U.S. should legalize drugs, says former Mexican president FoxJim Forsyth
(Reuters) - Former Mexican President Vicente Fox said this week that the only way to end the drug violence plaguing his country is for the United States to legalize drugs.
"As a country, we are going through problems due to the fact that the United States consumes too many drugs," Fox, who served as Mexico's president from 2000-2006, told reporters Monday night before a speech at the Turkish-American Chamber of Commerce in San Antonio.
"I would recommend to legalize, de-penalize all drugs," Fox added.
He said the drug violence threatens to rip his country apart. It has claimed more than 37,000 lives in Mexico since 2006, when President Felipe Calderon took office and sent the army to combat cartels fighting for smuggling routes to the United States.
President Barack Obama has made it a priority to work with Calderon to curb smuggling over the nearly 2,000-mile border, a lucrative transit point for criminal networks hauling drugs and illegal immigrants north to the United States and guns and billions in cash profits south to Mexico.
Fox said the U.S. drug market generates billions of dollars that are laundered in the United States and flow into Mexico, money that is used to bribe Mexican police officers and government officials and to buy weapons that are brought into Mexico.
"The question is not what is going on in Mexico, but what is going on in the United States," Fox said.
Fox accused U.S. politicians of using his country's bloody drug war as a talking point, while they are unwilling to take the tough steps needed to end it.
"I have never heard President Obama say, 'No more drugs for our kids,'" Fox said. "The U.S. does not want to stop it."
Fox said so many of the Mexican victims are young people between 15 and 24 years old that the country faces a "lost generation" due to the drug war. And, he said, Mexico is paying not only in lives but in investment and in lost income from tourism.
"We don't deserve what we're going through right now," Fox said.
The former president said drug use in the United States is so huge no law can stop it, so American politicians need to take the bold step of legalizing drugs.
He lamented last November's defeat of a ballot measure in California that would have legalized possession of small amounts of marijuana for recreational purposes.
Fox cited the example of Portugal, which decriminalized the possession of drugs for personal use in 2001. He cited a Cato Institute report that drug use is down 25 percent in that country.
"This can be done, and this would separate the issues of crime and violence from the issue of health, which are two separate issues," he said.
He said some of the money being used in the war on drugs could then be used to convince Americans not to use drugs, and on more extensive drug treatment and intervention programs.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/03/us-mexico-fox-drugs-idUSTRE74251220110503?feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews
Drug Decriminalization in Portugal:
Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug PoliciesGlenn Greenwald
On July 1, 2001, a nationwide law in Portugal took effect that decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Under the new legal framework, all drugs were "decriminalized," not "legalized." Thus, drug possession for personal use and drug usage itself are still legally prohibited, but violations of those prohibitions are deemed to be exclusively administrative violations and are removed completely from the criminal realm. Drug trafficking continues to be prosecuted as a criminal offense.
While other states in the European Union have developed various forms of de facto decriminalization — whereby substances perceived to be less serious (such as cannabis) rarely lead to criminal prosecution — Portugal remains the only EU member state with a law explicitly declaring drugs to be "decriminalized." Because more than seven years have now elapsed since enactment of Portugal's decriminalization system, there are ample data enabling its effects to be assessed.
Notably, decriminalization has become increasingly popular in Portugal since 2001. Except for some far-right politicians, very few domestic political factions are agitating for a repeal of the 2001 law. And while there is a widespread perception that bureaucratic changes need to be made to Portugal's decriminalization framework to make it more efficient and effective, there is no real debate about whether drugs should once again be criminalized. More significantly, none of the nightmare scenarios touted by preenactment decriminalization opponents — from rampant increases in drug usage among the young to the transformation of Lisbon into a haven for "drug tourists" — has occurred.
The political consensus in favor of decriminalization is unsurprising in light of the relevant empirical data. Those data indicate that decriminalization has had no adverse effect on drug usage rates in Portugal, which, in numerous categories, are now among the lowest in the EU, particularly when compared with states with stringent criminalization regimes. Although postdecriminalization usage rates have remained roughly the same or even decreased slightly when compared with other EU states, drug-related pathologies — such as sexually transmitted diseases and deaths due to drug usage — have decreased dramatically. Drug policy experts attribute those positive trends to the enhanced ability of the Portuguese government to offer treatment programs to its citizens — enhancements made possible, for numerous reasons, by decriminalization.
This report will begin with an examination of the Portuguese decriminalization framework as set forth in law and in terms of how it functions in practice. Also examined is the political climate in Portugal both pre- and postdecriminalization with regard to drug policy, and the impetus that led that nation to adopt decriminalization.
The report then assesses Portuguese drug policy in the context of the EU's approach to drugs. The varying legal frameworks, as well as the overall trend toward liberalization, are examined to enable a meaningful comparative assessment between Portuguese data and data from other EU states.
The report also sets forth the data concerning drug-related trends in Portugal both pre- and postdecriminalization. The effects of decriminalization in Portugal are examined both in absolute terms and in comparisons with other states that continue to criminalize drugs, particularly within the EU.
The data show that, judged by virtually every metric, the Portuguese decriminalization framework has been a resounding success. Within this success lie self-evident lessons that should guide drug policy debates around the world.
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10080
The full report by the CATO institute is available through this link [you know, if you want to complain about the methodology, read the methodology first]
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I know, sorry guys, these are facts. Clearly not as important as uninformed opinions from people who don't understand the concepts they are trying to talk about [like simple hypothesis testing, sic!]. In the future I will try to keep an eye out for stuff that has no factual basis whatsoever, such that I can participate in this debate more.