Decriminalisation of drugs: an interesting debate?
Apparentely Portugal has been experimenting with decriminalisation for the last five years. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank..
“…. found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled…..and deaths related to heroin and similar drugs were cut by more than half.”
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1893946,00.html
Reckon we will be hearing more about this in the news soon…
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Although I have no experience of drug convictions, I have recently been offered one of the so called ’soft options’ for speeding.
I was recently caught speeding on the Bath Road and was offered a place on a “Speed Awareness” course as an alternative to points and a fine. I have to say that the course was more effective than I imagined it would be and I am more much more aware of the speed I am doing in built up areas and have changed my behaviour as a result.
This is something that several previous speeding convictions has failed to do.
Although there may be a natural resistance to these rehabilitation courses for speeding, drug abuse etc, they do seem to reduce reoffending rates and help people change their behaviour.
Hi Ash,
No-one is doubting the dangers of reckless abandonment and massive free-for-all as described in the link you posted. Although it is amazing to us now, the use of cocaine, morphene, etc was encouraged as a healthy and mordern medical breakthough. It is astounding and (embarrasing for BAYER) that heroin was marketed as a safer alternative to morphine !!
We live in a different time.
The problem for me is that as soon as you make someone a criminal, you have to treat them as a criminal and punish them. Study after study has shown that this is not very effective in helping people change and the problems (for the person and for society) continue.
It’s not working.
Interesting quote from the original article quoted by Jimmy:
“”I think we can learn that we should stop being reflexively opposed when someone else does [decriminalize] and should take seriously the possibility that anti-user enforcement isn’t having much influence on our drug consumption,” says Mark Kleiman, author of the forthcoming When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment and director of the drug policy analysis program at UCLA. “