Bigkarch said:
canada....a wierd bird.....
Yup. We're pretty law-abiding, and in return, we expect the state to keep out of personal lives. So a lot of our laws are designed to avoid criminalizing victimless acts. Which makes them look odd at first glance.
E.g., in Canada the law states that you need a prescription to obtain scheduled drugs. However, for many of these drugs the law also says that it's not a crime to possess personal supplies (as long as you're not found holding amounts large enough to traffic). In effect, the law decriminalizes possession of certain restricted drugs without legalizing it.
And in other cases we simply step around laws that invade our personal space. E.g, legally you need prescriptions to obtain supps like melatonin and L-carnitine, but all the health foods stores carry it. I can't remember the last time the cops busted a health food store for trafficking in melatonin.
And in many cases the state doesn't even attempt to prosecute laws that invade personal lives. E.g., in Canada you need a script for glucophage. I once imported some from the U.K. without a script. Customs and Revenue agents inspected the package and they must have known what was inside, because the blister packs clearly identified the pills as glucophage, but they let the parcel pass, and I never got a letter.