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Six Year British Study Proves Drug Use Should be Decriminalized
This post comes to us from Ecolocalizer.com. For more along these lines, visit Ecolocalizer or some of its most popular categories: Animals, Environment, Society, or Transportation.
An extensive six-year study by the independent British advisory organization, the UK Drug Policy Commission (UKDPC), has clearly shown that possession of small amounts of controlled drugs should be decriminalized. Their thorough research explained that this sensible reform will not only have positive social and economic impacts, it also will not lead to a significant increase in drug usage.
Britain’s Guardian reported that the 173-page study concluded:
“Taking drugs does not always cause problems, but this is rarely acknowledged by policymakers. In fact most users do not experience significant problems, and there is some evidence that drug use can have benefits in some circumstances.
The commission’s radical critique says the current UK approach is simplistic in seeing all drug use as problematic, fails to recognise that entrenched drug problems are linked to inequality and social exclusion, and that separating drugs from alcohol and tobacco use makes it more difficult to tackle the full range of an individual’s substance use.
It says the £3bn a year spent tackling illegal drugs is not based on any evidence of what works, with much of the money wasted on policies that are not cost-effective..”
Several other countries, such as Portugal and the Czech Republic, have already successfully enacted similar changes in their policies, with very positive results. More than a decade after Portugal decriminalized small amounts of drugs for personal use, the European nation has the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use for people over fifteen in the European Union — just 10%. The most comparable figure in the US is the rate of pot consumption for individuals over the age of twelve, which is nearly four times greater, at 39.8%.
Decriminalization has been repeatedly proven to be more much effective at reducing drug use than the horribly failed “War on Drugs“. This simple reform would also help redirect scarce resources into treating addiction, tackling organized crime, and would help reduce our bloated prison population. The United States now has more people imprisoned, most for non-violent drug use, than any other country on the planet. What are we waiting for?
2012-10-19 00:21:08
Source: http://ecolocalizer.com/2012/10/15/six-year-british-study-proves-drug-use-should-be-decriminalized/
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