As a practical matter, what happens to cannabis sellers when possession is “decriminalized” – when a consumer:
1. Faces zero consequences? (There’s zero incentive for possessors to turn on sellers and turn them in.)
2. Faces minor consequences?
Does law enforcement lose heart and tolerate illegal sales?
Claude A.I., WHICH IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED, replies:
These are sharp practical questions, and the real-world evidence from various decriminalization regimes gives some fairly clear answers.
When consumers face zero consequences
You’ve identified the core enforcement mechanism correctly: informants. Most low-level drug prosecutions historically depended on threatening buyers with possession charges to flip them against sellers. Remove that threat entirely and you lose that tool almost completely. In practice, what happens:
- Street-level and mid-level sellers become nearly prosecution-proof without other investigative methods (surveillance, undercover buys, financial investigations).
- Law enforcement shifts toward those other methods, but they’re far more resource-intensive. A “buy-bust” using an undercover officer is expensive compared to arresting a buyer and flipping them.
- Illegal markets don’t disappear — they often stabilize or even expand in the short term, because the downside risk for buyers evaporates and demand rises.
- Portugal’s full decriminalization (2001) is the most-cited case. Illegal sellers still exist and still get prosecuted — but enforcement shifted almost entirely to supply-side methods rather than buyer-cooperation.
The Center for New Revenue 