Pubdate: Mon, 19 Nov 2012
Source: Kathmandu Post, The (Nepal)
Copyright: 2012 Kathmandu Post
Contact:  http://www.kathmandupost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/222
Author: Malinowska-Sempruch
Note: Malinowska-Sempruch is the director of the Global Drug Policy 
Program at the Open Society Foundations

END OF MARIJUANA PROHIBITION

LONDON , NOV 18 - In the coming days and weeks, critics will try to 
minimize what voters in the US states of Colorado and Washington 
accomplished by backing referenda permitting marijuana legalization 
and regulation. They will likely produce puns and editorial gags 
about a legislative coup for "hippies" hosting patchouli-scented 
victory celebrations. They will be tempted to reduce the story to 
witticisms about hedonism and decadence in America's free-thinking 
mountain states.

But such reactions will be wrong.

In fact, America's disastrous preoccupation with marijuana 
prohibition is more than a story of a relatively harmless substance 
being sent into legislative exile.

Rather, it is part of the larger story of the country's misguided 
"war on drugs," which has resulted in the incarceration of more than 
two million people at any given time. It is a story of lawmakers 
branding young people with criminal records for actions that they may 
well have taken in their own youth - but without getting caught.

Legalizing and regulating marijuana will not only help to protect 
consumers from such life-altering penalties; it will also reduce the 
incentives for violence associated with black markets that are common 
in US cities and narcotics-producing countries.

Profits from marijuana consumption will now benefit legitimate 
economies, rather than fuel violence in producer or transit countries 
and lead to the exploitation of vulnerable people.

And those who struggle to control their use can seek treatment 
without fear of arrest or the stigma of dependence on an illegal substance.

In backing initiatives that would regulate the sale and use of 
marijuana, the voters of Colorado and Washington did not vote 
recklessly. On the contrary, they did something contemplative, even courageous.

Prohibition is embedded so deeply in the American psyche - and that 
of other countries troubled by illicit drug use and the narcotics 
trade - that drug-policy reform is a non-starter in many 
environments. After all, prohibition is not just governed by states 
and municipalities; it is enshrined in US federal, and even 
international, law. How Colorado and Washington balance their local 
responsibilities with such laws will be hotly debated in the coming months.

Indeed, the approval of these referenda will drive drug-policy 
debates worldwide.

Governments in three Latin American countries - Colombia, Mexico, and 
Guatemala - have called on the United Nations to open a debate on the 
drug-control treaties.

And the Organization of American States has undertaken a 
scenario-planning process to consider the relative costs and benefits 
of all policy approaches. Moreover, proposals to decriminalize or 
regulate certain drugs are routinely being presented around the world.

Marijuana regulation is already under consideration in Uruguay, while 
the various forms of decriminalization that have been introduced in 
Europe have been resounding successes.

For example, since Portugal abolished all criminal penalties for drug 
use in 2001, drug use has not exploded, as some predicted, and has 
even declined among some groups.

Moreover, HIV/AIDS among intravenous drug users plunged from 52% of 
all new cases in 2000 to 16% in 2009.

Given that the US is the biggest backer of the international "War on 
Drugs," Colorado and Washington voters' decision is particularly 
bold. Regulating marijuana - and the initiatives that could soon 
follow - has the potential to reduce violence at home and abroad, 
spare young people from undeserved criminal records, and reduce 
stigma among vulnerable people.

These states' citizens should be proud.Kasia
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom