The Market Ticker - My God, It's Full Of Stars! (Drug Policy Reform)

You have the right to control your own body, so long as you do not harm others.  Consensual adult drug use does no harm to others on its own.  (Drugged driving, on the other hand, as just one example, should remain prohibited.)

Encourage experimentation by governments with models of legal regulation of drugs to undermine the power of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their citizens. This recommendation applies especially to cannabis, but we also encourage other experiments in decriminalization and legal regulation that can accomplish these objectives and provide models for others.

The drug war has empowered criminal gangs.  It has also empowered criminal banks; one in particular was caught moving nearly $400 billion dollars for criminal gangs, all drug proceeds.  These funds not only are used to produce and sell more drugs, they also buy guns and ammunition which are then used to shoot people – including innocent, non-involved bystanders and civilians.

Offer health and treatment services to those in need. Ensure that a variety of treatment modalities are available, including not just methadone and buprenorphine treatment but also the heroin-assisted treatment programs that have proven successful in many European countries and Canada. Implement syringe access and other harm reduction measures that have proven effective in reducing transmission of HIV and other blood-borne infections as well as fatal overdoses. Respect the human rights of people who use drugs. Abolish abusive practices carried out in the name of treatment such as forced detention, forced labor, and physical or psychological abuse that contravene human rights standards and norms or that remove the right to self-determination.

Human beings have a right to self-determination.  This is true even if that self-determination is self-destructive.  We don’t put people in prison for drinking themselves to death or smoking cigarettes, even though both are dangerous to your health and can kill you.per se but rather on reducing their harms to individuals, communities and national security.

Apply much the same principles and policies stated above to people involved in the lower ends of illegal drug markets, such as farmers, couriers and petty sellers. Many are themselves victims of violence and intimidation or are drug dependent. Arresting and incarcerating tens of millions of these people in recent decades has filled prisons and destroyed lives and families without reducing the availability of illicit drugs or the power of criminal organizations. There appears to be almost no limit to the number of people willing to engage in such activities to better their lives, provide for their families, or otherwise escape poverty. Drug control resources are better directed elsewhere.

Yep.  At the same time we stand on and for liberty when we stop this jackbooted treatment in the drug trade among those who are engaged in purely consensual adult behavior.

Invest in activities that can both prevent young people from taking drugs in the first place and also prevent those who do use drugs from developing more serious problems. Eschew simplistic just say no messages and zero tolerance policies in favor of educational efforts grounded in credible information and prevention programs that focus on social skills and peer influences. The most successful prevention efforts may be those targeted at specific at-risk groups.

In short: Stop lying.  For example, there is no known lethal dose for marijuana.  When you claim that someone will “die” from using it, and their buddy has been smoking joints for years, you destroy your credibility when you then tell the same person that crystal meth will rot their teeth and cause them to have a heart attack.  The latter statement is true but having destroyed your credibility you’re ignored. Guess who’s fault it is that your later statement is ignored?  Yours: you’re a lying bastard and got caught.

Focus repressive actions on violent criminal organizations, but do so in ways that undermine their power and reach while prioritizing the reduction of violence and intimidation. Law enforcement efforts should focus not on reducing drug markets

Those who commit violence deserve to be incarcerated.  But do so for the violence.  Leave peaceful people alone.

Begin the transformation of the global drug prohibition regime. Replace drug policies and strategies driven by ideology and political convenience with fiscally responsible policies and strategies grounded in science, health, security and human rights and adopt appropriate criteria for their evaluation. Review the scheduling of drugs that has resulted in obvious anomalies like the flawed categorization of cannabis, coca leaf and MDMA. Ensure that the international conventions are interpreted and/or revised to accommodate robust experimentation with harm reduction, decriminalization and legal regulatory policies.

In short, respect individual liberty rather than political ideology and convenience, not to mention a prison business that thirsts for lots of “customers.”

Break the taboo on debate and reform. The time for action is now.

It sure is.

Anyone care to bet whether we’ll get it?