Ontario is a strange and contradictory place. You can’t smoke a cigarette on a patio or, god forbid, on a sports field, but soon you might be able to drive to the nearest liquor store and pick up a bag of weed with your Chardonnay.

Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne announced this week that if marijuana is legalized in Canada as planned, she’d like the drug to be sold in provincially owned LCBO stores. Who knows — maybe the LCBO will become the Costco of debauchery, where college kids can acquire the bulk of their party favours in a single trip.

This plan, fun as it sounds, is terrible news for would be mom-and pop-pot dispensaries, independent sellers in the province who were hoping to turn a profit from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s legal weed promise. But perhaps their loss is our gain. After all, what better way to deplete the marijuana black market and battle stigmatization around casual pot use than by making the drug appear as conventional and mainstream as possible?

There is nothing more mainstream than the LCBO, where customers can donate money to charity every time they check out, and wine coolers are often stored the earnestly titled “Party Zone” section. Wynne is probably right that such a place is well-suited to the legal distribution of marijuana; sure, pot-wary people will be shocked and possibly angry the first few times they walk into the LCBO and see and smell green, but by their fourth or fifth visit the drug will register as no more offensive than Mike’s Hard Lemonade or Pumpkin Spiced Vodka (and maybe less so). Besides, what better way to get mom to try that sativa strain you know will alleviate her sciatica problem than a trip to the LCBO where the pot is steps away from the Kim Crawford, Sauvignon Blanc?

Yet where Wynne’s plan succeeds on public access it fails big time in its messaging to younger Canadians. When marijuana becomes legal we are told the LCBO will be extremely careful not to promote pot. Last month, Warren (Smokey) Thomas, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, said if the LCBO sells pot it will work within a “strong regulatory framework,” where the drug is subject to a “ban on marketing.” Government-regulated pot sold by government dispensaries, Wynne tells us, are “socially responsible” because, among other things, impressionable teens won’t be bombarded with pot-positive messaging.

This may sound like a good thing and it would be, were it not for the fact that this selective marketing is hypocritical in the extreme. Drinking alcohol, according to a study in the U.S. National Library of Medicine, is riskier than smoking pot, yet the LCBO — a government body— markets and glorifies alcohol like Colgate does toothpaste.

From its sprawling wall ads featuring smiling, sun-kissed beer drinkers to its extensive wine pairing lists (“These easy-drinking wines are great anytime-sippers”), it’s no mystery that the government has not and will not take the same interest in warning kids against alcohol as it will in warning them against marijuana. But it should, because selling both alcohol and pot in the same government regulated store and feverishly marketing the former while warning against the latter, suggests the latter — marijuana — is more dangerous than alcohol. And research suggests this may not be true.

In the spirit of fairness and public health accuracy, if weed becomes legal, the LCBO should market both substances equally. In fact, government stores should run a “pot pairings list” alongside their wine pairings list. If a Riesling is good with “spicy Thai dishes,” and “Indian curry” (which somehow I doubt) the LCBO should also inform Ontarians about the appropriate food and Netflix pairings for an Indica, Purple Haze, and Mango Kish. If its catalogues feature photos of thirty-something women sitting by a fire, beaming at each other over generous glasses of merlot, it should also feature potheads cracking up on a ski hill at blue mountain, or staring blankly into space on an exceptionally worn sofa.

Of course it makes logical sense that the government would market alcohol and not weed. (I am also just as elated as anyone else about the fact that this week select supermarkets across the province began selling beer). Alcohol is socially acceptable and weed is not. But it doesn’t make moral sense. Recreational pot use may make you laugh at things that aren’t funny, eat things that aren’t tasty, and spiral into a vortex of self-doubt. But it probably won’t kill you. Our government shouldn’t indicate otherwise.

Emma Teitel is a National columnist. Her column appears Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays.

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