Worldwide Decriminalization of Drugs
The battle to decriminalize drugs, especially marijuana, here in the United States has been going on for some time. Many advocates believe that, if legalized and tightly regulated, it would decrease the number of people using harder drugs and severely cut the amount of money going to dangerous drug cartels. In fact many countries have already passed similar laws to legalize the use, but not necessarily the selling, of these dangerous drugs. Although Amsterdam has legalized soft drugs, such as marijuana and mushrooms, and there are regulations regarding where they can be used and sold, even the hard drugs are tolerated more so than in the U.S. Brazil and Columbia have also been reconsidering their stance on narcotics.
The most recent, however, and the most likely to affect us here U.S. is the new drug law that was passed in Mexico. On August 20, 2009 the new law went into effect stating that it is no longer illegal to possess small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, and crystal meth. With nearly 12,000 drug related deaths in the past three years, Mexico is desperately revising legislation to put more pressure on the drug lords and less on the small time users. Once caught for the third time, users will be referred to a nearby drug rehab where they will receive addiction treatment; although this is probably not the drug intervention that they are looking for.
Advocates of legalizing marijuana in the U.S. see this as a good sign. With a global change of opinion in regards to drug and the rising cost of fighting the War on Drugs, they hold out hope that one day we will follow suit; even though several states have already decriminalized the use of marijuana and California has legalized it for medical purposes. The White House on the other hand was surprising silent on the issue.
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Tags: addiction treatment, Amsterdam, drug intervention, drug law, Drug Rehab