'(It's) the way to go': Brian Mulroney explains his about-face on cannabis
Former prime minister Brian Mulroney, whose government once introduced legislation to keep marijuana in the same legal category as heroin, hasn't merely become a born-again weed evangelical — he now says Canada is poised to influence the rest of the world to join the cannabis bandwagon.
"I'm saying the government's position that was taken yesterday is the way to go," Mulroney told CBC News Thursday.
"It takes a while for certain people and certain things to catch up with reality and great social advances — as I've indicated — come in waves. And this is one of the waves that I think will have Canada showing the way for the rest of the world."
© Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press Former prime minister Brian Mulroney, shown here giving testimony to a U.S. Senate committee on NAFTA earlier this year, has joined the board of directors of Acreage Holdings, an American cannabis company, It was announced yesterday that Mulroney is joining the board of Acreage Holdings, a New York-based marijuana company that also counts former U.S. Speaker of the House John Boehner and former Massachusetts governor William Weld among its directors.
It's a long way from his stance in the early 1990s, when Mulroney's government introduced Bill C-85 — which would have entrenched marijuana in the same legal category as LSD and heroin.
And while Mulroney may be the latest high-profile political figure to switch sides in the cannabis debate — and to take advantage of the commercial opportunities legalization offers — he's definitely not the first.
Julian Fantino, Toronto's former chief of police and a Conservative cabinet minister under former prime minister Stephen Harper, has become chairman of the board for 48North, a medicinal marijuana company.
That's a significant course correction for a longtime opponent of marijuana legalization who told the Toronto Sun in 2004 that legalization would not cut down on crime.
"I guess we can legalize murder too and then we won't have a murder case," Fantino said at the the time. "We can't go that way."
Fantino is following in the footsteps of another former cabinet minister — Liberal Herb Dhaliwal, who served in former prime minister Jean Chrétien's cabinet. Dhaliwal founded cannabis producer National Green Biomed Ltd., based in the Fraser Valley.