Marijuana becomes legal for all Canadians in October, including those who defend the red and white. How to handle the legalization has been a subject of sensitive nature for the military, but they finally laid their pot use policy on the table for all members of the armed forces.
First it’s important to understand that in the military something like this isn’t cut and dry, Soldiers follow orders like laws, and even have their own that if broken can result in fines and even jail time. There are previous sets of orders and regulations that must be consulted and amended before a decision with this much ramifications can be made. So when their policy was finally announced it’s no surprise that it came as an official document with many reference numbers and a bunch of military terminology, But we took the liberty of translating and summarizing these orders.
Right off the bat the military defines what they consider to be consumption. Vaping, Smoking, Ingesting or “absorption into the body by any other means.” They also defined what the military considers duty being any exercise, parade, training or service that is military in nature.
The Canadian Forces have put the responsibility of safe consumption on the member. In policy it states that soldiers are not aloud to consume cannabis 8 hours prior to certain duties, 24 hours before other duties such as handling a weapon and even 28 days in some cases such as leading up to deployment.
This may seem excessive but these orders are intended to provide all members of the Canadian Forces a safe working environment as well as maintain the army’s goal of a high state of operational readiness.
