Oh, and just to back up my argument, check this out (I googled the term "decriminalization" and found this, it took me about 10 seconds):
5 Years After: Portugal's Drug Decriminalization Policy Shows Positive Results
Street drugrelated deaths from overdoses drop and the rate of HIV cases crashes
By Brian Vastag
DRUG PLAN: Portugal decriminalized the use and possession of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other illicit street drugs in an attempt to cut down on related deaths and infections
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.
"Now instead of being put into prison, addicts are going to treatment centers and they're learning how to control their drug usage or getting off drugs entirely," report author Glenn Greenwald, a former New York State constitutional litigator, said during a press briefing at Cato last week.
Under the Portuguese plan, penalties for people caught dealing and trafficking drugs are unchanged; dealers are still jailed and subjected to fines depending on the crime. But people caught using or possessing small amounts—defined as the amount needed for 10 days of personal use—are brought before what's known as a "Dissuasion Commission," an administrative body created by the 2001 law.
Each three-person commission includes at least one lawyer or judge and one health care or social services worker. The panel has the option of recommending treatment, a small fine, or no sanction.
Peter Reuter, a criminologist at the University of Maryland, College Park, says he's skeptical decriminalization was the sole reason drug use slid in Portugal, noting that another factor, especially among teens, was a global decline in marijuana use. By the same token, he notes that critics were wrong in their warnings that decriminalizing drugs would make Lisbon a drug mecca.
"Drug decriminalization did reach its primary goal in Portugal," of reducing the health consequences of drug use, he says, "and did not lead to Lisbon becoming a drug tourist destination."
Walter Kemp, a spokesperson for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, says decriminalization in Portugal "appears to be working." He adds that his office is putting more emphasis on improving health outcomes, such as reducing needle-borne infections, but that it does not explicitly support decriminalization, "because it smacks of legalization."
Drug legalization removes all criminal penalties for producing, selling and using drugs; no country has tried it. In contrast, decriminalization, as practiced in Portugal, eliminates jail time for drug users but maintains criminal penalties for dealers. Spain and Italy have also decriminalized personal use of drugs and Mexico's president has proposed doing the same. .
A spokesperson for the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy declined to comment, citing the pending Senate confirmation of the office's new director, former Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs also declined to comment on the report.
Source:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic … nalizationAnd here's a link against your whole lock-them-up-because-they're-all-criminals argument, and shows the case for rehabilitation and treatment:
Feds fail to use effective drug treatment plans in prison
By Coco Ballantyne
Despite 20 years of scientific evidence showing that drug treatment programs work, the feds fail to offer enough of them to prisoners, according to a new study. Currently 7.1 million adults—over 2 percent of the population—in the U.S. are locked up or on probation; about half of them suffer from some kind of addiction—heroin, alcohol, crack, crystal meth, you name it—but only 20 percent of those addicts actually get effective treatment, say researchers from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.
"For every dollar that you spend on treatment of substance abuse in the criminal justice system, it saves society on average four dollars," says study co-author NIDA director Nora Volkow, a psychiatrist.
Among the studies Volkow and her colleagues reviewed: one of heroin addicts treated with methadone in prison, a treatment program that they continued when they were released. That study found that addicts who received no treatment were seven times more likely than their rehabbed compeers to become addicted to heroin again once back on the streets and three times more likely to commit a crime and land back in prison.
The rehab programs save money that otherwise will likely be spent on re-incarceration of drug addicts and treatment of psychiatric disorders and diseases such as HIV or AIDS that they may contract from dirty needles used to satisfy their addictions, Volkow says.
"Many people with addiction also have psychiatric disorders," she says, noting that recreational drug use often exacerbates the problem. (In fact, more mentally ill people are housed in prisons than psychiatric hospitals in the U.S. "The Los Angeles County jail, with 3,400 mentally ill prisoners, functions as the largest psychiatric inpatient institution in the United States," according to a 2003 report by The New York Times.)
Volkow stressed the rehab programs only work if continued after addicts are released from lockups.
"Addiction is a chronic disease. …For treatment to be effective, you have to provide continuing care," she says. "In some instances, some patients have to maintain [treatment] for several years."
Source:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/ … 2009-01-13
Last edited by Jaekus (2010-04-19 02:47:38)
