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.
Did you ever sell pot to support your habit, or do other drugs?
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.
God made us intelligent for many reasons, IMHO. If it is stronger, then there probably will be less overall exposure to the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons - the stuff thought to make any smoking carcinogenic. By making these various drugs illegal, government increased the incentive to make the effect more concentrated by weight. Why go to jail for raw opium or coca leaves when you do the same time in jail for heroin or cocaine, respectively?
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?
Prisoners are getting drugs while they are incarcerated already.
The only contact I've had with the police in my entire life was a speeding ticket in 1971.
At the same time, I clearly recognized that smoking reefer was against the law, and that no matter how well I behaved in the non-drug part of my life, I could suffer the same legal consequences, and be labeled with the same reputation, that more hard core drug users could expect.
As to cost - A quarter ounce of premium buds cost $40 in south Florida in 1990 - that would last me two weeks. Not a financial burden.
As to other drugs - I belonged to a sub-culture within the drug sub-culture, namely, marijuana was the only drug I ever enjoyed using or tried to buy, and I hung out with other people just like me, college students or professional people with no family to take care of.
Can someone out on bail or parole or probation now use alcohol or tobacco legally?
If pot and opiates were either legal or decriminalized, what would be the barrier to their use by that person, presuming avoidance was not a requirement of said bail, parole or probation? And why would it be your business, again presuming that the individual were not being intoxicated in public or driving under the influence, same as with alcohol?
Not sure you noticed the context for my comments.
I was trying to argue the point that a strong correlation exists between sociopathic behavior and alcoholism and drug use.
Several readers pointed out that correlation does not equal causation.
I agree, but I tried to buttress my point by suggesting that no reasonable person would allow inmates or people on probation or people out on bail to use alcohol and legalized drugs, a prohibition that is now almost a universal legal requirement in all states.
Why is it my business?
That's easy - these are people who violated social and legal contracts, they are threats to the life, property, and liberty of law abiding citizens, and there is clear statistical and common sense evidence that their sociopathic behavior may be linked to alcohol and drug use.
I have long held that if someone has not paid full price for his (actual) crimes... that is, a burglary, a robbery, rape, murder, mayhem, whatever, or restitution is not possible, that individual has no business being out on my streets. I do not consider use of drugs or prostitutes or going gambling or whatever is the consensual “crime” du jour to be criminal acts. Because I do not recognize the LEGITIMATE authority of any government to outlaw such behaviors. The government CLOSEST TO the situation (city or county) DOES have legitimate authority to regulate and penalize PUBLIC BEHAVIOR, though... but I digress...
If the penalty for a crime has been paid in full and restitution made to the victim, then the perpetrator should be able to walk free again. If he does go on and commit another crime, then the second time he’s convicted, away he goes and someone can pipe sunlight to him on alternate leap years. Parole or probation should not exist for crimes of violence and should only be made available to NON-violent offenders if it is shown to be the best way for restitution to be made to the VICTIM of the crime.
So if you’ve followed me to this point, the violent criminal should pay full pop for his crime, no discounts allowed, and then be able to do as he chooses with his life. Of course this presumes that he has learned to control his baser impulses and has found prison sufficiently distasteful as to make him not want to perform acts that would send him BACK there.
Now, as perhaps you know, the BEST deterrent to crime is an armed (and PACKING) citizenry, coupled with an incentive system which would reward such things as proper marksmanship and saving taxpayers the expense of imprisoning wrongdoers for long periods of time. Paying a felon’s funeral expense pales in comparison and the armed citizen could receive, say, ten percent of the estimated cost of trying and imprisoning his attacker as a special thank-you for being willing to help out.
This way, your concerns can be laid to rest, as the behavior which troubles you is minimized as are the perpetrators.
I agree with much of what you say, especially doing the full pop for a violent crime.
Although I have never owned a gun, I fully support the Second Amendment.
The things to keep in mind are that ALL rights are absolute, that one thing affects all others and that all rights must be absolutely respected and protected by government. After that, it’s easy to be consistent in your world view. Also note that, if you are a Christian, there’s no conflict between that world view and God’s Word. He gave us free will and a Book of instructions. So what’s SINFUL and should be avoided isn’t necessarily CRIMINAL. Besides, criminalizing all “sin” defeats the purpose of having a MORAL code. Morality (what we do when no one’s watching us but God) must be voluntarily accepted by each person, else there’s no virtue to it. If I promise to club you each time you stray from what I tell you is moral, I trample all over YOUR free will and the end result is simple coercion instead of morality.
Oh, and go buy a firearm, learn how to use it (and see how much fun shooting can be) and stop depending on others to do YOUR job of protecting yourself... then see just how much your self-confidence SOARS when that happy day arrives!
I'm a Vietnam vet, I've always had plenty of confidence, I will fight to my last breath to protect myself, and I will never blame anyone else if I lose that fight.
Fair enough. So am I... and retired from the Marine Corps besides.
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