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In Alberta, as in other provinces, this will be the winter of the weed. On Friday, the government will (finally) stop surveying the public and inviting submissions on what the retailing system for legal marijuana ought to look like here. It will have to finally go ahead and create the damned thing: write, debate, and pass a law implementing its chosen principles.

If you live elsewhere, your government is also struggling through the guts of this process. But the political stakes are probably a little smaller, and as far as I can tell there is much less suspense. Federal pot legalization has created a special problem for that weirdest of Canadian anomalies: a New Democratic government of Alberta.

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The starter’s pistol on legalization was officially fired in the House of Commons in April, and the Alberta government spent June and July taking a first round of soundings from “stakeholders” and the public. This feedback gave them enough data to make plenty of firm, confident decisions on the correct principles of socially healthy pot retailing.