U.K. Guardian skewers the “war on drugs”

It's clearly time to rethink the U.S. War on Drugs. For many good reasons, consider this Editorial by the U.K.Guardian:

If the purpose of drug policy is to make toxic substances available to anyone who wants them in a flourishing market economy controlled by murderous criminal gangs, the current arrangements are working well. If, however, the goal is to reduce the amount of drugs being consumed and limit the harm associated with addiction, it is surely time to tear up the current policy. It has failed.

This is not a partial failure. For as long as courts and jails have been the tools for controlling drugs, their use has increased. Police are powerless to control the flow. One recent estimate calculated that around 1% of the total supply to the UK is intercepted. Attempts to crack down have little impact, except perhaps in siphoning vulnerable young people into jails where they can mature into hardened villains.

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Let the feds worry about marijuana

In the LA Times, Hanna Liebman Dershowitz points out the stupidity of not changing X because X is "the law." The case of interest in California is legalizing marijuana. Federal and state authorities annually arrest more than 800,000 people for possessing marijuana. This is an immense and destructive waste of government resources. Liebman Dershowitz argues that California legalization would leave it to the feds to justify this atrocious policy of criminalizing marijuana (though not beer or tobacco - - I would add psycho-active prescription drugs):

Voter approval of Proposition 19 would shift to the feds the responsibility and burden of justifying marijuana prohibition in the first place. Now, the Washingtonians who have never questioned decades of anti-pot propaganda can explain to the people of California why we cannot be trusted to determine our state's marijuana policies. Let them endorse the prohibition laws' usefulness as a tool of oppressing minorities. Let them celebrate how minor marijuana violations cost people their jobs, their housing, custody of their kids, and entrap them permanently in vast criminal justice databases. Let them justify the utter hypocrisy of the legal treatment of alcohol and tobacco, as compared with the illegal treatment of marijuana. Let them tell us how many more people will have to be prosecuted and punished before marijuana is eradicated, how much that will cost, and where the money will come from.

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Portugal experiment: legalizing street drugs reduces use

In July, 2001, Portugal enacted a new law that the purchase, possession or use of any previously illegal drug would no longer be a criminal offense. Portugal's official position is now treatment, not punishment. Since decriminalization, drug use has gone down 10%, drug infections are down and drug deaths are down. Causation is convoluted, of course, but the drug use explosion predicted by many people never occurred. Ten other European countries have decriminalized drugs. Even in Great Britain, where punishment is still technically on the books, 80% of users who are caught are given a caution or a warning, and only about 1,000 people per year spend time in prison.

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