Drug Decriminalization
This is an alternative that does get people off the streets, reduces the rates of H.I.V. infection, and lowers crime. It is humanistic but also pragmatic - Miguel Vasconcelos, chief psychiatrist, Taipas treatment center, Lisbon
image by: Kennedy Stewart
HWN Suggests
Why we should de-criminalize all drugs
Across the political spectrum, politicians, law enforcement officials and even many activists are surprisingly united in the belief that addiction is a disease. We need to reduce associated stigma, they intone; “we can’t arrest our way out” of the drug problem...
If we really want to treat addiction like the medical problem it so clearly is, we can’t use the criminal justice system to arrest people for showing symptoms of it. If you want to fight stigma, you’ve got to first fight criminalization and reform the coercive and demeaning addiction treatment system that has been warped by it.
Resources
Portugal’s radical drugs policy is working. Why hasn’t the world copied it?
Since it decriminalised all drugs in 2001, Portugal has seen dramatic drops in overdoses, HIV infection and drug-related crime.
Scenes From a City That Only Hands Out Tickets for Using Fentanyl
Oregon’s experiment to curb overdoses by decriminalizing small amounts of illicit drugs is in its third year, and life has changed for most everyone in the city of Portland.
What Happened When Oregon Decriminalized Hard Drugs
A bold reform effort hasn’t gone as planned.
Decriminalizing drug use is a necessary step, but it won’t end the opioid overdose crisis
The criminalization of drugs results in significant health, social and economic harms, particularly to those who are homeless, experiencing mental health issues, racialized or Indigenous. By eliminating a criminalized response to drug possession, drug policy reform efforts can minimize the contact between people who use drugs and the criminal justice system, and may increase their connection to health and social systems.
Getting a Fix
The prevailing approach in the rest of the world ignores scientific reality and squanders resources on things that have been shown again and again to fail,” said Miguel Vasconcelos, the chief psychiatrist at the Taipas treatment center, the largest in Lisbon, with eighteen hundred patients. When Vasconcelos began working at the clinic, more than twenty years ago, there was no attempt at harm reduction.
Should All Drugs Be Decriminalized?
[Branson] believes that focusing on domestic American reforms would reduce the global policy will to criminalize drugs and would provide strong momentum for pushing a goal that seems well beyond even the outer limits of the American policy imagination. “Decriminalizing and regulating all drugs is going to be the answer,” he proclaimed.
Should drugs be decriminalised? Yes
Prohibition as a policy has failed. Just look at the US, where hundreds of thousands of people have been jailed and, despite billions of pounds of funding for draconian policies, higher purity drugs continue to flood the market.
Should the United States Decriminalize the Possession of Drugs?
Several states have voted to reform their drug laws in response to the opioid epidemic and as a way to address high rates of drug-related incarceration. What do you think of this, and other, solutions?
The case for decriminalizing heroin, cocaine, and all other drugs
Given the failures of the war on drugs and the spread of marijuana legalization, many drug policy experts are now thinking about what's next. What should happen with other illicit drugs, such as heroin and cocaine, if the war on drugs isn't working? Should illicit drugs even be considered illegal in the first place?
The Science Of Decriminalizing Drugs
Interestingly, researchers and politicians both for and against general drug decriminalization have used Portugal as an example. The disagreements arise in part because different people looked at different numbers, such as lifetime drug use, which went up, or problematic drug use, which went down. Alex Stevens, a criminal justice researcher at the University of Kent in the U.K. who has studied Portugal extensively and supports the country’s policy, thinks that the most important numbers show improvement.
The War on Drugs Has Failed And It's Time to Decriminalise, Scotland Says
The Scottish government says it needs radical changes to the UK's old drug laws in order to tackle record drug deaths.
Which countries have decriminalised and how?
Some form of decriminalisation has been adopted in 30 countries – with significant differences and levels of effectiveness.
Why we should de-criminalize all drugs
It’s impossible to remove the stigma of addiction while drug use remains illegal – the two concepts are completely at odds with one another.
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