Reply With QuoteDrug addiction is a Axis one Diagnosis, While it can be a criminal offense, it should not be. In bold, your are 100%, IMHO.Originally Posted by Rattfink
Portugal Decriminalized All Drugs Eleven Years Ago And The Results Are Staggering
On July 1st, 2001, Portugal decriminalized every imaginable drug, from marijuana, to cocaine, to heroin. Some thought Lisbon would become a drug tourist haven, others predicted usage rates among youths to surge.
Eleven years later, it turns out they were both wrong.
http://www.businessinsider.com/portu...n-works-2012-7
The results are not what I would have expected and I think this demonstrates that the cure for drug abuse in society can be treatment and not longer prison terms. It does seem to require sound judgment of individual cases and is not a one size fits all magic bullet.
Drug addiction is a Axis one Diagnosis, While it can be a criminal offense, it should not be. In bold, your are 100%, IMHO.
I disagree with the underlying assertion. Not nearly every drug addict started doing drugs for "vindicable" reasons, i.e. personal misery and misfortune or mental health problems.
Their behaviour fuels drug-related crime both in their native country and abroad, produces immense follow-up costs and significant economic burdens for society. I'm not feeling entitled to judge someone who started doing drugs after losing his job and watching his wife die from cancer but I'm unwilling to exculpate students who smoke pot for fun or wannabe upstarts who get high on cocaine.
A society's penal code has not only a "modulating" purpose - to effect quantifiable results like fewer addicts - but must punish misconduct regardless to guarantee its universal and continued validity.
I can respect dissenting views but I am unalterably convinced of mine.
Same here. There is a balance. Criminal actions cause by addiction is not the same a being a criminal for having a addiction.
The penal code still punishes misconduct. It simply steers clear of the bigger burden that represents the criminalization of individual drug use. The depenalization actually does not change much in the landscape.
The pushers will push (and get punished) and so will be customers caught buying. A society penal code has only a role to determin what is permitted and what is not. As such it does not regard miscoduct or morality although it is a product of a broader moral line. Claiming that pot smokers cause more damage than alcohol abusers or cigarette addicts is a stretch that defies understanding. If anything decriminalization is only a limited step that allows a huge burden of small offences to be absolved, while a legalization in the same ground as tobbacco and spirits would pretty much clean the sheets of a good chunk of the turf-related wars both in house and from the originating countries.
Yet no one is ready to face that choice, because it is a morally loaded matter.
-- "Misconduct" in the sense of conduct against what's allowed and what's not. --
The connection is more immediate than you seem to think. Societies punish infractions to protect valuable interests and to give validity to a certain set of values as well as to maintain social cohesion itself. In doing so, a penal code plays an essential role in expressing a society's morale. Homosexual intercourse for example was illegal in many so called progressive nations up until not so long ago but societal changes caused a revision in this regard.
Unfortunately, the enforcement of laws and the execution of sentences have become a political commodity nowadays and the results thereof a currency. Quantifiable variables are given precedence above fundamental considerations, just as if (for example) the number of inmates alone were a telling ratio...
^^^ have any of you guys read the DSM (IIIR or IV)? It opens some interesting legal arguments. Especially in a constitutionally grounded society like the US.
While addicts/alcoholics are not responsible for having their disease, they are responsible for their disease. It cannot be used as an excuse for criminal activity, and should be punished only f the individual fails to adhere to a treatment plan. Which I think is exactly what you just said. D'oh!
How so? 12345
Actually the connection is simply not there. The majority of infractions are simply not even adressed. Those who get caught are a fraction and more linked to a result oriented approach, rather than a morality oriented approach. Let´s take the broken window theory. It single handedly has driven the ideological thinking of most conservatives. While being a wholly teleological animal. Most penal codes do not express morality directly. Hence various social misconducts are not really regarded by a penal code (notably cheating on your spouse). The issue however is that you simply do not push your own idea further. If there is a moral line, why does the state entertain a harmful trade like, alcohol and tobacco, but not drugs?
Hollis: you mean the Diagnostic ans Statistical Manual?
DSM, is a manual of Diagnostic Statistical Manual of the Board of American Psychologist, or something like that. In the US a axis one diagnosis has certain legal protections. Under US law, there are certain classes of people who can not commit a crime.
The issue however here is more of a way to pull the drug trade in. Legalizing drugs would litterally become a matter of *faith*, rather tha reason and that not only in the US but everywhere. America went against Spirits. It came back.
From a pure economic point of view, decriminalizing drugs + a good and strog education campaign can hurt drugs (and those who profit from it) way more than any police / military action.
I´m strongly against drugs and I don´t like the idea of "drugs are not illegal anymore", but we tend to forget that drugs are a HUGE business and if we really want to hurt them, we need to think business-type + public health; otherwise they´ll keep being available, being demanded and many people will get a cut from it.
If you want to discuss huge follow on costs, look at how much it costs to house even casual, occasional drug users in prisons. And according the article, there is less recidivism, which means less using, less demand, less violent crime in using and supplying countries. We can argue the morality of it, but if you want to find a way to reduce drug related costs, drug usage, associated violence, Portugal seems to have found a way.
Personally, I liked Mao's method of drug eradication. There two aspects to our societies, one is reason based the other is mob based. There are more mob members than reason members. This was the argument between Jefferson and Hamilton. Problem, who is to determine who is a member of the mob or the member of reason? The founding of the US, it was white male land owners. They had a vested reason for the survival of the US. As we became more mob base, that is what the politicians pander too. It is emotions that rule the mob. It has become as what was said in Rome, "He who controls the mob, controls Rome." Our freedoms are our own destruction. We live on a paradox, a balance between utopia and totalitarianism. As human neither extreme is beneficial. We are victims of our own success and failures.
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