Well, apparently not. It seems that the police are simply enforcing an existing law. It got no support when it was about to be repealed - police thought (IMO correctly) that it was no use clogging up the court system with a charge that was about to be nullified. So they did not lay criminal charges for simple possession.

Which brings up the question of the benefit of this particular law. How it serves to protect the public. How it is time well spent for police to charge people who simply take a toke and aren't harming anyone. Whether their time could be better spent.

And IMO how the criminalization of marijuana leads to - not the use of harder drugs, as many proponents claim, but to encourage a criminal culture to supply a need. How laws that don't serve to protect the public in any meaningful way simply make more work for police to distract them from more important activities, and create opportunities for a criminal subculture.

Or maybe there is good cause for prohibiting everyone from taking a toke. Like abstinence only sex education, or Prohibition - it's the only way to make so many irresponsible people do only what's best for them.