Interesting, the linked article called it decriminalize, but the text sounded more like full legalization to me. If you have the political support to fully legalize, why take half measures?
The Guardian is simply wrong. The Liberals fought the last election on a promise to legalize, and just today in Question Period Trudeau rejected calls to decriminalize first, saying that it does nothing to keep pot away from kids and legitimizes a significant income stream for organized crime.
Nah, we're not really worried about those treaties, we're going to send our little, "thank you, but we will no longer be complying with Section XXXXX, in YYYY)". Decriminalizing is simply taking it off the current schedule, and removing it from existing laws.
Legalization requires a whole framework of laws to be created. You could piggyback off cigarettes of alcohol, but should you? Those are the discussions that will be heard over the next sever months.
Sounds plausible that it takes some time to come up with a reasonable-ish framework for legal production, distribution, and consumption. Most of the US states that legalized seemed to jump in with an attitude more like legalize it now and figure out the details as we go. It seems to have worked okay, but could be seen as being kinda risky.
I also think that many people way overestimate the importance of international law and treaties. There is no court with any teeth on these things, and nobody gets any brownie points for following treaties. The only enforcement mechanism is what other countries care to do about any violations they perceive, which could be anything from nothing at all for blatant violations to sanctions, trade war, or real war for minor violations or even not going along enthusiastically enough.
Looks like decriminalization to me, which matches up with what I heard. Meaning that personal users don't get thrown in jail, but the supply chain is still illegal, and nobody would dare try to set up a legitimate business for production or distribution. So all of the profits of the trade go to criminal gangs and street violence instead of either legitimate, tax-paying companies or the Government itself.
That law passed in 2013 and they're still implementing the large scale sales part of the deal. Which in this case means that pharmacies will distributed the drug to "registered" customers. That will start in the second part of the year.
