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.
Almost none of these problems were issues back before prohibition. government created these problems by their policies. Apparently Portugal has dicovered that the world didn't end when they declared a cease fire in the drug war. perhaps we should look at it more closely, because we have all of those problems you mentioned with prohibition.
It already works this way in many areas of the country. People are usually offered help in lieu of prison. But there are some cases where nothing but the threat of prison will work.
Governments don't have rights, they have delegated powers. The reason the feds have the power to regulate drugs has nothing to do with the constitution. They have the power because they have guns and a demonstrated willingness to use them at the drop of a hat. That's the basic difference between government and the people at all levels in this former republic. They will keep taking until we demonstrate that same willingness.
Amazingly, I am having the best revenue year of all time, do not use drugs, and advocate the government stay the heck out of the drug issue.
What were you referring to on these topics and prosperity?
I’m curious... we had NO drug laws in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Why didn’t we, as a nation, go belly up then? Seems to me we had some of the greatest expansion in our history... yet drugs were widely available (and used, from all accounts). So could you sort of clarify your post, please? Thanks in advance.
Thanks for the post...and the sound advice.
I took this subject on once before and barely escaped with my life.
“So, do you mean the drug culture, or the crime culture? Because drugs are illegal, these two are forced to coincide. If a drug, say marijuana, was legalized, I’m sure that they would no longer coincide. In our current system, drugs beget crime, and crime begets drugs.”
I made the point I favor marijuana decriminalization.
Drug dealers 30 and 40 years ago had a variety of drugs, to sell. If I wanted to buy pot, it would mean interfacing with people who perhaps sold heroin, too.
So I decided to grow my own pot, and avoid socializing with the drug dealer types.
I agree that in our society, drugs and crime are interlocked. The prisons are full of the folks.
But Grandma who gets a marijuana prescription for pain from a legal source in California is outside that culture.
So we should return to alcohol prohibition?
It takes a fair amount of work to make any kind of alcohol, i.e. beer, wine or hard liquor. If God made it in nature, let it be. IMHO, God didn't do anything for nothing.
Connecting the War on Guns & Drugs [my title]
The war on guns: Joel Miller explains how drug cops are killing 2nd Amendment
Report on arms smuggling to Mexico called incomplete Gun grabbers are drooling again!
Governments don't have rights, they have delegated powers. The reason the feds have the power to regulate drugs has nothing to do with the constitution. They have the power because they have guns and a demonstrated willingness to use them at the drop of a hat. That's the basic difference between government and the people at all levels in this former republic. They will keep taking until we demonstrate that same willingness.
Back to back home runs!
I would prefer government stay out of nearly everything, but we have delegated many duties related to public protection so citizens don't become entangled in their own brand of justice and the least / weak are afforded protection against stronger individuals.
I'll leave this discussion with these simple observations since I have neither the time, nor the inclination to debate anyone who wants to justify their drug usage at whatever level they partake.
We did have drug laws, but not as many because medical science was very limited . As we discovered the harmful effects of various chemicals, regulations were enacted to restrict their usage. That’s why we don’t sell lead paint and a whole host of other previously ubiquitous products that caused everything from cancer, birth defects, to addiction. Right now, the government is pushing the use of CFLs as a way to be “green”, when in fact it’s based on GE’s profit motives. Go to www.eps.gov and do a search on cfl cleanup. This is a case of the gov working in the wrong direction. It cuts both ways until science, based on facts, risks, and public safety - overrides selfish motives.
re: Alcohol Prohibition
No, I do not support prohibition, and I've been a teetotaler for 25 years.
There is a qualitative difference between alcohol and narcotics.
Most people who drink, about 90%, do not become intoxicated and have no intention of becoming intoxicated.
Narcotic use is the exact opposite.
Close to 100% of the people who use drugs have the explicit intention of becoming intoxicated.
Most societies recognize that wide spread or chronic intoxication by their citizens is a bad thing.
Thus, they erect legal barriers against intoxication.
Not sure I understand the relevance of your links to gun control essays.
Even though I have never owned a gun, I fully support the Second Amendment, and I fully support the principle that all Americans should be actively encouraged to defend themselves, their families, their property, and their liberty.
I guess it's possible that gun use by drug dealers gives some political ammunition to the Anti-gun Left.
In my opinion, the greatest political threat to gun ownership is the all too frequent mass murder in schools, work places, homes, shopping centers, and restaurants.
Plus, unless it’s in your sources, which I didn’t check, you should be aware that God also put receptors in our brains for opiates and cannabis... which suggests to me that He meant for us to be able to use these substances as medically indicated. The intoxicating part of the drug passes through the brain/blood barrier and hits its receptor in the brain. Gee, do you suppose that today’s nanny state would ARREST GOD if they could, for enabling us to become intoxicated (feel good) by some of the drugs He ALSO put on earth? I can just picture the drug warriors trying to bust down Heaven’s main gate to get to God and arrest Him.
So exactly WHERE does the Nanny State derive its authority to pass these regulations and bans? Certainly it’s not from the Constitution, as the Ninth and Tenth amendments are pretty specific and the General Welfare clause is a GOAL, NOT a grant of authority. But many people look at the Interstate Commerce Clause and hang many, if not most, of their hopes on that slender reed. However, reading the clear words of the Founders in the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers plus their letters and other writings AT THE TIME OF ENACTMENT pretty much demolishes that reed. Because they were aware that the ICC could be misused if FedGov were not kept under VERY tight reins, they did make their intentions as clear as glass: The ICC was meant to be used SOLELY to provide a level field when it came to trade and shipping and tariffs BETWEEN THE STATES. The Feds were to ensure that Pennsylvania could not, for example, impose a tariff on goods coming from Ohio or New York for sale in Pennsylvania or in transit to, say, New Jersey or Delaware.
Or, as recently happened (and I forget the details), one state wanted to put a tariff on automobiles brought in for sale there from out of state. That was CLEARLY a violation and was the PRIMARY reason for the ICC. It was NEVER MEANT to allow the Feddies to regulate, control, ban or prohibit ANYTHING, period. Its misuse essentially started under Teddy Roosevelt and was vastly expanded by his equally despicable and evil cousin, Franklin.
And if you look at the origins of the war on drugs, it was a BLATANT and naked power grab. Certain groups were demonized (think Saul Alinsky) and linked to certain drugs, then the public was told, in no uncertain terms, that these drugs had to be “controlled” (or their users did) in order to prevent these evil men from having sex with white women. AT NO TIME did the medical experts sign off on such laws, for the AMA KNEW what the end result would be... and thus it came to pass.
So, NO, we did NOT have such laws really until the earliest parts of the Twentieth Century (about 1914, with the Harrison Act, which demonized the Chinese and smokable opium but did NOT outlaw the possession and use of OTHER FORMS of opium). Then in the Thirties, after Alcohol Prohibition was at last removed, in order to keep the federal alcohol cops employed, the Feds came up with the National Firearms Act (of 1934) and the Marijuana Tax Stamp act which required users of pot to have a tax stamp on their product, which the Feds had no intention of supplying. It’s a long and sordid story of a raw, naked power grab and the results of it are with us to this very day.
We also found that God put benzodiazepine receptors - think of Valium - there and in peripheral receptors too. I would tax natural plants and substances, making it legal. Synthetic chemicals and drugs would remain under the FDA and DEA. If someone wants to smoke opium, it's better than using intravenous needles spreading HIV/AIDS, various types of bloodborne hepatitis and God knows what else. If they want to chew coca leaves or khat, so be it.
There are drug treatment programs for those who can't control it. As it is, the war on drugs is funding Al Qaeda, the Taliban and organized crime besides threatening our civil liberties.
Excellent post.
I suppose the statement taht I DO NOT USE DRUGS has no bearing. People on your side who debate this think that the pro-lagalization camp can merely have the view based upon the fact that we love liberty and respect the laws of our land.
Look up ad hominem because your statement is a classic usage.
Marijuana started out as “Ditch Weed” with relatively low THC levels.
Today's marketable reefer has been selectively bred by man, and it's three to five times stronger.
Also, since marijuana and opium are God's creation, since you believe they should be lawful, should people who are in prison, on probation, or out on bail be allowed to use those drugs?
Universally, those people now face re-arrest or longer prison sentences if they use those drugs while passing through the justice system.
If drug laws were based on science, alcohol would be banned.
I doubt you have any proof of that one whatsoever. But what is "intoxication"? There's a huge difference between someone who is three sheets to the wind and is starting fights with everyone and beating their wives and just the person who gets a slight buzz from 1-3 beers or the ditzy chicks who just get a buzz from having a margarita after work. But all are "intoxicated" in some sort of way.
Much like the difference between someone who takes a sic foot bong hit and a guy who takes a hit off of a pipe. Both are getting "stoned" in some way, but the latter person has a much more mild state of intoxication than the former.
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