- health warnings on cannabis packaging
