New Democrat Leader Thomas Mulcair said he would move toward the full legalization of marijuana, but he is focusing on decriminalization first because it can happen immediately.

“We need to make sure people are going to understand we’re going to take our time to do it, but it’s going to get done. That is the direction that it is going in. Look at Oregon. Look at Colorado. We’re getting more and more information that’s the type of thing that will be the way for the future,” Mulcair said Tuesday evening in a town- hall-style interview with VICE in downtown Toronto.

“I am going to start by immediately doing something that I know I can and will do overnight, which is to make sure that nobody ever has to face a charge for personal use or possession of marijuana and of course we are on track to full legalization, but it is more complicated than snapping your fingers,” said Mulcair.

“We are not going to have weed being sold at the LCBO tomorrow morning. That’s not going to happen. Making sure that nobody gets arrested for personal use? That can happen,” Mulcair said.

The New Democrats have long promised to decriminalize marijuana, but it is not currently official party policy to propose the full legalization of the drug.

Several policy resolutions from the NDP grassroots calling for the legalization of marijuana did not get adopted at the last party convention in Montreal in April 2013.

That promise has been left to Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau, who has proposed full legalization and regulation of the drug, arguing that selling it like cigarettes and alcohol are sold would reduce the criminal element.

Mulcair took a veiled shot at Trudeau’s proposal when asked why he favoured decriminalization over legalization Tuesday.

“I am going to start with something that I can do immediately, because there are lots of promises that have been made, but I would like to talk about what I can do,” Mulcair said.

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper is promising to preserve the status quo, calling marijuana “infinitely worse” than tobacco, although some members of his caucus have expressed openness to making the possession of small amounts of marijuana a ticketing offence.

NDP MPs on the Commons health committee issued a dissenting minority report on the risks and harms of marijuana released in June called on the federal government to set up an independent commission to study the regulation of marijuana for non-medicinal purposes.

But Mulcair has not always been so open to the idea of legalization.

In 2012, he had to clarify his position on the issue after he said shortly before winning the NDP leadership that the decriminalization of marijuana would be a mistake.

“I think that would be a mistake, because the information that we have right now is that the marijuana that’s on the market is extremely potent and can actually cause mental illness,” Mulcair said in an interview with Global TV’s Tom Clark, which appeared to contradict NDP policy.

That prompted a spokesman to later clarify that Mulcair had mixed up his terminology.

“Terms like legalization and decriminalization are often inappropriately used interchangeably,” his spokesman at the time, George Soule, told the Canadian Press in April 2012.

“But be very clear that Thomas Mulcair does not believe that anyone should be going to jail for possession of just a small amount of pot. Criminalization is not the answer for any area of social policy,” Soule said.

The Canadian Medical Association Journal published a commentary last month that had addiction doctors arguing the prohibition of marijuana does more harm than good.

The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto has also called for the full legalization and regulation of marijuana.

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