WARREN: Set the age to buy pot at 21 across Canada
Jim Warren
Updated: December 8, 2018 6:00 PM EDT
A woman exhales while smoking a joint during the annual 4/20 marijuana rally on Parliament hill on Wednesday, April 20, 2016, in Ottawa.Justin Tang / THE CANADIAN PRESS
Last week, the newly elected Quebec Premier Francois Legault and his party the Coalition Avenir Quebec introduced legislation to raise the minimum age from 18 to 21 in Quebec to consume and purchase all cannabis products. The bill will also ban the consumption of all cannabis products in all public spaces including parks and playgrounds.
This is a huge change from all of the other premiers and provinces who have linked drinking age to cannabis consumption age even though medically they are completely different products.
Quebec is finally the first government to justly act to protect teenagers from the impact of marijuana on the development of their brains. The minimum age to buy and consume recreational marijuana should be set at 21 across Canada. Every other premier should be acting as quickly and swiftly as Premier Legault to raise the age to 21.
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There is no question the legalization of pot has created economic opportunities for many Canadians and the intention of pot legalization is to put the criminals and black market out of business. But there are many questions about the impact of pot on the developing brain of people under 25.
Some medical studies have found that even light use of marijuana — smoking pot once a week — may cause structural changes in the size and shape of two brain regions. The study titled "Cannabis Use is Quantitatively Associated with Nucleus Accumbens and Amygdala Abnormalities in Young Adult Recreational Users" was published April 2014 in The Journal of Neuroscience.
Since then there have been other studies that show casual use of marijuana may be related to major brain changes. We know our brains are still developing until we reach the age of 25. Putting the age limit at 21 is actually just a political compromise and still setting the age too low.
There is a reason car rental companies do not rent cars to people under 21 and charge an extra fee to drivers under 25. Your brain is still developing, and you make decisions differently.
Why can Avis or Budget act in the best interests of our young people while our governments rush to make drugs available to our kids?
Ontario Premier Doug Ford is himself newly elected. He and the other premiers should consider a more phased-in and gradual approach than what happened this past October.
Set the age limit at 21 immediately as a pilot project, fund studies from the sales of marijuana provincially and if everything goes well you can lower the age later.
"Science and research support a higher (age) limit," Andrew Murrie, CEO of MADD Canada, told me in an interview last spring. "And there should be national standards. Ten different provinces will give you 10 different sets of ages and regulations, which gives you 10 different sets of problems."
Murrie supports strict provincial controls to regulate "grow your own pot" operations, access to minors and the sale and distribution of legal weed.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in the fall that increasing the legal age could undermine one of his key aims: eliminating the black market.
I would think the police and our judicial system should be used to get rid of the black market instead of treating 19- and 20-year-olds as marijuana guinea pigs.
The Premier of Quebec made a bold and powerful political statement this week by acting to product young people in his province. A minimum age of 21 is the best possible way to protect our youngest and most vulnerable generation of Canadians and it should be set to 21 across the entire country.
Jim Warren is a Liberal strategist who previously worked for Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty.
Ontario Politics
Quebec Politics
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