Global Courant 2023-04-14 19:01:13
Quebec’s ban on homegrown cannabis plants is constitutional, Canada’s Supreme Court has unanimously ruled.
The ruling is in a case first brought to court in 2019 by Janick Murray-Hall.
Federal law allows people to grow or possess up to four cannabis plants at home, but the government of Quebec banned growing for personal use, with fines ranging from $250 to $750.
Murray-Hall’s attorney argued that Quebec’s ban on owning and growing plants for personal use is unconstitutional and contradicts the federal cannabis law enacted in 2018.
The Supreme Court emphatically disagreed with this on Friday.
According to the ruling, the provincial law aligns well with the general objectives of the federal law, which include diverting users from the black market.
“The Quebec legislature did not see the possession and personal cultivation of cannabis as a social evil to be suppressed, but rather a practice that should be banned in order to direct consumers to a controlled source of supply,” the ruling reads.
Quebec’s cannabis law paved the way for the creation of the Société québécoise du cannabis (SQDC), the government agency that operates cannabis stores in the province.
Prior to today’s ruling by the nation’s highest court, the Quebec Superior Court sided with Murray-Hall in ruling that the law was unconstitutional. That decision was subsequently overturned by the Quebec Court of Appeal, which paved the way for today’s decision.
Ontario, Manitoba, Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia were all interveners in the case.
