The area around Main and Hastings in Vancouver is called the Downtown Eastside. Its existence has little if anything to do with marijuana consumption or laws. Most of the people there are on drugs like heroin, and there is a lot more to the story than drug consumption. For example, many of the people there have mental health problems that make it difficult for them to integrate into normal society and more susceptible to drug addiction. This is part of why drug prohibition laws haven't been very successful in solving the problems and why Vancouver has largely given up on that approach. I'm not sure how throwing people in jail is supposed to help anyway when the root cause of their problem is a lack of healthcare treatment and general living standards.
I haven't seen any evidence that pot is any worse than alcohol, and pot laws are clearly causing a lot of hardship and public expense. I don't think pot should be illegal, particularly when enforcement is so spotty and when the laws are so mixed up. It's a real mess in the US. In a few cases even farmers who have gotten medical marijuana crops OKed by lawyers and state legislators have been arrested and imprisoned by federal law enforcement. In the particular Montana case I was thinking of the farmer had a gun on his property so he fell under some sort of "drug trafficking with weapons" multi-decade mandatory sentence. It's ridiculous and obviously driven by politics more than a sense of justice or concern for society.
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Originally Posted by Hali87
Marijunana laws are essentially unenforced in Vancouver, and rates of use are almost certainly higher than in most parts of Canada, yet the city consistently ranks as one of the best places to live IN THE WORLD, and has been one of the most successful cities in Canada in pretty much every way.
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I wouldn't put much stock in those rankings. Vancouver has one of the highest poverty rates in Canada, some deep social problems like the drug abuse you described, low wages, and some of the worst housing affordability in the developed world. It's a nice spot and a nice city to live in if you're rich, but in practice I don't think it has a very good quality of life for the average person. I think the average person in Halifax or Calgary has a much higher standard of living than the average person here. There's also a pretty noticeable "brain drain" of professionals out of this city because of the high costs. Hopefully that will turn around a bit as the housing market cools off a bit here and housing costs reflect what locals can pay rather than how much investors think they'll get from speculating on condos.