These days it seems everyone is talking about pot. The Prime Minister often speaks about the impending legalization across our country. And in Toronto, everyone is talking about dispensaries.

Later this month Toronto’s Board of Health will consider a report from the city’s top doctor regarding the legalization of cannabis in Canada. For the sake of public health and harm reduction, the board should endorse a legalization approach.

The move to legalize and regulate cannabis in Canada is long overdue. The criminalization of pot and the war on drugs has failed. It doesn’t act as a deterrent. It’s a waste of money ($1.2 billion is spent every year on this failed approach). And the lasting impact on people is awful: 60,000 Canadians are arrested for possession every year; and more than 500,000 Canadians are carrying a criminal record for this offense. Far too often, enforcement of these laws has disproportionally targeted marginalized populations. These harms are real … and with a regulated approach, they are avoidable.

It is time for a new approach to cannabis focused on public health and safety. On this, many of us agree. The task now is to develop a regulatory framework and that’s where things get interesting.

Let’s start with some basics. Cannabis is the most commonly used (currently) illegal drug in Canada. According to research conducted by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), 14 per cent of adults and 23 per cent of high-school students reported using cannabis in the past year. Not insignificant numbers. People have smoked, ingested and vaped pot for years. It’s clearly not going away.

Cannabis use may be commonplace today, but so are the harms associated with it. As Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health and CAMH have reported, there are real health risks. Like tobacco, there are serious respiratory impacts. When used frequently, it can affect memory and is associated with increased risk of impairment to cognitive functioning.

Let’s not kid ourselves, while cannabis offers very important medicinal benefits, it can also bring significant harms. It is not benign — that’s why we need a strong regulatory framework.

For these reasons it is very good news that the Government of Canada has committed to bringing forward a legalized regulatory framework. A regulatory approach will allow us to mitigate the negative health effects while avoiding the broader social impacts of criminalization.

The challenge now is striking the right balance when implementing federal regulations. Among advocates of legalization, many of us will agree on principle and disagree on the details of the correct approach.

Legalization can take many forms with varying degrees of regulation. If we approach cannabis legalization with public health and harm reduction in mind, a range of issues need to be considered: cannabis content, access, age-appropriateness, marketing restrictions, pricing, medicinal and recreational use, among others. The details matter.

In Toronto we’re dealing with the growth of cannabis dispensaries: there are currently more than 100. Let’s be clear, under the current federal law these dispensaries are operating outside the law and have expanded their businesses and community presence far outside the intended scope of current medical marijuana regulations.

While medicinal marijuana is legal (and should be!), under the current law you have to be a licensed provider and you can’t operate out of a retail storefront. While recreational pot use will soon be legal in Canada, it is not today. In the meantime, we’re stuck in a legal grey zone that isn’t ideal for anyone. While we await new federal legislation, municipalities and neighbourhoods are facing a situation akin to unregulated legalization.

We need the federal government to move quickly to legalize marijuana. Many have asked what, if anything, the city can do in the interim. Mayor John Tory has asked Municipal Licensing and Standards to explore options.

While it is appropriate and necessary for the city to explore all options, this will take time and may not ultimately work. For example, the city could spend months to develop new bylaws for dispensaries, only to be told by the federal government cannabis will be distributed via pharmacies or through the LCBO.

Municipalities are stuck in legislative limbo. We need direction and we need it quickly.

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With legalization coming we have a chance to implement drug policy focused on public health. A century of trying to arrest our way to a solution has failed. The task now is to get the details of a legal regulatory framework right.