Can you tell me when people started smoking cannabis? No? Then, let’s travel
through time to find out how far we can find marijuana in the History. It’s well known
that cannabis is one of the oldest plants on Earth, but it is still complicated to
determine exactly when its wonderful proprieties have been discovered for the first
time. Even if, at first, the plant was probably harvested for its fibers and seeds, the first
testimonies about cannabis use for therapeutic and religious rituals are as old as 5000
years. At this time, marijuana was considered a magical and sacred plant that was
pushing evil away. Native from Central Asia, it took until the 20th century for the plant
to reach the United States. To this day, we can count more than 160 million cannabis
users from all around the world. In Canada, this psychoactive substance has been
banned from 1923 until 2001, when it was legalized only for medical use. It’s only in
2018, more precisely October 17th , that cannabis for recreational use has been
legalized. Even if that decision from the Canadian Parliament is accepted and
celebrated by the majority of the population, it wasn’t the case for our “dear” Prime
Minister François Legault and his government. But how one person can decide to
ignore thousands of years of cannabis use in the whole world and stigmatize it thus
causing bankruptcies, thousands of patients who can’t get a license for medical use to
self-medicate and most of all causing a delay in the advancement of the province’s
economy? Here is how Legault’s government restrictive laws about cannabis
contribute to keep Quebec in the past.
When the CAQ came to power in October of 2018, Legault send a very strong
message that the legalization of cannabis was something bad and imposed by the
Federal Government. Probably due to a lack of research or knowledge about cannabis
through History, the Prime Minister decided to put in place a list of restrictive laws to
control the use of cannabis by the Quebec’s population. This is why we are the only
Canadian Province that the legal age for cannabis use is 21 years old instead of 18 or
19 years old in the anglophone provinces.
Quebec is also the place where there are the least prescriptions given for
medical cannabis use, counting only 21 692 of the 377 024 licenses in the whole
Canada. The College of Medecins explains that gap with the overly strict directives
given to its members, which are 3 times less numerous to prescribe medical cannabis
than in Ontario. According to Marc-André Brissette-Hébert, director of the clinic
Solution Cannabis Médical (www.solutioncannabismedical.com,
@SCM.Clinique.Medicale), there is a demand for medical and recreational use of
cannabis, but the restrictions put in place by the CAQ actually encourage patients to
seek help from the SQDC or the black market to self-medicate or they simply get their
license from other provinces where the laws are more permissive.
Also, the cannabis market is a great opportunity for the Quebec to improve its
economy but we are still far behind the rest of the Canada in that field. In fact,
according to Statistics Canada, since the legalization in 2018, the cannabis industry
brought 12 billions of dollars to the Canadian GDP (Gross Domestic Product), which
Quebec contributed with only 800 millions of dollars (more than 3 times less than
Ontario). One of the causes of this gap is that Investment Quebec has the permission
to subsidize medical cannabis producers only after they get their permit form Health
Canada. To this day, no project has ever been financed and many of them have never
seen the light of day during the last two years.
Even though Legault changed his mind about smoking cannabis in public
places and we are now allowed to consume it in the parks, the damages caused by his
overly restrictive laws are already irreparable. Until the next elections, the only thing
that can be done is to support our local producers as Hexo (https://hexo.com,
twitter.com/hexo), Lot420 (https://www.instagram.com/lot420_/), 48North
(https://www.instagram.com/48nrth/, https://www.48nrth.com) Origine Nature
(https://www.instagram.com/origine.nature, https://originenature.com/#quebec), Fuga
(https://www.instagram.com/groupefuga/), Emerald (https://emeraldhealth.ca) and many
more.
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