Pubdate: Wed, 07 Jan 2015
Source: Age, The (Australia)
Copyright: 2015 The Age Company Ltd
Contact:  http://www.theage.com.au/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/5
Author: Greg Barns
Note: Greg Barns is a barrister and a former national president of 
the Australian Lawyers Alliance

STATE MUST ABANDON FAILED POLICIES

Drug Prohibition Isn't Working, and the New State Government Could Do 
Worse Than Look to Portugal for Some Fresh Ideas.

The dramatic rise in Victoria's drug trade over the past five years 
has occurred because the government has pursued failed prohibition 
policies. According to figures published in The Age on Monday, demand 
for "illegal narcotics such as ice is growing at breakneck speed. Use 
and possession offences for all drugs have skyrocketed 68 per cent in 
the five-year period, while cultivation, trafficking and 
manufacturing offences have jumped 25 per cent.

"Almost 18,000 drug use-possession offences were recorded in the past 
financial year, while offences relating to the production of illicit 
substances reached almost 6000," The Age reported.

This is despite the state spending billions over this period charging 
hundreds of thousands of Victorians with drug offences.

Last year the London School of Economics released a report signed by, 
among others, five Nobel prize-winning economists  Kenneth Arrow, 
Christopher Pissarides, Thomas Schelling, Vernon Smith and Oliver 
Williamson  who summed up why it is that a criminal justice and law 
enforcement approach to drugs is such a failure.

"The strategy has failed based on its own terms," they said. 
"Evidence shows that drug prices have been declining while purity has 
been increasing. This has been despite drastic increases in global 
enforcement spending. Continuing to spend vast resources on punitive 
enforcement-led policies, generally at the expense of proven public 
health policies, can no longer be justified."

In Australia, former federal police commissioner Mick Palmer, the 
nation's most eminent health professional on drugs Alex Wodak, and 
former Defence Department secretary Paul Barratt have called for 
governments to move from a law enforcement and criminal justice focus.

So what can be done? Victoria's new Attorney-General Martin Pakula 
and Health Minister Jill Hennessy ought to visit Portugal, a country 
that in 2001 became the first nation to decriminalise possession and 
use of all illicit drugs. When a person is caught with illicit drugs 
they are steered to a panel of legal, health and social-work 
professionals. Most people end up with no sanction, and treatment is 
not compulsory. The latter is important because adults should not be 
forced into treatment when it is clear to all that their use of drugs 
is purely recreational and that they function effectively as 
law-abiding citizens.

Since embracing a health and lifestyle approach to drugs policy, drug 
use in Portugal has declined, particularly among the at-risk 15-24 
years group. There has been no increase in crime linked to drug use, 
such as robberies and burglaries. Trafficking of drugs remains low.

The Portuguese experience has led to other nations such as the Czech 
Republic following. In Uruguay, cannabis was legalised in 2013, and 
Guatemala, tired of the cost in lives and resources that has resulted 
from the "war on drugs", also wants to legalise possession and use of 
drugs. Even in the "home" of the prohibitionist policies, the US, we 
are now seeing medical and recreational cannabis becoming legal 
across many of the 50 states.

One of the major drivers for the push against the criminal justice 
approach to drugs is because jail and other sanctions are not 
deterrents. In Victoria, about 60 per cent of those who cultivate 
commercial quantities of cannabis go to jail and the average jail 
time is about two years.

In the medium to longer term we must ask ourselves, why not make all 
drugs legal? That does not mean that drugs would be sold in every 
supermarket but we ought to treat them as we treat other substances 
that are potentially harmful  we regulate the market as we do for 
cigarettes and alcohol.

Take so-called party drugs. The reason people die from ingesting 
party drugs is because the market is a black one. Similarly, those 
concerned about toxic strains of the weed should support a policy 
that ensures all cannabis is sold subject to product regulation.

Another Nobel prize-winning economist, Gary Becker, in a seminal 
paper written with colleagues from the University of Chicago in 2004, 
found that legalising drugs makes for a safer society. Becker noted 
"legalisation of drugs combined with an excise tax on consumption 
would be a far cheaper and more effective way to reduce drug use.

"Instead of a war, one could have; for example, a 200 per cent tax on 
the legal use of drugs by all adults - consumption by, say, persons 
under age 18 would still be illegal.

"That would reduce consumption in the same way as the present war, 
and would also increase total spending on drugs, as in the current 
system. But the similarities end at that point. The tax revenue from 
drugs would accrue to state and federal authorities, rather than 
being dissipated into the real cost involving police, imprisonment, 
dangerous qualities, and the like. Instead of drug cartels, there 
would be legal companies involved in production and distribution of 
drugs of reliable quality, as happened after the prohibition of alcohol ended."

Victoria has a choice. It can continue to pursue inherently flawed 
policy on drugs or focus on evidence-based policy.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom