Canadian doctors: legalize, regulate, tax pot

CBC:

Criminalizing the use of marijuana and other tough on crime approaches haven't worked, say public health doctors from across Canada who propose taxation and regulation instead.

The chief medical health officers in British Columbia, Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan wrote a paper reviewing the evidence on Canada's current illicit drug policies in Wednesday's issue of the journal Open Medicine.

The paper comes as the federal government is set to table its budget amid funding questions for its new anti-crime legislation, which includes mandatory minimum sentences for minor drug offences.

The authors, who were giving their personal opinions, said governments need to consider other approaches that include public health objectives that minimize health and social harms, such as:

• Taxing marijuana as alcohol and tobacco are.

• Licensing cannabis dispensaries and issuing prescriptions for medical marijuana.

• Implementing age limits and other sales restrictions like those used to reduce alcohol use.

• Regulating and controlling the availability of potent substances to reduce the illegal market.

"We're even calling for taxation and regulation of marijuana under a public health framework as a strategy not only to reduce the availability of marijuana to young people, but to get away from all of the public health and organized crime concerns related to all of the gang violence," said Wood.

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