Common Sense

by Bill Piper from Los Angeles Times, July 15, 2009 continued - PAGE THREE

President Obama said a few years ago that marijuana should be decriminalized, although he doesn't speak about it now. It's hard to see, though, how Obama can reach his goal of "shifting the paradigm, shifting the model, so that we focus more on a public-health approach" to drugs, without some degree of decriminalization or legalization. At a minimum, he needs to end the criminalization of people who use drugs. No other health issue is dealt with by the criminal justice system.

In February, the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, a high-level commission co-chaired by former presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, called for a "paradigm shift" in global drug policy, including decriminalizing marijuana and "breaking the taboo" on open and robust debate about all drug-policy options. Mexico's Congress recently decriminalized not just possession of marijuana but possession of all drugs, so Mexican police can focus on violent crime.

In a report released last week, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime cited Portugal's decriminalization of drug use as a model for eliminating jail time for drug users, increasing access to treatment and decreasing drug-related problems. The agency recommended countries focus on violent drug traffickers instead of arresting and prosecuting people for drug use. It rejected drug legalization but concluded that "the system of international drug control has produced several unintended consequences, the most formidable of which is the creation of a lucrative black market for drugs and the violence and corruption it generates."

Almost every measurement criteria that can be used shows the U.S. and the rest of the world trending away from prohibitionist policies.