the legalization of alcohol has certainly not helped the countless bashed and raped woman, the destruction of huge numbers of aboriginals and the numerous families mourning family members due to selfish drunk drivers. It is very hard to believe the legalisation would reduce consumption as Evert seems to believe would happen with an end to illegal drug usage .

BBoy: regarding Portugal [could you please attach a link on the statistics, the year and so forth]as I wish to view the information. Also, any info relating to statistics in Portugal on studies done neurologically. Their economic situation poverty etc. Many factors involving proposals to legalise all highly addictive drugs.

we are unique: "could you please attach a link on the statistics, the year and so forth"

This is probably the most balanced assessment.

http://www.idpc.net/php-bin/documents/BFDPP_BP_14_EffectsOfDecriminalisation_EN.pdf.pdf

Changes in drug related deaths:

--Opiates--
2001: 350, 2003: 98
--Other-drugs--
2001: 19, 2003: 54
--Total--
2001: 369, 2003: 152

Those numbers are probably reliable. In summary, drug related deaths halved. The reason is fairly straight forward. Before people seeking help could be prosecuted. Now they get help, so naturally many more seek help.

In drug related diseases, HIV dropped by 17%, and Hepatatis B & C also dropped.

Student drug usage, 16-18 group:

--Canibas--
2001: 12.3%, 2003: 17.7%
--Heroin--
2001: 2.5%, 2003: 1.8%

Those numbers aren't as reliable, as Canibas use in Europe went up in that period, and a major supply route for Europe is via Portugal's sea border.

As drug was no longer an offence prosecutions dropped by 60%. The significance of this is it costs a huge amount to prosecute someone. That money was diverted into treatment. As a result drug users became functioning members of society, rather than a burden in jail. Interestingly, prosecutions for trafficing remained unchanged, which is possibly an indication that drug use overall remained fairly flat. Overall, people in jail for drug related offences has dropped from 44% to 28%, and prison overcrowding has dropped from 119 prisoners per 100 places to 101.

Portugal effectively changed their treatment for drug use from jail to medical help, and it only worked because they did ensure everyone got medical help (wanted or not). There is some debate in Portugal over whether casual soft drug use has increased, if so whether this is a problem. My guess is it probably has, but it probably isn't huge issue as soft drugs are less toxic than say alcohol. If they treated all drugs like they do cigarettes now, the "Underbellies" of this world would be starved of cash, the cost of law enforcement would disappear, and taxation revenue would shift the burden of supporting them from us non-drug users to the users themselves. Sounds good to me.

Just because people harm themselves, does not make it a national problem.

What is lost in the idea that we are justified in criminalising drugs because of the harm that some people do to themselvses, is all those users who don't seriously harm themselves. For example I smoke marijuana probably once or twice a year, have an enjoyable time, and have no other negative side-effect. It does not noticeably affect my ability to work, my personal relationships, or my health. (Although it reminds me of that joke "I'm allergic to marijuana - every time I use it I break out in handcuffs.")

But even if I did harm myself - so what? Why is that someone else's business more than it is mine? Just because there's a harm, doesn't mean we are justified in criminalising it.

What about all the heart attacks caused by butter? Or the deaths caused by cars? Everything involves risk; that doesn't mean we should prohibit them. People have a right to choose for themselves as a matter of principle; and so long as they are not aggressing against the person or property of others, should be free.

Ideas can be far more harmful than drugs - should we prohibit communications of ideas that we think harmful too, as the puritans, and the neo-Marxists maintain?

The impulse to take intoxicants has, and always will, persist despite the malevolence of any retributive punishment. And the key difference lies in the fact that not all drug users become drug addicts.And not all drug addicts destroy the fabric of society. Legislation fails to acknowledge this and therefore fails to base itself on rational thought and fails ultimately to take care of the citizenry it so aims to protect.
The tragic fact of prohibition is we are only ‘allowed’ a miniscule amount of intoxicants. Humans, being inquisitive, will always want to know what's on the other side of the fence. Except that taking the leap into possibly different pastures also means rubbing shoulders with some of the less salubrious members of our citizenry. With that they are by themselves in many ways and will need to deal with the producers of these intoxicants who are not governed by quality control or health and safety regulations.
By ‘criminalising’ a substance and creating a ‘war’ as such on it, legislators are in a sense increasing the harms associated with the use of substances. Rather than saving us from ourselves, they are creating a situation whereby the health of drug users is actually causing far more harm than good.
A recent report, 'After the war on drugs: Blueprint for regulation', comprehensively highlights the harms caused by the prohibitionist stance. In its foreword it cites some alarming figures gleaned from WHO sources and looks at HIV/AIDS statistics as an example of how legislative zealotry harms human beings. Outside Sub-Saharan Africa 30% of HIV/AIDS infection are attributed to injecting drug use. In Europe and Central Asia a whopping 60% of this blood-borne death sentence is contracted via injecting drug usage.
Time to wake up and smell the cofee. Hang on, that's a drug!

One can't help but wonder at the game of ping-pong being played in the field of cannabis research. Last year the report from the Keele University Medical School concluded "This study does not therefore support the … link between cannabis use and incidence of psychotic disorders" (http://ukcia.org/wordpress/?p=76), yet only a few days ago the UQ's John McGrath and his team's report stated "Among all the participants, a longer duration since the first time they used cannabis was associated with multiple psychosis-related outcomes," (The Age, 27/02/10). It seems academia generally operates on an a priori basis and will gather evidence supporting the conclusion they want, hence two completely different findings.
So now my two bob's worth; pot smokers are prone to mental illness, not because they smoke pot, but because they are born/made that way from infancy. I personally believe that those of us with an artistic temperament are drawn to altered states of consciousness because of a deeper perception of the world and a keener sensibility to its vagaries. This world is ruled by a rampant military-industrial plutocracy, a class of people who kill to achieve their greedy, planet destroying ambitions, and then get drunk to celebrate their latest conquest, while the peace-loving, artistic folk, driven to despair by such evil, seek alternative ways to cope with a world gone mad and turn to such things as “illicit drug” use. We are not mad, we are normal, the real abnormality is the status quo, the powers that be, the mad men (and a few women) who wage war against the people, and then incarcerate us for wanting to escape the madness by smoking a joint or shooting heroin. We are the enemy of uber-power and we have to be kept in check by proscriptions against our normal behaviour and being vilified as deviant by the truly degraded. And even these SOBs are free to indulge in their high-grade cocaine with impunity while the crack addict is criminalised. If ever there was a case of the pot calling the kettle black, the enforcers of the war on drugs are the hypocrites.