Mr. Speaker, one of the stated objectives of this bill is to ensure that we do not have the situation we have now, with the courts being tied up with people who have been charged for possession of a small amount of marijuana. The courts should be used for other things that are far more important.
I visited Europe and drove around Switzerland, Germany, and the Netherlands with the police. They did not pick up marijuana smokers, nor were they interested in them, because that just blocked up the courts. We need to deal with a lot of the backlog in our courts.
If people are going to be charged with cannabis possession, we have to look at their age, because we are still talking about a legal age. We have clear guidelines for how much cannabis someone is allowed to have on their person. We want to make sure that we are not treating a person with simple possession and a person who is selling on the street in the same way, and it is very clear in this bill that there are going to be distinctions on both.
On what has happened in the past, I do not know. Whether there are going to be any pardons is something the committee can discuss and debate. I am not discussing that right now. We are talking about whether we should legalize this drug, whether we should regulate, and whether we should have clear guidelines in terms of potency and who should be authorized to sell it. This is to get the street vendors off the street. It is to deal with the pushers and organized crime who are making money off our young people. We do not see organized crime selling alcohol on the street anymore.