In 2001, Portugal became the only EU-member state to decriminalize drugs, a distinction which continues through to the present. Last year, working with the Cato Institute, I went to that country in order to research the effects of the decriminalization law (which applies to all substances, including cocaine and heroin) and to interview both Portuguese and EU drug policy officials and analysts (the central EU drug policy monitoring agency is, by coincidence, based in Lisbon). Evaluating the policy strictly from an empirical perspective, decriminalization has been an unquestionable success, leading to improvements in virtually every relevant category and enabling Portugal to manage drug-related problems (and drug usage rates) far better than most Western nations that continue to treat adult drug consumption as a criminal offense.
I hope a side benefit of the economic collapse in the US is that perhaps we'll finally figure out that putting people in prison costs a lot of money.
I've always thought that legalizing all drugs would be a good idea, but I'm okay with just starting with pot. Of course, the Loon Brigade would have a fit, because they think it's their responsibility to dictate to you what you should and shouldn't be doing.. but ultimately, every single time that morality is legislated, it fails. They're just very stupid people.
It is nice that we can look to what other nations are doing to see if it works or not. We can look at same-sex marriage in Canada.. which is a resounding success. We can look at all the nations that do not allow their military to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. We can see what the effects are of changing drug laws.
The problem we have here, though, is that drug enforcement is a big business.. and they're not going to give it up without a fight.
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