*lives in B.C. Canada*

The laws are considerably more lenient here, but we still have lots of work to do! right now we're working on decriminalizing posession or small amounts and person use.

if you're caught smoking weed right now, and have less than an ounce, the cops will probably just ignore it, but if they're assholes they can give you a fine. you can be caught something like 8 times before facing jail time, which is usually a couple months. I'm not sure about multiple offenses after jail time though.

if you're caught growing and dealing, they'll raid your house and destroy everything just like America. you'll go to jail for about 18 months-3 years, if it's a big multi-million dollar operation you'd be looking at bigger time, like 8 years.

however, a criminal record only for posession generally won't bar you from employment (in a legal sense, the employer could always have a bias of course). even for being a cop, as long as you haven't smoked in the past 2 years you can be an officer.

Socially, it's not too bad, improving anyway. People often go down to the beach here in kelowna and smoke in public, nobody really cares, we just makes sure we don't do it near kids. Also, we have some great shops here like "mary janes hemp hollow" and "Wigwam smoke and rock shop" that sell pipes, bongs, incense, rolling papers, vaporizers, books on growing, and probably some stuff under the counter. They don't get shut down, it's all legal since you're allowed to have paraphanelia, though if a cop decided to be an asshole and take your pipe don't count on protesting and getting it back.