TORONTO

Now that the LCBO has shown it can't handle its vodka, we better rethink how to sell pot.

Unless you've been high since Christmas, you know Premier Kathleen Wynne and union boss Smokey Thomas - Smokey and the Bandit - are pushing to have weed, when the feds make it legal, added to the shelves of LCBO stores.

No surprise there, given Queen's Park's chronic case of the munchies.

Few "new revenue tools" are as tempting as the marijuana business. Wynne and Thomas's Ontario Public Service Employees Union lust after it, from sales to taxes.

But can we trust them to tell weed from oregano?

Last week, I wrote about a bottle of water masquerading as Smirnoff vodka sold by LCBO to a nice, unsuspecting couple from Pickering. It had been "returned" for a $56.95 refund by some fraudster, then placed back on the shelf by staff. Other bad bottles have popped up across the GTA and police are hunting the dubious dude, who was caught on camera.

Could have been worse.

Could have been anthrax.

But it gives one pause about LCBO's quality control. When you buy booze from the government, it better be booze.

Same if the G-man becomes your dope dealer. You'd buy your Acapulco Gold from a harried minion ringing up countless bottles of hooch.

What if you get home and your cat takes a sniffand goes berserk?

But if not the LCBO, who? Our Jenny Yuen told Sunday of the scores of dispensaries cropping up across Toronto, selling medical marijuana named Chemo, Purple Paralysis, God, and such.

But, as Ms. Yuen pointed out, their legality is as hazy as a roomful of Purple Paralysis smokers.

Do you trust them any more than you trust the LCBO?

Here's another option: Your pharmacy. After all, they're called drug stores.

Makes sense. Get your shaving cream, your vitamins, your makeup, your antacid, your flu shot ... and your whacky tobacky. Pick up your prescription for Viagra - and a bag of something to get you in the mood.

The Ontario Pharmacists Assocation (OPA) last week launched a survey of its 8,200 members in response to the pitch by Smokey and the Bandit.

It asks: Should we offer to do it instead of the LCBO? Not just medicinal pot, the for-fun stuff, too?

The survey asks whether pharamacists see weed dispensing as a business opportunity or a threat to their professional image.

Don't get too excited there, Mary Jane, we're not talking about bins of Schnazzleberry and Martian Mean Green in amongst the sunscreen and Epsom salts.

Marijuana would be dispensed from behind the pharmacy counter, just like Tylenol 1 is now.

No prescription needed, but at least a trained medico checks your ID, looks you in the eye, maybe gives you some expert advice - and knows just what's in that baggie.

Regular customers, St. Catharines pharmacist Tom McAnulty adds, could be alerted if marijuana is a bad mix with their regular presciptions.

Also, pharmacists have access to a data base that spots abuse, say if some giggling hoser visits his 10th pharmacy that morning.

"Our biggest problem might be how to store the stuff," McAnulty tells me. "There's gotta be 50 different flavours. It's like a coffee shop."

Works for me, though. Better than some OPSEU fella who flunked high school botany.

McAnulty runs Tom's Pharmacy in the Garden City and is a former OPA director and no fool. "It's obvious what Kathleen Wynne is up to," he says. "She badly wants that revenue stream. At some point, they'll sell the LCBO or parts of it, so they're fattening the cow."

But he's more worried about safety when legal pot goes on the market. "Could be absolute bedlam."

If you're sure the LCBO is up to the task, well, I don't know what you've been smoking.

Hear Strobel at 94.9 The Rock FM Tuesday and Thursday mornings.

@strobelsun