Quote:
Originally Posted by Mathgod
There are plenty of things that are decriminalized but not legalized. Things like driving over the speed limit or riding the C-train without a fare. The reasons why these things are decriminalized but not legalized are pretty straight forward.
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Yeah, but people don't drive across a border just to go faster due to higher speed limits, or ride a train in another city because they don't ticket non paying riders. Not really sure where you're going with that comparison.
Anyways, decriminalization wouldn't have the desired effect with weed, as the government wouldn't be controlling the growing to ensure safe product, wouldn't be enacting laws to attempt to keep it out of the hands of youngsters and wouldn't receive any revenue from it.
There's a lot of no brainer, positives about legalizing weed, and decimalization only checks off one box, which is not making criminals out of users. Granted that's an important box to check off, but it makes almost no sense to only go that far.
Like MattyC was getting at, it screams "We understand that weed shouldn't be illegal, and we can clearly see the other benefits of legalization but the subject is very taboo and past feelings on weed won't allow us to fully embrace such a no brainer".
Decriminalization is a half measure that says "We don't want to be completely behind the times, so here's kind of a thing that allows us to say we did something and aren't archaic".