On the topic of practicality and incrementalism:

It’s true that decrim represents a step forward and is preferable to criminal prohibition. If it came up, I’d vote for it. I just don’t want to exert all our energy trying to make it happen.

Medical marijuana backlash has just begun. Excessive focus on medicalization may make legalization harder, if the rhetoric continues that the herb is a ‘powerful medicine for the sick and dying’. Check out this post from national NORML: http://blog.norml.org/2010/03/03/medical-marijuanas-not-getting-any-better-the-time-for-re-legalization-is-now/

To clarify my stance that decrim supports the moral stigma that marijuana is somehow “wrong”, I only mean that if we remove criminal penalties but retain still a civil penalty, we’re still punishing people. A civil penalty is less severe than a criminal penalty, but it’s still a punishment.

As for my assertion that “completely removing cannabis laws from the books” is utterly unrealistic, I mean only that the public will never support a non-system (of zero regulation) in which children can grow and consume marijuana at school. Responsible regulation is the more realistic model.

I tried to provide a common definition of decrim in the first paragraph as that against which I am arguing. I think it’s the model most commonly pursued and implemented around the nation: criminal penalties are removed for possession of personal quantities, but big-time manufacture and sale are still serious crimes. For example, HB-541 in Montana: http://data.opi.mt.gov/bills/2009/billhtml/HB0541.htm

Such a model is absolutely of some benefit to the end-users, but suffers from the flaws I describe in the main body of the post.

Thanks again for all the feedback.