Expanding on this a bit, there's a huge difference between not punishing drug users and allowing commercial sales. The latter opens up a Pandora's box of regul

Expanding on this a bit, there's a huge difference between not punishing drug users and allowing commercial sales. The latter opens up a Pandora's box of regulatory capture, since problem users account for the vast majority of profits in recreational drug industries. Meanwhile coming up with a defensible reason to criminalize possession in amounts for personal use is a bit of a stretch. You either care about drug users as people (in which case alienating them from law enforcement is bad) or you don't (in which case there is no reason to regulate drugs at all). There's a bit of a gray area around discouraging initiation of new users, I suppose, but mostly it comes down to punishing people for getting high in ways you don't approve of.