As the vote came in, Obama's drug czar gave this statement:
"Today, Californians recognized that legalizing marijuana will not make our citizens healthier, solve California's budget crisis, or reduce drug related violence in Mexico," read the statement. "The Obama administration has been clear in its opposition to marijuana legalization because research shows that marijuana use is associated with voluntary treatment admissions for addiction, fatal drugged driving accidents, mental illness and emergency room admissions."
The trite, but true, objection is that alcohol and tobacco are associated with a heck of a lot more than that, and you have no problem with them, either. In fact, here's what the British government's ex-drug czar had to say:
BBC: Alcohol 'more harmful than heroin' says Prof David Nutt
Alcohol is more harmful than heroin or crack when the overall dangers to the individual and society are considered, according to a study in the Lancet.
The report is co-authored by Professor David Nutt, the former government chief drugs adviser who was sacked in 2009.
It ranked 20 drugs on 16 measures of harm to users and to wider society.
Heroin, crack and crystal meth were deemed worst for individuals, with alcohol, heroin and crack cocaine worst for society, and alcohol worst overall.
The study by the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs also said tobacco and cocaine were judged to be equally harmful, while ecstasy and LSD were among the least damaging.
(...)
"Our findings lend support to previous work in the UK and the Netherlands, confirming that the present drug classification systems have little relation to the evidence of harm," the paper says.
This is not, by any means, the only report to draw these conclusions, but our politicians are united in their determination to ignore them.
Another recent paper, in the British Journal of Criminology, had this to say:
Political reluctance to reform drug laws has been clearly demonstrated in recent years in the United Kingdom. Despite international evidence that rates of drug use are not directly affected by harsher punishment of drug users (Reuter and Stevens 2007; Degenhardt et al. 2008) (and pressure from multiple advocates), the British Government has firmly opposed any move towards decriminalization. Politicians have warned that decriminalization of cannabis would ‘send the wrong message’ (Home Affairs Committee Inquiry into Drug Policy 2002: para. 74). Some researchers (McKeganey 2007; Inciardi 2008; Singer 2008) have supported this argument, arguing that removing criminal penalties would lead to increased drug use, with harms falling hardest on the deprived communities that are already the most damaged by drug-related problems. However, most public arguments are based on speculation rather than the available evidence on effects.
The topic of the paper is the decriminalization of drugs in Portugal. Not a lot of people know that in 2001, Portugal decriminalized possession of almost all narcotics. The Scientific American summed up the results:
5 Years After: Portugal's Drug Decriminalization Policy Shows Positive Results
In the face of a growing number of deaths and cases of HIV linked to drug abuse, the Portuguese government in 2001 tried a new tack to get a handle on the problem—it decriminalized the use and possession of heroin, cocaine, marijuana, LSD and other illicit street drugs. The theory: focusing on treatment and prevention instead of jailing users would decrease the number of deaths and infections.
Five years later, the number of deaths from street drug overdoses dropped from around 400 to 290 annually, and the number of new HIV cases caused by using dirty needles to inject heroin, cocaine and other illegal substances plummeted from nearly 1,400 in 2000 to about 400 in 2006, according to a report released recently by the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C, libertarian think tank.
In case anyone is overly suspicious of the Cato Institute, their conclusions are upheld by the British study above. From its summary:
It disconfirms the hypothesis that decriminalization necessarily leads to increases in the most harmful forms of drug use. While small increases in drug use were reported by Portuguese adults, the regional context of this trend suggests that they were not produced solely by the 2001 decriminalization. We would argue that they are less important than the major reductions seen in opiate-related deaths and infections, as well as reductions in young people's drug use. The Portuguese evidence suggests that combining the removal of criminal penalties with the use of alternative therapeutic responses to dependent drug users offers several advantages. It can reduce the burden of drug law enforcement on the criminal justice system, while also reducing problematic drug use.
**
So, could we please start getting this into our heads? Legalizing drugs will have a positive net impact. So far, everyone who's done it has experienced improved public health and saved a heck of a lot of money in not having to put all those people through the justice system. Yet we refuse to acknowledge this, because we're still being gripped by a ridiculous moral panic on drugs. Couldn't we just stop?
The way I see it, if people want to get intoxicated, they're going to do it. The "war on drugs" is a massive failure because especially in the United States, it costs billions of dollars and puts untold people into prison while clearly failing to stop the drug trade. It's no more successful than the prohibition on alcohol was, and we gave that up as well.
If we actually come to our senses on the drug issue during my lifetime, I'll be pleasantly surprised.
No comments:
Post a Comment