British Columbians have a reputation in Canada as being the biggest pot smokers in the country. This reputation was built over the last few decades at least. It was no surprise to Canadians that gold medal winning snowboarder, Ross Rebagliati tested positive for THC from marijuana at the Nagano Olympics and he is a native British Columbian.
His excuse was classic. The positive drug result was from him inhaling second hand smoke at a party where friends were smoking marijuana. Whether he did or didn’t smoke up, he kept the gold medal because marijuana wasn’t a banned substance for Olympian performance, yet. It is banned, now, but at higher concentrations than the reading at Nagano.
Whether Ross’s story is true or not I will leave up to you but he has been financially involved with medical marijuana companies since that test.
That aside, ask a Canadian to give qualities of a British Columbian. I bet “stoner” or the equivalent is in the top 5.
So the title of this post is funny. It’s just that it is also true. So what’s going on here?
Obviously British Columbians are staying with their pushers. Perhaps it was such a common pastime and pot pushing was so common that the price on the black market is as low as possible already. Or the local pusher is closer than the nearest pot store.
The pushers have the market saturated and the only retail customers that the pot stores attract are those that are trying it for the first time and lack a pusher.
Regardless, if the British Columbian government wants to get rid of the black market, they are going to have to try harder. After all, they have quite possibly the biggest per capita market to tax. I see dollar signs appearing in the government’s eyes. Perhaps they will realize the mistakes they’ve made and become more competitive.
