Thank you.
I understand and respect that there are different philosophical approaches to drug policy in this country, but I want to press a bit on the general idea of moving to legalization. In terms of alcohol prohibition from the thirties, if we look at what happened then, when it was illegal and prohibited, we had organized crime, illegal stills, machine guns in the streets, and thefts and break-ins and that sort of thing.
As we've moved to legalize that product, which, by the way is a dangerous product—I think we all recognize that alcohol is responsible for a lot of health problems, a lot of death, and a lot of violence—we have moved to a situation now where people can access it legally and you can home-brew your own wine and beer. I dare say that every person in this room has a liquor cabinet of some type at home. Alcohol is in the home. We're not seeing a diversion of alcohol to the black market. We're not seeing people break into houses to steal liquor on any grand scale.
My question is, why would it be any different if we simply add cannabis to that as the intoxicant that people choose? I recognize that there would be a transition period, but over time wouldn't we expect to see a very similar social rollout with cannabis? What's the difference between cannabis and alcohol and the way society has dealt with them?