The morals must change.
The United States has thrown more money at reducing the supply of drugs than any other 1st world country and still has, by far, the highest drug usage rates in the world. Unfortunately, despite the Obama administration’s efforts to adjust the US position on drugs, our primary focus remains on interdiction and law enforcement. These strategies have proven to be disastrous, leading to uncontrollable violence, wasteful spending, and the same high drug use we have been trying to avoid. The solutions to America’s drug problem cannot be found in good old-fashioned American stubbornness and commitment to values. This is because the problem is not tactical, but strategic. America’s failure to control drug use stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of drug use and appropriate policy. America needs to expand its drug program to other countries, but not by training law enforcement, or sending money and weapons. Instead, we need to use their ideas.
The innovator of progressive drug policy, to the delight of many tourists, is the Netherlands. The precedent for the Netherlands drug policy is found in the Opium Act of 1919, which criminalized possession, cultivation, trafficking, import and export of drugs, including marijuana. In 1976 an amendment was passed in response to the Hulsmann and Baan commissions, whose purposes were to “clarify the factors associated with the use of drugs.” The amendment reorganized drugs into two schedules. Schedule 1 is composed of drugs deemed unacceptable in their risk imposed on society. This classification includes heroin, cocaine, and amphetamines. Schedule 2 includes soft drugs, mainly marijuana. The basis for the schedules is the idea that drugs should only be criminalized when their use poses a threat to society. Marijuana use is distinct from hard drug use in its lack of addictive and socially destructive properties. Thus, as long as marijuana use did not reliably lead to hard drug use, it should be decriminalized. The commission believed that any connection between marijuana and hard drugs could be severed by creating clear distinctions in the markets for the drugs through decriminalization.
Portugal followed the Netherlands in 2001, when it declared all drugs decriminalized. This decision included hard drugs, a significant step further than the Netherlands had gone. This ultra progressive policy was the result of a study undertaken by the Commission for a National Anti-drug Strategy, at the request of the Portuguese government. The commission’s report was almost entirely adopted by the Portuguese government. It decriminalized the use of all drugs, but kept production and trafficking criminal. Penalties for drug use were to be decided by panels of 3 members, which included law and medical experts. These commissions would recommend a fine, treatment, or no penalty, depending on their evaluation. The commission declared the goal of the national drug policy to be one of harm reduction. It found that the best way to reduce the instances of drug abuse and death was to eliminate all barriers to treatment for users. By decriminalizing all drugs, they eliminated any disincentive to seeking treatment. There was no longer a fear of authority by drug users, as the goal was always rehabilitation.
The results of the Portugal experiment have been overwhelmingly positive. The trends of overall drug use, positive HIV tests, and drug related deaths, all rising before 2001, have declined yearly since then to among the lowest levels in the European Union. Portuguese cannabis use stands under 10% and cocaine use under 1%. In the Netherlands, cannabis use is around 20% percent and Cocaine around 2%. The Netherlands is not as stellar as compared to the rest of the EU in terms of drug use, but it still does not approach the levels of US use, which, at over 40% percent for cannabis and over 15% cocaine, are the highest in the world.
Portugal and the Netherlands represent some of the most progressive thinking on drug policy in the world. But even their decriminalization strategies pale in the face of a new proposal from Uruguay. Uruguay already has decriminalized use and possession for use of all drugs, like Portugal. But in an attempt to further hinder the drug market and respond to the heavy toll that the US led war on drugs has had on South America, Uruguay is now considering full legalization of marijuana. The government would control the growth, sale, and transport of marijuana, with every citizen being allotted a 40 joint per month limit. The 5.6% percent of the population that uses marijuana monthly contributes somewhere between 35-75 million dollars into the illegal drug trade. Removing that money from the illegal drug trade would cause more damage than continued attempts at interdiction because it would completely reorient the supply chain. The government hopes that by providing a safer, more reliable, legal product it will be able to rupture the connection between marijuana users and hard drug users.
While Uruguay is the first country to officially propose legalization, there have been strong calls for discussion in Guatemala and Costa Rica. Argentina and Brazil are seriously considering decriminalization of all drugs. Outside of South America, the European Union has moved almost entirely towards de facto decriminalization already. While no other EU countries have decriminalization on the books, incarceration for drug use is almost nonexistent, instead courts tend to prescribe rehabilitative measures. This evolution is guided by an informal agreement among EU nations know as GBE. The global, balanced, evidence-based approach outlines a strategy that disposes of existing moral baggage and embraces scientific decision-making. The GBE supports decriminalization as part of a harm reduction approach to drug control. This represents an ideological shift in drug policy from criminal prosecution to rehabilitation that is spreading across the world.
But not to the US. Despite the Obama administration’s efforts to increase federal funding for drug treatment, the balance for 2012 is $15.1 billion towards interdiction and law enforcement and $10.1 billion towards treatment and rehabilitation. While more and more effort is spent on rehabilitation, the essence of the US drug philosophy is one of criminal punishment; the rehabilitation that is provided for by the government is applied in conjunction with prison sentences. Marijuana is still a Schedule 1 drug under the Controlled Substances Act, and the federal government has repeatedly asserted that it belongs there, as it has no proven medical purpose and has high abuse potential. Therefore, the law demands that users, distributors, and growers be prosecuted. It is a different discussion than this one as to the legitimacy of the government’s position on the effects of marijuana use despite the rich grounds for attacking such a bizarre ruling. The more important debate is instead the basic moral opinion on drug use and control.
The morals must change means that the way we look at drugs must change. Attempting to regulate drugs as we do murder or theft represents a grievous misunderstanding of the nature of drug use and of crime. A crime is an action that inflicts harm on society; crimes are choices. Using drugs is not inherently harmful to society. In many cases it is a controlled and solely pleasurable experience. The abuse of drugs is a disease. Addicts are physically dependent on drugs; they do not develop habits of drug use out of malice. The crime in drugs comes from its illegality. The development of black markets, the violence over distribution, and the aversion to treatment due to possible punishment is what harms society. Portugal and the Netherlands as well as the rest of the EU decided to listen to the science and resolved to do what was necessary to protect their citizens. They sacrificed the moral disapproval of drug use when it was clear that such disapproval was unfounded. Our morals should tell us to protect society, not punish drug users to no effect. The morals must change.
The Morals Must Change
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