Is Portugal's Liberal Drug Policy a Model for US?
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Surprisingly, this news made barely a ripple in the US media...then again, coverage of Mexican affairs here is not that good, and even discussing legalization is political suicide in most of the US. One articulate and credible advocate for the idea is a judge and self-described former 'drug warrior' from Orange County named Jim Gray, who left the GOP to run as a libertarian candidate in 2004 (for the senate, of all things). I caught him speaking recently on CSpan and was highly impressed by his pragmatic approach.
http://www.judgejimgray.com/grayarticles.php or http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/295043-1 or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_P._Gray, for text, video, and background respectively.
Mexico could further legalize transshipment of drugs so that cartels could just hire Mexican shipping companies to deliver the drugs to the USA border. And that might help a little in the interior of the country, but the interior of Mexico already sees low levels of drug crime.
The real problem will be crossing the USA border with the drugs. As long as that is a critical concern of the cartels, they will need decoys, armies of labor, help from police, forged bills of lading, bribed officials, and the whole infrastructure of corruption and violence.
Since the USA isn't going to be legalizing anything as far as I can see, there will always be violence in Mexico paid for by USA users. I don't see anything the Mexican government can do about it.
The sad fact is that every time we or the Mexican government removes a top-level dealer, there's a gruesome competition to take his place because the market is worth billions of dollars. Even a vanishingly thin slice of such a huge pie is worth the risk of death to many people. The more of a high-risk occupation we make it with aggressive enforcement, the more marginal and unscrupulous the individuals who will be attracted to it. The sort of people who are willing to decapitate their competitors or massacre civilians are not rational actors who are influenced by the calculus of deterrence; as we've seen in Central and South America, the net effect of escalating the conflict into paramilitary activity is to just bring drug suppliers and illegal arms dealers into closer proximity.
If you have the hour to spare, I felt Judge Gray had a very pragmatic and persuasive approach to overcoming the political and legislative inertia, but it's going to be an uphill struggle. While the Obama administration has finally altered national policy a little (eg by supporting legislation to eliminate crack/cocaine sentencing disparities and taking a hands-off approach to state policies on medical marijuana), more fundamental changes will require the voters to demonstrate where the safe electoral ground is.
"Instead, they're referred to a panel comprised of a drug-treatment specialist, a lawyer and a civil servant, who usually recommend treatment -- and pay for it, too." is something that won't happen here. And I think that's a fundamental part for legalization to work.
To the decriminalization, if I can grow it in my back yard, the government should have no right to say what I can do with it. If I have to create it in a lab setting and plan on selling it to someone else, then there should be some control. I've never heard of weed killing anyone, but I've heard of all the rest killing people. So when it's possible to kill someone, there should be roads to justice available.
2¢
For some people, drugs are just another enjoyable part of life, not an escape from life.
Basically, an "I don't care anymore so just keep them banned" attitude or an inability to do analytical thinking to see that the negatives of our drug culture aren't inherent to drug use.
But for the other people, the ones not included in your 'some' I believe that drugs are used as an escape. I've known plenty of people that had their nirvana moment and then continued to use for years after because it's better than coming home and watching tv while waiting to go to sleep and start the 8-5 all over again. Walk into a gas station at 5 pm and see how many people buy a six pack on their way home. Or ponder the large amount of the population taking the legal drugs to alleviate depression.
You know, any way of living which can't be passed to other people is kinda useless.
In the Netherlands, we're still struggling with tons of unforeseen side-effects of partial legalization (like a excessive alcohol abuse amongst teenagers, since drugs are no longer particularly "cool", and alcohol is much cheaper and more available). The net result has been positive, but it's not without its problems.
As a results, there is still a lot of pressure from conservatives to take more repressive measures, and the road to full legalization is blocked by the relations with other countries (not just immediate neighbors, but the entire EU with its wide-open borders and the US that meddles in everyone's business) that take a much less liberal view.
Bottom line is: legalization will create new problems, some of them may be hard to predict. It does not magically solve the problem. It just allows you to focus efforts and resources on the real problems, instead of the side-effects of prohibition.