"Personal use decriminalization" is a farce. Imagine if possessing a cup of coffee remained perfectly legal, but anyone found with a box of coffee beans were presumed to be a dealer and sentenced to hard labor.
Decriminalizing supply is impossible under current international treaties. But hopefully the farcical nature of this situation will open up the popular debate.
Hurray for Argentina and Mexico. I hope the trend continues.
I give Obama accidental credit for this. I suspect these decriminalization efforts would not have been tried under a McCain administration. (And if they were tried, those countries would have been punished.)
I'm happing to see this is maybe becoming a trend (Mexico sort of decriminalized marijuana for personal use recently). The war on drugs has done much damage already.
Portugal has also been getting a fair bit of press lately for their ongoing experiment. They decriminalized the possession of all drugs way back in July 2000.
"Each adult is free to make lifestyle decisions without the intervention of the state." I agree in principle, but the reality is people's lifestyle choices can impact the state - whether it be they turn to the government health systems to help break their addictions (I write this from UK where we have socialised healthcare) or crime rates go up, and the state has to increase the police force. There are so many issues, but it's interesting to see a government taking a more progressive attitude towards casual marijuana use.
asciilifeform|16 years ago
dtf|16 years ago
mattchew|16 years ago
I give Obama accidental credit for this. I suspect these decriminalization efforts would not have been tried under a McCain administration. (And if they were tried, those countries would have been punished.)
steiger|16 years ago
dtf|16 years ago
monkeygrinder|16 years ago
pyman|16 years ago
jsares|16 years ago