in all my years of being around many, many women and hearing their stories of abuse and such, I have never once, not once, heard a woman say "He smoked a joint and then became violent" but, I have heard (more times than I like) "He started drinking and all hell broke loose. I thought he was going to kill me."
Yes, alcohol seems like a far more dangerous drug - but that's judged on the basis of massively higher consumption levels. We don't yet know the effect pot will have on society if use becomes widespread.
Is it heavily taxed? Mildly? .... or dare I contemplate, lightly to none at all?!
I don't know, I think it's priced to be close to competitive to the illegal stuff to hopefully make their's not so worth while but that logic doesn't make sense - if that's the going rate they can still sell it, it would need to be cheaper to really hurt them.
In some ways having legal pot will make illegal pot harder to police because it's less clear-cut that it's an illegal substance in itself, now the source matters. Maybe they hope the economies of scale of commercial growers will put the hurt on hidden production - it has to be easier, although they don't have any taxes to pay.
In Alberta our sales tax is 5% which isn't so bad, I don't know if there is a specific 'pot tax' on top.
The only concern I have being a Canadian myself is the open capability of users to smoke pot in public places such as walking down street or waiting for a bus, even smoking at home outside, pot smoke isn't pleasant and carries a ways, so there be new annoyances to deal with.
Many places have passed bylaws to cover "smells" from properties - I think with the intention that there is an avenue to stop people who are lighting up with the smell drifting to neighbouring properties. You can't just smoke while walking down the street or even in designated smoking spots, it has to be private or have a specific license.
