Doing the impossible
I am no expert on drugs & drug crime. I never worked on the drugs squad though I did my fair share of drug raids & arrests of both users & dealers in my time.
One thing my limited knowledge of drug crime & its devastating effects on both the economy & the millions of victims has taught me is that the last 40 years of the war on drugs has not worked & there is nothing I have seen in any government policy or legislation which leads me to believe any change is imminent.
I have long been a proposer of radical thinking on anti-drugs policy, so it is with interest that I saw Mark Easton, of the BBC’s piece on Portugal’s response to fighting the menace of drugs.
Portugal hasn’t legalised drugs, though this is what the headlines might show; they have de-criminalised the personal use of drugs.
On 1st July 2001 Portugal announced that the purchase, possession & use of any previously illegal substances would no longer be viewed as a criminal offense.
Health & social workers can now assist users to use ‘clean’ drugs paraphernalia & guide users on police-free drug rehabilitation programmes.
HIV infections & drug related deaths have fallen dramatically.
One of the biggest objections to the legalisation of drugs is that it would open the floodgates to everyone who previously were desperate to take drugs but were only stopped for fear of breaking the law. It’s interesting to note that Portugal’s eight-year experience does not bear this out. Figures suggest there to have been a fall in drugs use of 10% across the country. Use by school-age children shows some dramatic falls; approximately 25% fall un use of cannabis & 50% fall in the use of ecstasy, cocaine & amphetamines. The use of heroin & LSD is also down.
Whatever the figures there is no evidence that any use of illegal substances has risen as a result of the relaxing of the law in Portugal. The truth is that some people will take drugs whether it is illegal or not & most people would not take drugs even if you stood on street corners handing it out free.
Drug trafficking remains a serious offence in Portugal but those caught with drugs for personal use are sent to a local drugs dissuasion commission panel which encourages drugs education & treatment.
Since Portugal changed its policy 10 other EU countries have de-criminalised the possession of some if not all illegal substances.
Here in Britain we seem to have a policy which is not clear in its purpose & is a hybrid of mixed messages; possession of drugs is still a criminal offence. Cannabis possession has just been put back into a more serious category after the government experiment to move it from class B to C was deemed an error, yet 80% of people caught with an illegal substance are given a caution or a warning & less than 1% (about 1,000 people a year) are sent to prison.
With so many of the government’s policies, it seems the bark is worse than the bite which leads to a wishy-washy approach which looks good in the soundbites but actually does absolutely nothing to address the issue.
Blueknight says:
If there were no users there would be no dealers, but if there were no dealers it may not follow that there would be no users.
There is not always a clear distinction between user and dealer. Users deal and dealers use.
The big question is what would happen if possession of drugs was decriminalised. Nothing much except that there would be more cannabis smoked in the street and the dealers would have a field day.
TThe dealers have to be neutralised and one way of doing that might be to have drug clinics supply the actual drugs on prescription and increase the prion sentences.
No one can be sure whether this approach would work, but nothing could be worse than what we have already got
July 4th, 2009 at 12:49 am
Hibbo says:
I’m not quite convinced by the legalisation of drugs, but the more I think about it the more I struggle to see anything fundamentally wrong with the idea.
I think the Portuguese type decriminalisation is a sensible move; as drugs are SO easy to get hold of, I don’t think there’s many people who don’t take drugs because they’re illegal, so that’s not an argument.
I agree with Blueknight in that it would be a problem that dealers would get an easy ride, so if it were to happen (which it won’t of course) then the ‘personal use’ threshold must be set very low.
July 4th, 2009 at 8:55 am
Ex-RUC says:
Surely the problem is that street dealers only carry enough to warrant personal use and keep their main stock somewhere else. So proving dealing would be difficult and it would be pointless sending a dealer to a dissuasion commission. Granted a big drugs bust should carry far greater sentences but to take the Portugal route would probably make detecting and convicting dealers more difficult. Mind you, I was also impressed by the BBC piece.
July 4th, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Blueknight says:
Ex RUC,
The question of ‘personal use amounts’ is a difficult one. I have heard at least one story about someone who was caught with a huge block of cannabis claim that it was for personal use, – they buy in bulk to save money, – and they carry around with them so that their brother/friends/other tenants don’t steal it.
It would help if personal limits were set for each individual drug Exceeding that limit by a small amount would result in a conviction/penalty fine. But exceeding it by a greater amount (which would indicate that the offender is a dealer) would mean prison.
July 4th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Merv Nash says:
Taking drugs has always been a solution to some other problem. A large percentage, something like about 75 comes from boredom and in kids the bulk of that comes from school failures. The kid is made to learn something in which they have no interest or the subject has never been explained properly and they are full of words they never got defined and understood. However, for all of that proper education in the effects of drugs on the body and the mind can go a long way to giving a person enough certainty that drugs are destructive to get them to decide to stay clean. Laws haven’t worked and never will. A person will always do what they believe in never mind any laws. If the person can be brought to a point of understanding so that they themselves decide that drugs (or anything else for that matter) are not what they want to do they won’t take do it or them. Nothing else works as well as this. Well presented information that people can easily understand and given in a non threatening way AND with them given the choice of take it or leave it is the only way education can be done that will stick because the person makes the decision for themselves as opposed to a decision that is forced on them which never works for long.
July 5th, 2009 at 9:36 am