I though I was relatively well-informed, but I'd never before heard that Portugal had decriminalised drugs.

Thanks for the report. I hadn't realized Portugal had gone all out, decriminalizing the use (but not trafficking) of the hard stuff as well as the soft. While eight years isn't a full test, and what happens in Portugal may not translate to the US, their experiment contains lessons we can learn from.

One of the lessons is that treatment works better than punishment. Helping people take personal responsibility for their lives actually deals with drug usage more effectively than a zero tolerance ideology. As usual, the far right invented a culture war and finds itself on the wrong side of it.

I suspect the interplay between you and Prof. Reuter will be well worth reading.

I have long been in favor of changing our drug laws, and not just because I enjoy weed.

The other side often says that in Amsterdam, one has to step across junkies to walk down the street. This is not true, but the American public will believe almost anything when it comes to evil drugs.

I will be most curious about how the other side tries to frame this, because I will be very surprised if they would support this.

The USA will continue to drive this vehicle (drug war) over the cliff, just because, our leaders and the conventional wisdom are NEVER wrong about anything. Can you imagine that the massive prison industry, infinite police and police related industry, social services apparatus built around drug criminalization, etc, etc, will ever give up this cash cow? Not fuckin' likely.

yeah right

The USA will continue to drive this vehicle (drug war) over the cliff, just because, our leaders and the conventional wisdom are NEVER wrong about anything. Can you imagine that the massive prison industry, infinite police and police related industry, social services apparatus built around drug criminalization, etc, etc, will ever give up this cash cow? Not fuckin' likely.

Far more effective -- and pernicious -- than any single bad policy is the way so many citizens have come to see themselves as irrevocably helpless, impotent, and defeated:

We can't change anything. We have no ability to alter thinking or shape debates. We can only submit to defeat and accept that these terrible things will continue forever because we have no ability to do anything about them. Nothing will ever change and we must accept that we have no ability to do anything about it and therefore no reason/obligation to try.

Whatever advantages a country's establishment has, none is more potent than the willingness of so many people to voluntarily -- even eagerly -- declare themselves to be worthless, irrelevant and permanently inconsequential.

Will your report be available on-line after the presentation, i.e. as PDF for download?

That's easy. The other side will call it surrender.

Will your report be available on-line after the presentation, i.e. as PDF for download?

I assume so, but I'm not sure. I know it'll be available in print form from Cato. I'll find out for sure about online availability and post that.

Thanks Glenn. I needed that.

Decriminalize means not putting people in jail for the drugs but does allow fines (like a speeding ticket) to be handed out. This still also allows police to sieze the contraband.

Legalization would require the government to monopolize the selling. The moral quandry of being the pusher insists on instituting drug-health programs. Being a pusher allows government to know its users.

I think decriminalization is the better of the two. The economist article claims legalization is the least bad solution but doesn't explain why it is better than decriminalization.

(non-empirical) aspects and get an overwhelming case for doing a lot more than just decriminalizing use. It would be ridiculous to have something you can use that cannot be sold. It is criminal to allow over-enforcement of laws that are already over the top. There are some folks that belong in prison, and not just violent pushers.

"Far more effective -- and pernicious -- than any single bad policy is the way so many citizens have come to see themselves as irrevocably helpless, impotent, and defeated"

Maybe that's because the citizenry have plenty of empirical evidence to support that conclusion.

Maybe that's because the citizenry have plenty of empirical evidence to support that conclusion.

You mean like the way that the status of women, racial minorities and gay people have remained exactly the same over the last 100 years?

If you want to convince yourself that you have no ability to change or affect anything in the world, I probably can't convince you otherwise. There's a great psychological benefit to convincing yourself of that -- it relieves you of the burden and responsibility of doing anything and provides a great excuse for not trying ("it's all futile, so there's no reason for me to act").

There are certainly reasonable debates to be had over what are and are not effective tactics. But beyond the psychological comforts it provides, it's always been mystifying to me how anyone could even casually review history and conclude: "I'm completely powerless to change anything and simply must accept my own defeated and impotent state."

As your comment demonstrates, though, there are people eager to embrace that conclusion.

Maybe that's because the citizenry have plenty of empirical evidence to support that conclusion.

-- 23skidoo

There used to be no such thing as legalized medicinal marijuana. Now there is in many states. The Feds used to raid them anyway. Now, according to Holder and Obama, they have ceased doing that.

Those victories didn't come about from pathetically defeated citizens. They came about by engaged and determined citizens.

Substance use is best aligned with health policy and concerns. The majority of substance use (whether self-proclaimed recreation use or otherwise) is in effect, self-medication for a perceived symptom of some type of health deficit.

Since the US has effectively criminalized the visible symptoms of untreated or ineffectively treated mental illness and now provides over 50% of all inpatient psychiatric care in prisons and jails, decriminalizing drugs will expose this for the atrocity it is.

What must happen, independent of legislation around unprescribed substance us, is to build accessible, appropriate and local mental health and pain management services while concomitantly providing the mechanisms for people to afford, obtain and consume safe and nutritious food, clean water, clean, breathable air, safe and reliable transportation to school, work, recreation and commerce, and most of all, effective community building so that people no longer are marginalized and criminalized for simply being vulnerable and lacking essential life-sustaining resources.

Will you or another expert be addressing the health policy aspects of this?