If anyone believes there isn’t a healthy dose of unseemly cash-grab in the provincial government’s new cannabis legislation, then they haven’t read the proposed law.

More specifically, they haven’t read sections 72 and 69 (7) of An Act Respecting the Control and Sale of Cannabis.

That’s the section that deals with the online sale of cannabis.

In it, the province attempts to legislate the NLC (“the corporation” in the legislation) a global internet monopoly on cannabis sales.

Here are those sections.

“72. (1) A person other than the corporation shall not sell or otherwise supply cannabis online or through a website.

“(2) A person in the province shall not purchase, attempt to purchase, obtain or attempt to obtain cannabis online or through a website.

“(3) Notwithstanding subsection (2), a person may purchase or obtain cannabis online or through a website from the corporation.”

And, “69. (7) A sale of cannabis by a retailer, including the exchange of money, value or other consideration and the delivery of cannabis to the person purchasing the cannabis, shall take place in or at the cannabis store or cannabis retail location of the retailer selling the cannabis.”

Sounds formal, right?

But for a little background, it’s worth remembering the province’s pathetic attempt in 2013 to trap and charge FedEx with bringing a wine shipment into the province — something else that’s against “the corporation’s” regulations.

You need look no further than internet gambling sites to realize that the province has few tools — and literally no regulatory force — to be able to back up the legislation.

An NLC employee used their spouse’s name to order British Columbia wine and the NLC had the delivery company charged. At the time, then-finance minister Ralph Wiseman said liquor sales were an important source of revenue.

Two years later, provincial prosecutors were forced to admit that they had no case whatsoever, and withdrew the charges. FedEx tried, and failed, to recover the $150,000 it had spent in legal costs; there haven’t been any reports of NLC “sting” attempts since then.

Right now, it’s against the Criminal Code to sell marijuana in Canada.

Yet internet sales are booming, and if the province expects to somehow be able to stop that by mere regulation once marijuana use and possession is actually legal, they’re dreaming in Technicolor.

You need look no further than internet gambling sites to realize that the province has few tools — and literally no regulatory force — to be able to back up the legislation. The province has passed legislation leaving a monopoly on gambling in the hands of the Atlantic Lottery Corporation. But go online, and see if anyone comes after for playing poker for cash on any number of websites.

That horse is well out of the barn, down the road and has been grazing on other people’s hay for years.

A few lines of legislation in a provincial bill are hardly going to stuff that pony back in the shed. It won’t do it for online cannabis sales either.