Drug Freedom Works in Portugal

On Friday I attended Glenn Greenwald‘s presentation of his report, “Drug Decriminalization in Portugal,” at the Cato Institute. Greenwald studied how Portugal’s policy of decriminalizing the personal possession of all drugs in 2001 has fared. Portugal’s policy has been a “resounding success.”

Decriminalization is dismissed out of hand by those that consider drugs a moral issue, but prohibitionists that stoop to debate argue decriminalization will bring a “parade of horrors.” Some of these are that usage and addiction rates will explode, more children will do drugs, and decriminalized areas will become drug tourist havens that will spread addiction throughout the world.

None of these things have occurred in Portugal. Instead a massive amount of financial resources have been freed up to provide treatment to those that want it. In addition, more of the population has been willing to take advantage of government-supplied treatment now that there is no fear of criminal ramifications.

These results are unsurprising to those that understand how exaggerated the evils are surrounding “hard” drugs. On average, criminalization prevents responsible and conscientious people from using drugs – the exact population that can handle the freedom sensibly.

Note: Greenwald pointed out that the Portuguese commission had considered legalization but believed it could not legalize without violating international treaty obligations. (These treaties are enforced by zealous drug-war states like the United States.) He added that small countries like Portugal actually have to follow international treaties.

Sources:

1. Glenn Greenwald, “Drug Decriminalization in Portugal,” (2009). LINK

3rd Ed. of You Will Die Now Available

You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos is now available. Despite a momentary crisis in delivery coordination – my friend, whose house is the storage facility, had fallen off the wagon – everything worked and 2,100 copies are now in my possession.

Status Report

The Book

My book, You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos, is temporarily out of stock. The current version (second) is hand-bound and the demand for the book has outstripped my patience for cobbling books together with cereal boxes and glue strips. I will bind the remaining printings (roughly fifteen) which will bring the final print-run for the current version to roughly 210. For those who have ordered my book, you can find your book’s print number on the inside back cover where I marked each one in pen.

I am working on wrapping up the third version which should be professionally printed in the next couple months. I will probably make the remaining second version books available towards the end of August. To be notified when the book is again on sale, e-mail service@suburra.com and put “notify” in the subject line.

The Blog

I spent the last several months being clobbered by “real” work (over 280 hours in June), and now am preoccupied with the third version of You Will Die. I will probably begin blogging again when the third version has been turned over to the printers, although I might be incited before that.