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“We will not permit products to be visible,” Finance Minister Charles Sousa memorably vowed — so it’ll be like buying cigarettes, except the packages won’t even have branding on them. No “vaping lounges” or other public use will be permitted. A maximum of 150 government-owned storefronts across this vast province will be the only legal physical retail environment, and the government will run the mail order arm as well.

Two: it is at least entirely possible, if not highly likely, that marijuana will not be legal on July 1, 2018, as the Liberals had promised.

The basic pitch they made to change-averse Canadians in 2015, which they have been very consistent on ever since, is that legalization will be safer and healthier than prohibition. To avoid any whiff of recklessness, they need certain groups on board with the legalization date — notably the police.

The police are not on board with the legalization date. “It’s impossible,” Rick Barnum, deputy commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police told a House of Commons committee last week. Clearly not arresting people is harder than laymen might think.

Now, I’ve taken my own digs at both the federal regime and the one Ontario designed to fit within it. The latter, in particular, is ridiculous; I don’t recall encountering an objection to it that I don’t share (though in the end I think legalization, however clumsy, will be an improvement). What neither regime is, and should not have been to anyone, is surprising. And many Ontarians in particular have themselves, at least partially, to blame.