Global Support Grows for Legalizing Drugs. "Pablo Escobar said to me: 'One shot to the head isn't enough. It has to be two shots, just above the eyes.'" Jhon Velásquez, nicknamed "Popeye," is sitting on a white plastic chair in the prison yard. "You can survive one shot, but never two. I cut up the bodies and threw them in the river. Or I just left them there. I often drove through Medellín, where I kidnapped and raped women. Then I shot them and threw them in the trash. " Three guards are standing next to him. The experience is like opening a door into hell. Popeye was the right-hand man of Pablo Escobar, head of Colombia's Medellín cartel. Velásquez acquired the nickname Popeye while working as a cabin boy in the Colombian navy. "I've killed about 250 people, and I cut many of them into pieces.
Popeye is a pale, 50-year-old man with a shrill voice -- a psychopath who doesn't count his kills. He pauses for a moment before saying: "People like me can't be stopped. A Global War on Drugs Is Legalization the Answer? Why I Support Legal Marijuana. George Soros | The Wall Street Journal | October 26, 2010 Our marijuana laws are clearly doing more harm than good. The criminalization of marijuana did not prevent marijuana from becoming the most widely used illegal substance in the United States and many other countries. But it did result in extensive costs and negative consequences. Law enforcement agencies today spend many billions of taxpayer dollars annually trying to enforce this unenforceable prohibition.
The roughly 750,000 arrests they make each year for possession of small amounts of marijuana represent more than 40% of all drug arrests. Regulating and taxing marijuana would simultaneously save taxpayers billions of dollars in enforcement and incarceration costs, while providing many billions of dollars in revenue annually. The racial inequities that are part and parcel of marijuana enforcement policies cannot be ignored. Racial prejudice also helps explain the origins of marijuana prohibition. Source: The Wall Street Journal. Time to legalise cannabis. Although some countries have quasi-legalised cannabis use (the Netherlands), made cannabis available for medical purposes (California), or allowed the growing of a small number of cannabis plants for personal use (Australia), in most countries – the Netherlands included – cannabis supply, distribution, and use is prohibited (Reuter 2010). Nevertheless, in 2009, between 2.8% and 4.5% of the world population aged 15-64, corresponding to between 125 million and 203 million people had used cannabis at least once in the past year (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2011).
Table 1 presents cannabis use statistics for a number of countries, distinguishing between lifetime use (ever), recent use (last year) and current use (last month). The range in lifetime use is substantial from a low 21% in Sweden to a high 42% in the United States. The range in recent cannabis use is also substantial from a low 1% in Sweden to a high 14% in Italy. Table 1. Source: Van Laar (2011) Make Drug Use Pay Its Own Way: Laurence Kotlikoff, Glenn Loury. In a far-off land called I’m Right, You’re Wrong, a fierce drug-legalization debate is raging. Half the people, libertarians, say drug use should be legal.
The other half, moral purists, insist it shouldn’t. They disagree even on what to call it when those who buy or sell drugs are led off to jail. The libertarians call this a form of taxation -- specifically, a tax on the time of the buyer and seller. The moral purists prefer the term criminal penalties. On this much everybody can agree: non-violent buyers and sellers are wasting a lot of time in jail. Let’s say everyone agrees to drop the unwinnable legalization argument and to do something useful: switch to levying penalties in dollars rather than in time. The penalties should equal the difference between the gross price paid by buyers, including the dollar value of their lost time, and the net price received by sellers, after subtracting the dollar value of their lost time. Filled Jails This question applies in spades to the U.S.
Decriminalizing Drugs in Portugal a Success, Says Report. Pop quiz: Which European country has the most liberal drug laws? (Hint: It's not the Netherlands.) Although its capital is notorious among stoners and college kids for marijuana haze–filled "coffee shops," Holland has never actually legalized cannabis — the Dutch simply don't enforce their laws against the shops. The correct answer is Portugal, which in 2001 became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine.
At the recommendation of a national commission charged with addressing Portugal's drug problem, jail time was replaced with the offer of therapy. The argument was that the fear of prison drives addicts underground and that incarceration is more expensive than treatment — so why not give drug addicts health services instead? The question is, does the new policy work? Compared to the European Union and the U.S., Portugal's drug use numbers are impressive. Portugal and the drug war. Chicago, IL - The War on Drugs is a global war without end. The battle takes more prisoners than all conventional wars combined and yet the availability of psychoactive substances never significantly diminishes.
Those who sell and consume illegal drugs are subject to some of the harshest punishments ever meted out to human beings. In country after country, the punishments for those who violate drugs laws are often more severe than those for rape or murder. Unrelenting, international drug war hysteria whipped up by drug warriors at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODCP) makes the sale and consumption of illegal drugs seem more dangerous than the legal and equally lucrative business of selling arms and high-tech weaponry that actually kill far more people. In the United States, drug law violators are routinely given mandatory sentences of 10 to 25 years for possession of small amounts of drugs.
People are allowed to have up to 10 days-worth of any drug. Revolutionary policy. Global Commission on Drug Policy. How Can We Improve UK Drug and Alcohol Policy?