| > However, criminalization may be a less worse way to mitigate the impacts of the problem. There's no data to support this claim, and copious evidence against it. > This feels like "no true Scotsman" at policy-scale: it's unscientific to point out the flaws in actual sausage making as the reason the Platonically ideal sausage turned out poorly in reality. Those political characteristics are inherent to the process! If one path to utopia requires pissing voters off, then it's more logical to engineer a different path to get there while placating voters, because the former in untenable in a democracy. It's not a "no true Scotsman" to point out that the measure that voters passed was never actually implemented. Some of the provisions weren't even due to kick in until later this year! Ironically, your statement is a great example of begging the question (in the correct usage of the term): by your logic, any world in which decriminalization is not already implemented is "proof" that it's a bad policy, because if it were, the Logical Politicians™ would implement it, as that would surely appease voters. In reality, what happened is simple: voters approved an initiative, elected officials didn't like what voters chose, so they just refused to implement it, then called it a "failure". |
If the voters passed a measure, that caused substantial negative perception before it was fully implemented, then who's to blame?
Maybe the voters should have been clearer on the implementation sequencing.
> In reality, what happened is simple: voters approved an initiative, elected officials didn't like what voters chose, so they just refused to implement it, then called it a "failure".
How does this not suffice as an excuse for any bad results from decriminalization? What constitutes a sufficiently perfect implementation to validate negative outcomes?