Would you like some marijuana with that merlot?
How about some cannabis with your cabernet?
As weird as that sounds, it makes sense to Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne. She says the LCBO is well-suited to selling recreational marijuana once Prime Minister Justin Trudeau makes good on his campaign promise to legalize it.
“I don’t know what the timeline is with the federal government but it seems to me that using that distribution network of the LCBO - as has been talked about, I think, in other provinces, using their provincial institutions – I think that that makes a lot of sense,” Wynne said on Monday.
There are over 600 LCBO outlets in Ontario generating billions of dollars of revenue for the Province.
But not everyone agrees it’s the best way to sell cannabis.
Derek Ogden runs National Access Cannabis, a medicinal marijuana clinic in Ottawa. He points out that drinkers and marijuana users are often two separate groups. He says selling booze and pot under the same roof might encourage more people, especially inexperienced users, to combine the two. That could lead to people becoming more intoxicated than they realize.
It can also be dangerous. “You can have very unpredictable outcomes,” Ogden warns. “In fact it can lead much more easily to alcohol-induced deaths. So we don’t see that as a very good fit.”
Ogden cautions the federal government to go very slow with its plans to legalize marijuana, and rely on the experience of the medicinal marijuana community.
