I've blogged on this before but there's a good post on FullComment about Portugal and decriminalizing drugs.
Raphael Alexander: Evidence of success in decriminalizing drugs
Full Comment, Raphael Alexander
A socially conservative point of view generally holds that decriminalization of drugs will only lead to drug tourism, greater dependency for addicts, and a gradual social decline. But the Portuguese experiment would not seem to bear out those preconceptions, as revealed in the latest issue of the Economist.
Portugal decriminalized personal use and possession of all drugs in 2001, including such harmful narcotics as heroin and cocaine. Police were ordered not to arrest anyone discovered taking any illicit narcotics. At the time the rest of Europe thought that Portugal had gone insane, deeming it "ultraliberal legislation".
Interestingly, however, if you go into the news archives from that time period, there were a lot of publications in North America praising the move.
The predicted drug tourism and hardcore abuse, however, never came to pass:
Mr.Greenwald claims that the data show that "decriminalisation has had no adverse effect on drug usage rates in Portugal", which "in numerous categories are now among the lowest in the European Union".
This came after some rises in the 1990s, before decriminalisation. The figures reveal little evidence of drug tourism: 95% of those cited for drug misdemeanours since 2001 have been Portuguese. The level of drug trafficking, measured by numbers convicted, has also declined.
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/08/31/raphael-alexander-evidence-of-success-in-decriminalizing-drugs.aspx
James Morton
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1 comment:
Hopefully drug prohibition will be an issue in the next election. I won't hold my breath by I personally will be among those trying to drag it into the public debate.
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