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Rik's been smoking weed for 30 years, but he's skeptical of legalization

From determining impaired drivers to stocking online stores and the delay in storefronts, questions linger
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The only place to buy legal marijuana in Ontario is online at the Ontario Cannabis Store, which officially opened for sales at 12:01 a.m. on Oct. 17. (Arron Pickard)

Marijuana is now legal to purchase, possess, and grow across Canada.

The questions and concerns linked with pot's legalization are not limited to those who don't condone the use of marijuana, but weed smokers themselves are approaching the historic law change with a dose of skepticism.

Rik Elliott is 53-years-old and has been using marijuana for more than 30 years. Elliott has dabbled in many facets of the cannabis world, growing his own plants, making his own oils and edibles, as well as purchasing and smoking the stuff on a regular basis.

When it comes to marijuana legalization, Elliott says he never thought he'd see the day, but has his share of questions as to how everything is going to play out in the coming weeks, months and beyond.

"I had kind of hoped for this in the back of my mind, and now that it's happening and the way it's happening I'm not so sure I'm liking it," said Elliott.

"One of the biggest things, as soon as they said they're going to legalize weed, now there's all these impaired drivers by weed. I guess my biggest concern is marijuana was a billion-dollar industry prior to legalization and there was never an eye batted at the fact that you might be driving under the influence of marijuana."

The implementation of police roadside tests for marijuana impairment sticks out as a point of concern for Elliott, who says that determining a point of impairment under the influence of marijuana leaves a lot of grey area.

"For someone like me who has been smoking for as long as I have, it's about a tolerance. I don't think it's fully understood yet," said Elliott. "Tests have been done on how the brain works under the influence of marijuana and how it lights up, but you can't actually see a cognitive point of impairment. They know that this is going on and this is happening, but they haven't been able to definitively say you are impaired or you're not."

In addition to the growing pains tied to policing marijuana impairment, Elliott doesn't have high hopes for the government's online sale of marijuana, at least in the early going. Following the federal government's deccision to legalize marijuana, plans were in place for government-run businesses like the LCBO to act as storefront locations for the sale of marijuana. 

Those plans changed when the Conservatives took power in Ontario and ditched the government-run outlets. 

While storefronts are still in the long-term plan, they likely won't be operational until at least April 2019 and the only place to buy legal marijuana here in Ontario will be online at the Ontario Cannabis Store, which officially opened for sales at 12:01 a.m. on Oct. 17.

In the early going, the Ontario Cannabis Store will be offering a fairly limited variety of products, with buds, some oils, and pre-rolled joints available for purchase. Initially, the store will offer 70 strains of marijuana, increasing to more than 150 over time.

"They're going to be out of stock first day," said Elliott. "I'm going to go online right shortly after midnight to place an order and I'm betting that within the first 30 minutes that website should be down, it might not even take that long. Even the little bit of ordering that I do right now I see that they're already getting busier. In the past they'd have my order prosessed and packaged within a day, now it's three to five days before they even see my order."

While not technically legal in the past, ordering marijuana online has been in existence for some time and was used largely by people with medical marijuana licenses. 

Elliott is not licensed for medical marijuana, and he says that there's still some confusion around how the hundreds of online marijuana distributors will be classified post-legalization.

"Apparently these sites will all be black market now, with the medicinal ones I don't know, I don't actually have my license so that part is for the government and the police to sort out," said Elliott. "I think the sites that are truly not medicinal will feel the heavy hand of the law and will be cracked down on, the medicinal ones I'm not sure. I imagine they'll be made a lot more accountable for the amount of product they're producing and moving."

Elliott says that the government is missing a big opportunity in their decision to squash storefront sales in the early going.

"You hear a lot of this talk about they're going to eliminate the black market, but it's not going anywhere right now with how they're doing it," said Elliott. "This idea of no storefronts is an absolute killer for them. You've got enough people, you can walk to somebody's house and it's like a storefront, I think they're shooting themselves in the foot with that. 

"The storefronts made a lot of sense, you had a mechanism in place for distribution and to ID and ensure people were old enough to buy. I'm a little disappointed that they chose not to do that, but this is pretty much unknown territory for them right now, (as) we're only the second country in the world to legalize marijuana."


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