Has the Ontario government learned nothing from its decades-long struggle to find the right balance between safety and paternalism when it comes to selling alcohol? Judging by the path it seems to be going down on how to handle recreational marijuana, the answer, sadly, is no.

Premier Kathleen Wynne and her finance minister, Charles Sousa, have made it abundantly clear that when the Trudeau government gets around to acting on its promise to legalize marijuana (quite likely by this time next year), the province’s favoured option is that it be sold through the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO).

True, they’re going through the motions of studying various possibilities. But at every opportunity, Wynne and Sousa point to the LCBO as a secure, established, well-run mechanism for selling intoxicating substances. Alcohol today – why not pot tomorrow?

At first glance, it may make a lot of sense. Especially when the choice is set up as one between the safe, familiar LCBO and a supposed “free-for-all” of dodgy pot shops pushing cheap weed on unsuspecting kids.

In fact, that’s not the real choice we face. There are other ways of safely retailing marijuana that would not involve giving the state-run liquor monopoly total control over this new and lucrative market.

There are at least two big reasons to pause and consider whether Ontario really should go down the road being pushed by the province, by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s chief pot policy adviser, Scarborough MP Bill Blair, and (not surprisingly) by the union that represents liquor store workers.

First, consumers deserve to be treated as adults capable of making decisions about what legal substances they use. It’s obvious but it still needs to be said in staid, paternalistic Ontario.

There are plenty of legitimate concerns about marijuana use, including its effects on young people and how to deter people while driving under the influence. Once the federal government makes it legal, we’ll need well-thought-out policies to cover a host of issues. That includes how best to protect kids; how to keep the streets safe by enforcing the law against driving while stoned; and whether marijuana advertising should be allowed (that one’s easy: it shouldn’t).

At the same time, though, once pot is legalized it will be in the same category as alcohol – and adult consumers must ultimately be trusted.

Second, one of the key goals of legalization is to kill the illegal market and drive out the criminal element. If prices are kept too high and pot is made difficult or awkward to buy in the name of safety, the illegal market will continue to flourish. Handing it over to the LCBO risks that result. There’s a robust underground network in place right now, and it won’t be killed if pot is made too inaccessible.

We’ve gone through all this with booze. The LCBO was once a grim place that deliberately shamed consumers who had the temerity to buy its products. Now it’s open and friendly. And the Wynne government, to its credit, opened the doors further by chipping away at The Beer Store’s monopoly and making beer and wine available in selected supermarkets. The sky didn’t fall.

Why on earth, then, would it repeat the same pattern by giving the LCBO the exclusive right to sell pot? It should consider a more flexible model that combines sales through liquor stores along with a network of licensed and properly regulated dispensaries.

A working model for such a network exists in Colorado, which legalized recreational pot two years ago (it’s also legal in Washington state, Oregon and Alaska). Marijuana can be bought in privately owned dispensaries that check ID and age (purchasers must be 21 or older), and resemble pharmacies more than head shops.

Store owners risk losing their license – and therefore their livelihood – if they’re caught selling to minors. So far it seems to be working. A new survey by the state health department shows that pot use among Colorado teens has not changed appreciably since legalization, despite fears that it would create a lost generation of stoners.

It’s not hard to imagine a similar system in Ontario, complementing LCBO outlets. Dispensary owners would have to pay a substantial fee for operating, collect taxes on pot on behalf of the government, and strictly apply whatever age limit is set for purchase.

Limits would also have to be set on the number and location of dispensaries. The recent proliferation of pop-up pot stores in Toronto – some of them near schools – is a result of the current vacuum in the law. It’s exactly what would not be permitted under a well-regulated marijuana retail system.

Politicians who point to that chaos in order to defend turning all sales over to the state-run liquor monopoly are being deliberately ingenuous. They can figure out a better system, if they choose to.

What they choose to do will depend to a great extent on public opinion, which is sharply divided. But a new poll this week found that among various options, the government’s favoured choice of handing marijuana sales over to the LCBO was ranked lowest.

Oddly, more than a third (35 per cent) of those polled by Forum Research would like recreational pot to be sold in pharmacies. That might make sense now, when it’s permitted only for medical use, but once marijuana is declared legal there’s little logic to having pharmacists dispense it.

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Just over a quarter of those polled prefer sales through private dispensaries, while only 20 per cent think it should be sold through the LCBO. Evidently, combining booze and pot in the same location doesn’t sound like a good idea to a lot of people.

If there’s a message for the government in all this, it’s to keep your options open. Don’t get locked into a single rigid distribution system that treats adult consumers like naughty children and allows a substantial black market to survive.

And don’t fear a backlash once Ottawa legalizes marijuana. Public opinion may be more open to change than you think.