Canada's PM making the case very well that a legal environment for the Herb is the best way to control access by kids. Also removing any criminal element present in the supply chain will have positive effects on quality and possible funding of other criminal activities. This reasoning is excellent to try and convince the 'law and order' type people.
I have decided to take a sabbatical from Cannabis / The Herb / The Green Goddess / Santa Maria and have not partaken since early this year. I generally love the Herb but I felt I was enjoying it too much and too often, and could not moderate effectively so an open-ended hiatus was what is called for. I feel quite good for it, I'm trying to achieve the same relaxation and generally good feelings by meditation and I've achieved a little bit of success. I've not achieved anything as intense (yet), but with Cannabis in the end I was just chasing pleasurable feelings, and not gaining worthwhile insights anyway, so it seemed like a good idea to implement said hiatus. Having said all that, these are all experiences and decisions I'm happy to have had and made, rather than the government making it for me. It is illegal where I am, I'm obviously pro legalization for these and other reasons.
I probably will enjoy a joint again at some point, looking forward to it on some level, but not for the foreseeable future.
I also decided almost a year ago to stop drinking completely. I'll sometimes have 0% beer if other people are drinking, partly not to appear anti-alcohol among my drinking friends; maybe it'll spoil their vibe or whatever. Also I don't mind being in a group of people drinking and having fun, so it works well for me like that; I'm part of it with none of the obvious alcohol disadvantages. With the alcohol abstinence, I'm very happy how it's going and don't see myself even wanting to. There is one exception, which is my colleagues have a fairly regular Friday afternoon ritual of having a Whiskey together, I'm a bit of an odd one out there but hey, no way around that.
Just sharing a bit, thanks for reading.