Drugs in Rural Canada.
I don't have a huge opinion on Decriminalization. I think it may be a slippery slope, and is a complicated step for Western Governments, but sometimes I think, what could it hurt.
That being said, Canada is full of wide open spaces, and grow ops present a complicated problem for RURAL Police forces.
They aren't neccissarily built to fight the organized crime the surrounds big time GROWING Operations. And it is difficult to properly police vast rural areas. It takes problems and just hides them "out of site out of mind".
Illegal operations such as grow ops will change and scale upwards with their scourge on society role if Marijuana is taken away as an option for the CRIMINAL Enterprise.
We have seen the problems with METH and CRACK and what type of CRIMINAL user that creates.
POT Heads don't tend to steal to feed their habit, and the pot addiction tends to not enhance criminal behaviour.
As a result the suppliers of POT aren't by nature forced to DEAL with Harder Criminals on going.
I don't know that that being the LINE for Illegal drugs is neccessarily a bad thing.
I would think the better way of dealing with things would be to manage the "small quantity" segment of society more leniently as they are.
Pound the big producers for their adjacent criminal activities, money laundering, tax evasion (for drug purposes) etc., weapons offences.
What that will do is take the real criminals off the street.