The "low productivity from smoking marijuana" thing is stupid, not *just* because it is racist, although of course it's primarily that. But just on the productivity side, let's consider some other issues:
1. Worker productivity is largely a reflection of owner investment in machinery, computers, and new processes. When labour costs are high, owners tend to invest more in productive capacity, increasing worker productivity...
...when labour costs are low, there's little incentive to invest in machinery, etc to increase productivity., so,,,
... worker productivity tends to increase when workers are highly paid and unionized, which is an environment that is anathema to the Conservative politicians spouting bullshit about cannabis
2. Even with that, the argument is all wrong. There's mixed evidence about the effects of cannabis on *motivation* (a psychological term) as opposed to *productivity* (an economic term)...
I won't go through all the literature here, but the short of it is that some people who use a lot of cannabis suffer from "Amotivational Syndrome,” but they also suffer less from psychosis. Others have more complicated reactions, or none at all...
... more to the point, from an employer's perspective, depending on the work desired from workers, you may want a more docile workforce, one that is happy to do repetitive or otherwise boring tasks, as opposed to one that, say, is angry and looking to be disruptive...
... if effect, alcohol is already used as a depressive that serves employers well. You may have a shit job and an asshole boss, but if at the end of the day you can blow off steam at the tavern with your buds, you get up the next day and do it all over again...
... there's no reason to think cannabis won't have the same effect.... more important...
3. EVEN IF IT WERE TRUE (it's not) that cannabis had negative effects on worker productivity, so what? In recent years, increases in worker productivity have almost entirely resulted in higher profits for owners and very low, no, or even negative increases in wages...
... so why the hell should any one worker care about their productivity if it won't be reflected in wage increases? Not their problem. They may as well be happy as they can be in life, and if that means using cannabis, so be it.... LASTLY,
4. The "cannabis use = low productivity" argument is, in fact, inherently racist. White people, and especially rich white people with the means to buy lots of it, use cannabis with abandon, and constitute the owner class that considers itself "productive"...
... white people, and especially rich white people, suffer no significant legal consequences for using cannabis. It is, in effect, already legal for rich white people to use cannabis, so long as they stay within certain legal and social lines
... Joe Fratboy, son of the insurance salesman, can smoke all the weed he wants, still go through university and end up with an OK enough job, and then point at all the brown/black people as lazy potheads.
Meanwhile, Nova Scotia politicians toss around negative stereotypes about Jamaicans, just as over 1,000 Jamaican nationals are working as Temporary Foreign Workers in Canada, doing the jobs Canadians refuse to take...
those jobs the TFWs do, incidentally, are the definition of low-paying jobs, and therefore they reflect low-productivity. You know, the very thing our industry depends on. If we didn't have that low productivity, our economy would collapse.
The end.
