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Between them Ontarians will be ushered into an age in which it is no longer illegal to purchase marijuana, merely unpleasant. The aim is to get drugs off the street and into remote, cavernous state depositories where they belong: some 150 of them, or about the same as the province has Walmarts.

Still, it is odd that Ontario should have chosen to sell dope like liquor, rather than tobacco. Admittedly it has some of the attributes of both. Like tobacco, it is primarily ingested by smoking. Like alcohol, it is an intoxicant. Like both, it promises to make the government a ton of money — er, that is, it can be addictive, or at least habit-forming.

In fact, the government’s plan is something of a hybrid of the two. Like tobacco, it will be sold in plain packaging, from behind the counter. But like alcohol, it will be sold only in government stores. And therein lies the problem.

None of the real objectives of legalization — getting the mob out of it without getting kids into it; sparing otherwise law-abiding adults from having to deal with criminals or acquiring criminal records themselves — requires the government to be in the business. Even in purely mercenary terms, the government could make money off it simply by taxing it — as it does tobacco.

The tobacco industry may be a loathsome, amoral bunch, but they serve the vital social purpose of keeping tobacco out of the hands of government. Well, also children and the mob, but mostly government. Because something happens to governments when they get into these businesses; their judgment becomes impaired. If the government were in the tobacco business, trust me, it would be running ads telling you to smoke, the way it now runs ads telling you to gamble or drink — sorry, to drink “responsibly.” (David Frum has commented on the particular odiousness of a government that taxes honest labour at punitive rates running ads on TV extolling the get-rich-quick possibilities of lottery tickets.)