After Reading the following on the war on drugs do you agree or disagree?

[Caution]

Poll question: After Reading the following on the war on drugs do you agree or disagree?

From DrugPolicy.Org: (policy statement of a public advocacy organization, copyright would not apply so this is the entire document)
DrugPolicy.Org Prohibition Alternative Statement

Alternatives to Prohibition

The Drug Policy Alliance promotes alternatives to drug prohibition based on science, compassion, health and human rights. Read our entire mission statement here.

The current drug "control" system -- the war on drugs -- consists of two basic elements: the predominant role of criminal justice in all things having to do with marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine and other prohibited drugs; and the presumption that any use of those drugs, whether harmful or not, is inherently immoral and must be eliminated by government coercion.

Drug war advocates evaluate policy almost solely according to whether the number of people who admit to using certain drugs rises or falls after the policy's implementation. This standard has two key flaws. Since it does not distinguish problematic from non-problematic drug use, it gauges very little about actual changes in harmful behavior or social wellbeing. More importantly, it fails to account for many of the most important social costs related to drugs: high levels of incarceration; violence generated by the criminal market; the preventable spread of HIV and other infectious disease; the denial of medical marijuana to the sick; and so on. These costs are often driven by drug war policies more than by drug use itself.

Drug policy reformers evaluate a policy by asking a range of questions about its actual effects, both intended and unintended. Would an increase in recreational marijuana use by adults indicate, in and of itself, a policy failure? Drug warriors would likely say yes. But what if that "failure" were accompanied by a decrease in incarceration, taxation, black-market crime, and a host of other social problems? Drug policy reformers, taking into account both the larger social picture and the strong scientific evidence that adult marijuana use is relatively benign, would probably answer no.

This "new bottom line" is known as harm reduction. Harm reduction began in the 1980s as a public health strategy to stem the spread of HIV/AIDS among people who inject drugs. From its clinical successes, most notably with needle exchange, and from its pragmatic and compassionate values, emerged an alternative vision for drug policy as a whole. Harm reduction is grounded in the conviction that people should not be punished for what they put into their bodies, but only for crimes committed against others. It acknowledges that no society will every free of drugs. It holds that drug policies should seek to reduce the negative consequences (principally death, disease, crime and suffering) of both drug use and the policies themselves.

If the drug policy reform movement is successful, harm reduction principles will form the basis of a more effective, scientific and humane drug control regime. The number of drug law violators behind bars will be a tiny fraction of today's population; drug policies will no longer provide the means and excuse to arrest, incarcerate, disenfranchise and otherwise harm millions of people, especially African American and Latino men and women; marijuana will be legal, no doubt with regulatory models varying from state to state, as is true with alcohol today; drug control efforts with respect to heroin, cocaine and other drugs will seek to reduce the negative consequences of both drug use and prohibition through strictly controlled availability as well as quality treatment and other viable alternatives to drug abuse and criminality; drug education for young people will be honest and well informed by science and scholarship; government resources currently devoted to punitive approaches will focus instead on education and affirmative alternatives to drug abuse and incarceration. Under a harm reduction regime, these and other actual results -- rather than wishful thinking or political platitudes -- will be the goal of policymakers and the sole judge of their success or failure.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

1. Thanks for the article!

Go Pats!

:hi:

[On the Road]

2. I Have to Agree with Harm Reduction

It has to take all harms into account.

Over the last year, I've renovated and rented a house in a drug-riddled neighborhood of Baltimore. I've had a handymand start shooting up and cheat me and a renter fall behind on rent and move out, taking the new appliances. I've seen a little closer what heroin and crack can do to weak people's lives.

I have a tenant now who I've been told is selling oxycontin out of the apartment, but I haven't seen it and I have not been able to take any action as a result.

This might have turned me into a reborn drug warrior, and to some extent it's heightened my awareness of the destructiveness of drugs and drug-dominated lifestyle. But it has also shown me the futility of prohibition when whole neighborhoods are complicit.

[comradebillyboy]

3. sounds like a good idea, but

assKKKroft has other ideas (unless the perp is a prominent right wing radio celebrity)

[Caution]

4. More on Harm Reduction

DrugPolicy.Org page on Harm Reduction

Harm reduction is a public health philosophy that seeks to lessen the dangers that drug abuse and our drug policies cause to society. A harm reduction strategy is a comprehensive approach to drug abuse and drug policy. Harm reduction's complexity lends to its misperception as a drug legalization tool.

* Harm reduction rests on several basic assumptions. A basic tenet of harm reduction is that there has never been, is not now, and never will be a drug-free society.

* A harm reduction strategy seeks pragmatic solutions to the harms that drugs and drug policies cause. It has been said that harm reduction is not what's nice, it's what works.

* A harm reduction approach acknowledges that there is no ultimate solution to the problem of drugs in a free society, and that many different interventions may work. Those interventions should be based on science, public health, common sense and human rights.

* A harm reduction strategy demands new outcome measurements. Whereas the success of current drug policies is primarily measured by the change in use rates, the success of a harm reduction strategy is measured by the change in rates of death, disease, crime and suffering.

* Because incarceration does little to reduce the harms that ever-present drugs cause to our society, a harm reduction approach favors treatment of drug addiction by health care professionals over incarceration in the penal system.

* Because some drugs, such as marijuana, have proven medicinal uses, a harm reduction strategy not only seeks to reduce the harm that drugs cause, but also to maximize their potential benefits.

* A harm reduction strategy recognizes that some drugs, such as marijuana, are less harmful than others, such as cocaine and alcohol. Harm reduction mandates that the emphasis on intervention should be based on the relative harmfulness of the drug to society.

* A harm reduction approach advocates lessening the harms of drugs through education, prevention, and treatment.

* Harm reduction seeks to reduce the harms of drug policies dependent on an over-emphasis on interdiction, such as arrest, incarceration, establishment of a felony record, lack of treatment, lack of adequate information about drugs, the expansion of military source control intervention efforts in other countries, and intrusion on personal freedoms.

* Harm reduction also seeks to reduce the harms caused by an over-emphasis on prohibition, such as increased purity, black market adulterants, black market sale to minors, and black market crime.

* A harm reduction strategy seeks to protect youth from the dangers of drugs by offering factual, science-based drug education and eliminating youth's black market exposure to drugs.

* Finally, harm reduction seeks to restore basic human dignity to dealing with the disease of addiction.