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See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal for an example of decriminalisation of posession o
by tmp-20150107 11y ago
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal for an example of decriminalisation of posession of all drugs, even heroin. Dealers are still prosecuted, but users are not. This seems like a sane solution.
- king_magic 11y agoTotally agree with not prosecuting users. It's the dealers that need to be dealt with.
- vidarh 11y agoIt still fails to address many of the worst problems of criminalisation of drugs, namely the level of other crime associated with production and distribution, and the sale of contaminated products. The biggest risk from heroin, for example, is contamination and varying strength, not the drug itself. E.g. street heroin is often mixed with all kinds of other drugs or stuff like brick dust. Clean medicinal heroin is a quite safe drug (safe enough to be used for e.g. post-op pain relief as an alternative to morphine in some cases in the UK, for example - if you are ever prescribed "diamorphine", that's heroin). Decriminalisation of possession is basically a halfway step where politicians don't have to admit to how horribly criminalisation have failed, but can instead "sell" the change as caring about the addicts. But if they really cared about the addicts they wouldn't keep leaving them in a position where they're injecting drugs contaminated by brick dust and where they are still left dealing with criminals for their supply.