{"id":56599,"date":"2019-03-07T08:35:30","date_gmt":"2019-03-07T13:35:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=56599"},"modified":"2024-09-01T09:55:51","modified_gmt":"2024-09-01T13:55:51","slug":"armstrong-quebec-should-make-legal-cannabis-more-available-not-less","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2019\/03\/armstrong-quebec-should-make-legal-cannabis-more-available-not-less\/","title":{"rendered":"ARMSTRONG: Quebec should make legal cannabis more available, not less"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Armstrong, Associate Professor of Operations Research in\u00a0Brock\u2019s Goodman School of Business, wrote a <a href=\"https:\/\/montrealgazette.com\/opinion\/opinion-quebec-should-make-legal-cannabis-more-available-not-less\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">piece recently published in the <em>Montreal Gazette<\/em><\/a> about Quebec potentially raising the legal age for cannabis to 21.<\/p>\n<p>Armstrong writes:<\/p>\n<p><em>The Coalition Avenir Qu\u00e9bec government is making a mistake with its proposed law to raise the legal age for cannabis to 21 as well as to ban public smoking.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The government\u00a0seems well-intentioned. But its law seems likely to have unintended effects.\u00a0Critics argue the age increase would drive young adults to illegal suppliers. And the smoking restrictions could prevent residents of non-smoking buildings from legally lighting-up.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Instead, it would make much more sense for Quebec to increase all adult Quebecers\u2019 access to cannabis, by opening more stores.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Let\u2019s see what the numbers say.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>First, there are about 270,000 Quebecers ages 18 to 20, according to Statistics Canada data.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Statistics Canada\u2019s surveys also indicate 33 per cent of Canadians in that age group use cannabis. Quebec\u2019s figure might be nearer 29 per cent, given its lower overall usage rate.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Together, those numbers suggest roughly 80,000 existing users would be banned from Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 qu\u00e9b\u00e9coise du cannabis (SQDC) outlets. Does the government believe they\u2019d all suddenly abstain?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Continue reading the full article <a href=\"https:\/\/montrealgazette.com\/opinion\/opinion-quebec-should-make-legal-cannabis-more-available-not-less\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Armstrong, Associate Professor of Operations Research in\u00a0Brock\u2019s Goodman School of Business, wrote a piece recently published in the Montreal Gazette about Quebec potentially raising the legal age for cannabis to 21.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48014,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39,7,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56599"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56599"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56601,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56599\/revisions\/56601"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}