Dear Editor,
As we enter these last dark days before Solstice and then Christmas, I am finding my curiosity aroused by a situation brought forward to me by several friends. Perhaps you can please explain to me why our MPP John Yakabuski had to step down from the cabinet position of Minister of Transportation due to a family “conflict of interest”, yet the MPP for York-Simcoe, Caroline Mulroney, does not need to step down from her cabinet portfolio of Attorney General? She has defined and enforced the regulations whereby cannabis became “legalized” and distributed in Ontario, while her father, former “drug-warrior” and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney is on the Board of a big cannabis corporation.
It looks to me like the policies that Ms. Mulroney has brought forward and is implementing are financially benefitting the big cannabis corporations, instead of acting in the interest of “the People” whom Premier Ford promised to be serving.
By shutting down all the small private dispensaries and limiting who can grow to supply the Government monopoly she has set up, the common capitalist ploy of limited supply failing to meet greater demand has resulted in higher prices for the People and thus higher profits for the big corporations.
“The People” voted for “legalization” in 2015. It took three years to set up a corporate driven government monopoly that can’t supply demand and only supplies the variety of cannabis that is psychoactive, high in THC. There is a great demand for high CBD cannabis which had been available in the small private entrepreneurial dispensaries that Ms. Mulroney chose to shut down in Ontario. This is easily evidenced by sales of CBD in those U.S. States which have legalized all cannabis, and even those states which have only legalized access to CBD cannabis.
Without troubling the already stretched budget of the Ontario Health Care System, people were successfully self medicating with safe CannaBiDiol to ease anxiety (especially during holiday seasons and climate change news), arthritic pains, M.S., opioid addictions, autism, epileptic seizures, etc without having to experience the “high” of the high THC cannabis that Ms. Mulroney is making accessible.
Shutting down the small private dispensaries, instead of licensing and controlling them, has driven people back to the addictive opioids and other pharmaceuticals that have negative side affects and often are simply not affective. Thus Ms. Mulroney’s policies are also benefitting the shareholders of pharmaceutical companies.
Any new industry and company setting up in business would know before opening what the demand is for which products. The “People” want clean natural product grown from plants that have not been sprayed with poison as some of the Ontario Cannabis Store’s products have been tested to contain, thus sickening many people.
The idea of government licensed cannabis shops does have some positive merit. Suppliers’ “wares” from any grower could be lab analyzed for full content and quality. Customers would thus learn and know what is best for them, and actually get what they are looking for, and paying for. This also would arise from a clear honest education program about cannabis, which I have found available on the YouTube.com channel; “The Sacred Plant”. Not in the education programs provided by Attorney General Mulroney.
Having failed to provide for “the People,” I am curious why Premier Ford doesn’t review Mulroney’s handling of this portfolio, which clearly benefits the rich White friends of her father. Limiting the People of Ontario to only one variety of cannabis and cannabinoids is not serving the People. Surely Mr. Ford can find another portfolio that is worthy of Ms. Mulroney’s talents.
To your health and well being,
Robbie Anderman
Killaloe ON
Featured photo: Aaron Burden on unsplash.com
