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Although more and more countries are decriminalizing the possession of drugs such as cocaine and heroin, in producing countries these measures do not solve the problems of the illicit market. Experts explain.
“Historical! The state of Oregon took a drastic turn in the fight against drugs ”: This is the headline of the main media in the United States, after Oregon became the first state in the country to decriminalize the possession of all drugs. Having small amounts of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, or LSD for personal use is no longer a crime there. They are still illegal, as is selling them, but possession is now a civil violation, not a criminal one, which can result in a fine or medical therapy, but not in jail.
Oregon has been the most progressive state on the drug issue. It was the first to decriminalize cannabis in 1973 and legalized it in 2014. A total of 15 US states have decriminalized the recreational use of marijuana. However, analysts consider that decriminalizing drugs is not the current debate, since for more than a decade, 30 countries in the world, including Colombia, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Portugal, have decriminalized the personal use of some drugs
“What the United States is doing today in Colombia was done in 1994 with Sentence C-221, issued on May 5 by the Constitutional Court. For countries where the problem is production, trafficking, export and the entire criminal economy around drugs, the decriminalization of personal use, although very necessary, does not even tickle us ”, explained Isabel Pereira, drug policy coordinator in Of Justice to The viewer. An argument very similar to the one he raised Drug Policy AllianceAlthough the decriminalization of marijuana, for example, is a first step towards a reform of the prohibition regime, “the measure does not address the greatest damages: corruption, high levels of crime, violence and illicit markets.”
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Something that indisputably happens in Colombia. “On the one hand, here consumption is a minority. And, furthermore, the problems we have are associated with other dynamics in the drug chain. That is, if other countries decriminalize, this does not impact us at all because here it is still a crime for peasants to cultivate, the threat of fumigation is still present and the power that criminal actors have in the business continues. This leads us to a broader debate on what is necessary in terms of drug policy ”, added Pereira.
The way out: remove the prohibition for all drugs. Be careful: we are talking about regulating, but not legalizing. “Banning them is the worst of all possible worlds, because control is handed over to illegal actors whose purpose is to increase profits and for that they are going to adulterate, which exacerbates the damage of the substance,” he said.
John Walsh, director of drug policy at WOLA, an organization that promotes human rights in the Americas, told this newspaper that decriminalization works very well for countries where consumption is high, but it does not address the issue of supply. . “The measure leaves the distribution in the hands of the black market and in groups outside the law. The next step, as we saw in the case of cannabis, is to seek to regulate the supply. Only two countries have expressly regulated their cannabis market: Canada and Uruguay; Mexico is debating it ”.
The case of Portugal, stagnant?
In the early 1970s, dozens of young Portuguese were recruited to fight in the wars of various African colonies. “It was like the Americans in Vietnam. Whiskey was cheaper than water, and cannabis was easily accessible, ”João Goulão, the architect of drug policy in Portugal, told NPR. “Suddenly everything was different after the revolution. Liberty! And drugs came with that freedom. But we were completely naive, “he added. The issue was not minor: in 1990 1% of the population – about 100,000 Portuguese – was addicted to heroin.
The Portuguese government’s response was to introduce increasingly harsh policies tied to a criminal justice system. In the 1990s, about half of the people incarcerated in Portugal were there for some drug-related reason. And not only that, the problem was so severe, that the country faced one of the highest rates of overdose deaths in Europe, and people who injected heroin accounted for 60% of the country’s HIV-positive population, agree with Drug policy.
The country decided in 2001 to make a decisive decision: it became the first nation in the world to decriminalize the use of all drugs. The law assumes that anyone who is caught with a dose for less than 10 days is sent to a local commission, where a doctor, a lawyer and a social worker evaluate each case. “In Portugal, no distinction is made between“ hard ”or“ soft ”drugs, or whether the consumption occurs in public or in private. What matters is whether the relationship with drugs is healthy or not, “wrote journalist Naina Bajekal of” Time “magazine. The key: treat addiction as a medical problem rather than a criminal matter.
Yes, there was progress: Overdose deaths fell by more than 80%, and the country now has the lowest rate of drug-related deaths: three per million people. The number of people receiving addiction treatment increased, HIV infections among people who use drugs fell by half and the prison population for this matter went from 75% to 45% in 20 years, according to Dejusticia figures. But there are still several issues to be resolved.
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“It is curious that Portugal is mentioned so much. They say that they do not understand why they are an example in the world when the country was stagnant in decriminalization and did not go any further, ”Pereira added. Even Hannah Laqueur, a professor at the University of California, wrote in a 2018 report that “the reforms were more modest than the press suggested.” And he added that the change in the law on use seemed to be associated with a significant reduction in penalties for traffickers. “While the number of arrests for trafficking changed, the number of people convicted and incarcerated for trafficking since 2001 has fallen by almost 50%,” Laqueur explained.
What else is missing? Supervised places of consumption. In other words, take a step towards regulation. “In Canada they created supervised consumption rooms where people who use drugs, and do not want to stop using them, can go and consume in a safe space. They have access to hygienic material and health personnel in the event of an overdose. It is a very interesting model that they also use in Germany, and that Portugal does not have. In Switzerland they really go further, they have the same model of a supervised consumption room, but they give heroin to ensure that the substance is not from criminal networks that is adulterated. It is a model of a regulated scheme that is not mediated by the market, but by the health system, ”Pereira explained.
A challenge that transcends borders
The countries that represent the bulk of drug users are under the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which issues the entire regime of prohibition of marijuana, cocaine and their derivatives. “The regulation of cocaine, which is really what we would need in Colombia, does not have any political environment in the country. But also, if we were to have a regulatory change on cocaine, this does not remove the fact that there is an international treaty that prohibits it, “said Pereira.
Hence, John Walsh, WOLA’s director of drug policy, explains that states that enact cannabis regulation must find a way to align their reforms with their international obligations and reach a new global consensus, something that seems very difficult with some very conservative world powers in the United Nations like Russia and China.
That is the discussion in Uruguay, the first country in the world to legalize marijuana, where there is still a long way to go to reach a consensus between international treaties and domestic policy reforms. On January 4, the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) reminded the Uruguayan government that the recreational use of cannabis goes against international regulations. The Board insisted that the Convention establishes that the use of cannabis must be limited to medical and scientific activities, and that other regulations prohibit its production, distribution or sale.
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