just an open letter to the various health ministers in canada,
i'll be terse.
i know that you're not the happiest about marijuana legalization, due to concerns about potential public health problems. these are perhaps overblown, but not entirely unfounded. i would not expect marijuana usage to increase, in the long run; we may, however, learn that rates of use have long been even higher than we thought.
what i'm getting at is that any health concerns around marijuana are likely already maximized, as it is.
but, there's a policy that could actually decrease health concerns. it's currently being held up by fears around children that are certainly overblown, if not entirely unfounded.
so long as marijuana is sold to me in dried form, i will continue to smoke. in fact, this is the only reason i continue to sporadically smoke tobacco products, as well.
....but if you were to legalize edibles in a cheap and accessible form (cooking with dried marijuana is prohibitively expensive for most people), it is entirely possible that i may never smoke anything else for the rest of my life.
i think the question of edibles is currently being analyzed the wrong way and would urge you to see it from a different angle.
back in the 90s, when i was in high school, it was marijuana that i was first exposed to, and not alcohol or tobacco. you seem to understand this truth. but, while marijuana has been proven to not be much of a gateway drug after all, it was certainly a gateway for me to tobacco, as a cigarette was used to cover up the smell before going back to class.
i would not have started smoking cigarettes had it not been for my earlier use of marijuana. i cannot be an isolated example.
i might suggest that there are consequently potentially dramatically positive consequences in finding ways to separate marijuana from tobacco, and especially in the minds of youth.