Drug wars in the news

Carpe Diem wants us to read Richard Branson on drug legalization in Portugal.

The paper, published by Cato in April 2011, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the problem far better than virtually every other Western country does.

Well! CATO says socaalized drug therapy works!

Following decriminalization, Portugal has the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the EU: 10%. The most comparable figure in America is in people over 12: 39.8%, Proportionally, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have used marijuana.

The Cato paper reports that between 2001 and 2006 in Portugal, rates of lifetime use of any illegal drug among seventh through ninth graders fell from 14.1% to 10.6%. Drug use in older teens also declined. Life time heroin use among 16-18 year olds fell from 2.5% to 1.8%.

New HIV infections in drug users fell by 17% between 1999 and 2003.

There are a lot of cross correlations that are ignored, but for a preliminary look this seems like good news.

Has this worked in California? No, public sector unions got on the drug counseling bandwagon and screwed up the process. The other thing, California bureaucrats get power from distributing drugs, so they make heroin substitutes available only from government run drug houses. That is turnimng out to e a disaster, just let the doctors prescribe.

But otherwise, California has no choice, we can no longer afford to deal with drug addicts in any event. I don't think we have a solution anymore, except to warn the straights and stay out of the drug neighborhoods.