Ontario’s rather surprising plan to let medical marijuana smokers light up just anywhere has received a not too surprising slap down. The health department at Queen’s Park has quickly reversed course after word spread yesterday that smoking marijuana — for one’s health of course — would be legal wherever a user decided to light up. The opportunities for abuse were very clear. Many former tobacco smokers, happy survivors of the war on the cigarette, said they felt betrayed. Associate Health Minister Dipika Damerla announced the backtrack within hours apparently. “We will consider this feedback, look at it very carefully and see what we need to do,” she told reporters.
CRITICAL FAILURE
“It’s too early to say whether this was a failure or not,” Damerla added. “It’s important that governments be responsive.” About 23,000 Canadians use medical marijuana under doctors’ prescriptions. A critical failure of the scheme was the decision to make business owners responsible for telling marijuana smokers that they had to butt out. This translated to the witless expectation that people on the ground — theatre ushers, wait staff, clerks and others — would have to order people to stop smoking in the name of their employer — not the government.
