I call b.s. on that one. I’ve been a criminal defense attorney for a lot of years now and I’ve handled thousands of criminal cases including an awful lot of juvenile cases. I see a lot of cases where people are stealing to buy drugs like meth or opiates, but pot? Come on. Try that crap one somebody else. I’m not saying no one has ever stolen to buy pot, but if they’ll steal to by pot they’d steal to buy anything. They’re just regular old thieves. If these kids were stealing to by drugs odds are it was the hard stuff, opiates, speed, cocaine, the expensive stuff that is super addictive. Theft by adolescents to buy pot was “rampant?” Bull.
As for loosening up again in Spain, that’s not what happened. The drug possession laws tightened slightly in the early 1990’s in Spain. Simple possession or use did not become a crime, but doing it in public did become a civil violation, that’s it. Like a lot of European countries, they treat it more as a health issue than a criminal issue. I do not believe the laws loosened in Spain since the changes in 1992. They were already pretty darned loose. It wasn’t and still isn’t a crime there to possess a personal use amount of any drug, even drugs like heroin. If crime dropped like you said it did, it wasn’t because they “recriminalized” drugs. They didn’t recriminalize drugs. Check your facts.
I KNOW my facts. I lived there.