Posted on 06/22/2009 10:59:25 PM PDT by neverdem
Glenn Greenwald is a civil rights attorney, a blogger for Salon, and the author of a new Cato Institute policy study called “Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Policies.” The paper examines Portugal’s experiment with decriminalizing possession of drugs for personal use, which began in 2001. Nick Gillespie, editor of reason.com and reason.tv, sat down with Greenwald in April.
Q: What is the difference between decriminalization and legalization?
A: In a decriminalized framework, the law continues to prohibit drug usage, but it’s completely removed from the criminal sphere, so that if you violate that prohibition or do the activity that the law says you cannot do you’re no longer committing a crime. You cannot be turned into a criminal by the state. Instead, it’s deemed to be an administrative offense only, and you’re put into an administrative proceeding rather than a criminal proceeding.
Q: What happened in Portugal?
A: The impetus behind decriminalization was not that there was some drive to have a libertarian ideology based on the idea that adults should be able to use whatever substances they want. Nor was it because there’s some idyllic upper-middle-class setting. Portugal is a very poor country. It’s not Luxembourg or Monaco or something like that.
In the 1990s they had a spiraling, out-of-control drug problem. Addiction was skyrocketing. Drug-related pathologies were increasing rapidly. They were taking this step out of desperation. They convened a council of apolitical policy experts and gave them the mandate to determine which optimal policy approach would enable them to best deal with these drug problems. The council convened and studied all the various options. Decriminalization was the answer to the question, “How can we best limit drug usage and drug addiction?” It was a policy designed to do that.
Q: One of the things you found is that decriminalization actually correlates with less drug use. A basic theory would say that if you lower the cost of doing drugs by making it less criminally offensive, you would have more of it.
A: The concern that policy makers had, the frustration in the 1990s when they were criminalizing, is the more they criminalized, the more the usage rates went up. One of the reasons was because when you tell the population that you will imprison them or treat them as criminals if they identify themselves as drug users or you learn that they’re using drugs, what you do is you create a barrier between the government and the citizenry, such that the citizenry fears the government. Which means that government officials can’t offer treatment programs. They can’t communicate with the population effectively. They can’t offer them services.
Once Portugal decriminalized, a huge amount of money that had gone into putting its citizens in cages was freed up. It enabled the government to provide meaningful treatment to people who wanted it, and so addicts were able to turn into non–drug users and usage rates went down.
Q: What’s the relevance for the United States?
A: We have debates all the time now about things like drug policy reform and decriminalization, and it’s based purely in speculation and fear mongering of all the horrible things that are supposedly going to happen if we loosen our drug laws. We can remove ourselves from the realm of the speculative by looking at Portugal, which actually decriminalized seven years ago, in full, [use and possession of] every drug. And see that none of that parade of horribles that’s constantly warned of by decriminalization opponents actually came to fruition. Lisbon didn’t turn into a drug haven for drug tourists. The explosion in drug usage rates that was predicted never materialized. In fact, the opposite happened.
Bonus Video: Click below to watch Glenn Greenwald and Reason.tv's Nick Gillespie discuss both the lessons from Portugal and Barack Obama's disappointing performance so far on drug policy, executive power, and civil liberties.
However, there are blunt, statistical, real world facts that must be dealt with, too.
In the world of employment, drug users are massively more likely to have attendance problems, attitude problems, performance problems, and honesty problems.
In the world of criminal justice, drug users and alcoholics commit at least 60% of the violent crimes in America.
I do not know the solution to this dilemma.
But before anyone jumps on the legalization bandwagon, please remember that there is direct statistical link between drug use and sociopathic behavior.
r2 does not equate to causation. Simple stuff.
“r2 does not equate to causation. Simple stuff.”
Please note that my comment said nothing about causation.
Businesses, like countries, have limited means to sort the bad apples from the good.
If one orchard delivers a significantly higher percentage of bad apples than its competitors, a reasonable man stops buying apples from the offending orchard.
That, too, is simple stuff.
Legalization is wrongheaded thinking, usually by those who think it means they can walk around stoned out of their minds all the time, and not get busted for growing a garden full of the stuff and supplementing their welfare income.
Legalization does not mean that. legalization simply means that the government becomes the kingpin, commissions licensed pushers to sell it's drugs and provides them with their own territory. The government regulates the prices and the taxes on these bad, horrible evil (but now legal) drugs, and because they are bad, unrestricted taxation becomes the method in which they control usage (in the liberal mind anyways).
Private cultivation, smuggling illegal drugs, "bootlegging"(dealing0 is still illegal and still a class A felony. And the government will stop at nothing to protect it's turf.
What potheads really want, is decriminalization as described in this article.
you imply, rather directly, causation. Don’t run away from it now.
Statistics are vicious tools. Implying that drug users are the cause of societies ills and laying the gauntlet down ‘implies’ that using drugs leads to sociopaths which, I presume, was your intent.
Shall I tell how many people have eaten pickles and went on to commit heinous crimes? Betcha money I can pull an r2 close to 1. Want to toss in a $1?
9th Amendment means we have the right. Government (at least the Feds) have no rights here.
drug users ARE the cause of a lot of societies ills. Open your eyes and look around. In every there exists a druggie getto, gangs, turf wars, murders, property crimes, all driven by drug addiction, or supplying that addiction. And, there IS a link between drug use and sociopathic behavior. Follow the life span (usually very short) of a methamphetamine addict for example.
I state the obvious.
If you can link eating pickles with sociopathic behavior, please show me the data.
Oh no it doesn't. You do not have a right to cause harm to society, or be a burden to society, disrupt society, and everyone else right to live in a safe, free society. You have a very loose interpretation of the 9th amendment, and ignore the rest of the constitution which is an embodiment of law and order in which society lives as free as possible within them.
Please direct me to where the Feds have the rights to regulate drugs, #1. And then follow that up with how the majority of drug users (who smoke pot) are sociopaths, #2? A pot smoker is more likely to hide under their bed than engage even a bag of cheetos.
Shall I describe fat people (you know, the Whopper-eaters) kill far more people themselves through cardio-vascular disease than anyone else in this country? Would you like stats on diabetes or other ‘fat’ diseases?
Shall we ban Whoppers due to their impact on society? Or, heaven forbid, spicy chicken at Popeye’s?
What part of the 9th do you not understand? Shall I quote it or leave it as is?
The states have the right to regulate drugs but nowhere does the 9th allow the Feds to put into place drug laws.
Let’s make it simple and silly and just deal with famous people at SuperMax Colorado (which I will drive by tomorrow). Let’s go with an assumption that the happy people in Florence are sociopaths:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADX_Florence
How many have eaten pickles? Close to 100%!?!?!?!
Can we then come to a conclusion that correlation does not equal causation?
Sociopaths are CAUSED by pickle eating!!!!!
Silly, isn’t it. Let’s not equate sociopathic behavior as being caused by drug use. Perhaps sociopathic behavior results in drug use.
That's what gives the government the right to regulate drugs.
Why is that so hard for you to figure out?
Same as the government protects this nation from terrorist attacks, and therefore uses the tools at it's disposal to keep terrorists from getting into the country and causing harm.
And, that's what Society wants the government to do. The majority of sane, thinking rational people do not want this country to become another India as it was in the 1750's to 1850's, a cesspool of opium addicted, smelly, filthy people, where crime and prostitution was 90% of the populations main form of employment.
Governments, and their societies in the world have long ago recognized and learned that drugs have a very negative destructive effect on society which quickly becomes very costly and towns and cities degrade and become lawless as a result.
Again, where is this right conferred? I don’t give a rip about India, simply the US.
Doesn't matter what YOU think. They can and do. Nineth doesn't say anything about drugs, which are threat to the entire nation.
You don’t give a rip about America either it’s obvious. All you can about is whether you can strike up a joint regardless of the cost to society.
Full disclosure. I am a “recovered” alcoholic, meaning I haven't touched the stuff for over 15 years. (Or any other mind altering substances, including pot).
But just because alcohol eventually got to be a problem for me, I don't think alcohol should be outlawed for everybody.
In my 20s I smoked a bit of the reefer, too. Just gave it up, in favor of alcohol. Additionally, I wanted no contact with the drug culture, dealers, in my life.
In my circle back then, most of us were occasional marijuana users, most with no long term ill effects. I mostly grew my own.
I believe many people can use marijuana for recreation, just like many (most) people can drink alcohol.
I draw the line there. I favor decriminalization of marijuana. Only.
But not the harder stuff (heroin, cocaine, painkillers, uppers and downers, etc.). Worst of the bunch seems to be methamphetamine.
That drug is a near instant disaster. Some people tell me the effects can be permanent after a short time.
Present laws provide for prosecuting driving under the influence, of both alcohol and pot. I say punish the bad act—the errant driving, not the ingestion of the substance.
I do support a private employer who wants a workforce that is substance free. If you can't give a clean test, don't apply to work there; or stop using if you value the job more than your use (alcohol and pot included).
So we go back to alcohol prohibition? Then everybody will be just high on clean living, right?
Eating pickles tells us nothing about behavior.
On the other hand, about 90% of the inmates at SuperMax have used illegal drugs.
About 90% of the guards at SuperMax have not used illegal drugs.
To me, the conclusion is obvious.
If you disagree, I have no idea what else to say.
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