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Having promised to legalize marijuana, the Trudeau ministry is now trying to figure out how. It’s not the sort of thing that should perplex people in government.

Trudeau’s often-mocked pledge to legalize pot was entirely sensible on all kinds of grounds.

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First, a free society does not tell adults how to conduct their personal affairs. Second, it is clear by now that marijuana is not more harmful than alcohol or, possibly, tobacco (Sun Life just became the first Canadian insurance company to rate users of marijuana as “non-smokers” for actuarial and premium purposes.)

Third, the best way to keep it out of the hands of youth is to have it sold by people with reputations and legal businesses they could lose by selling to minors.

Fourth, to treat as illegal a substance that literally millions of Canadians regularly consume brings the law into disrepute. And fifth, to apply the law against marijuana in some cases but not others is fundamentally unjust as well as injurious to public confidence in the rule of law.