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This serves no one. Unintelligent pandering never does. Harper is widely acknowledged as “the smartest guy in the room” — even by his critics — so we should expect better from him. Maybe it’s asking too much during an election, but this prime minister has made a practice — think of his expensive and discredited “crime agenda” — of enacting unintelligent policy and making unintelligent statements in defence of it.

So here’s some intelligent commentary: cannabis prohibition is ending because all frauds end. We need to acknowledge what every serious policy analysis has found — a criminal record for cannabis use and possession is more harmful than the use of cannabis itself. We need to talk about what kind of regulatory regime we want to establish to accomplish what prohibition has failed to: shrink the role of organized crime, create a gatekeeper between suppliers and children, and promote moderate and responsible adult use.

We need to acknowledge that there’s a large body of evidence that finds that punishment does not work where cannabis is concerned. We need to embrace the fact that the Internet has democratized the knowledge of how to grow high potency cannabis and that there is no putting that genie back in the bottle. We need to acknowledge that — contrary to what Harper said — cannabis is not “infinitely worse” than tobacco. It’s the other way around. We need to acknowledge that moderate use of cannabis is safe for the vast majority of adults, but that persons with a familial vulnerability to mental illness should avoid it – as they should tobacco and alcohol.