The Globe and Mail reports in its Monday, April 22, edition that the warnings were dire ahead of pot legalization. The Globe's Campbell Clark writes that Saskatchewan Conservative MP Rosemarie Falk warned it "would have a profound impact on our Canadian society." That did not happen.
Liberal point man on pot legalization Bill Blair says: "It's a little bit like this generation's Y2K. Everyone was waiting for planes to fall out of the sky and for the lights to go out."
Last Wednesday marked six months since legalization -- a social revolution that was not so revolutionary. On Saturday, 4/20 events across the country were perhaps slightly more like celebrations than protests. Polls taken before legalization showed most Canadians were in favour, or ambivalent. Polls since have not shown any reward for Mr. Trudeau for following through.
Most important, says Mr. Clark, is the madness it stopped -- the arbitrary and unequally enforced arrest of 40,000 to 50,000 Canadians a year for possession of cannabis.
The Globe says an indigenous person in Regina was nine times more likely to be arrested for possession than a white person; a black person in Halifax five times more likely than a white counterpart.
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