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Puerto Rico needs drug decriminalization




Enviado por Anthony Vera



  1. The
    Big Picture
  2. How to
    decriminalize street drugs in Puerto Rico
  3. References

Go to YouTube©
and search "drug addiction in Puerto Rico." There you will
see videos that overwhelm with the epidemic of despairingly lost
lives barely surviving the inferno of addiction. They appear as
the walking dead just about everyone on the island disdains,
blames, and ignores with disgust. It is a human tragedy
perpetuated by ignorance and perverse thinking on the part of
government and society.

Countless are homeless. If they are not in
treatment or maintained on Methadone, they are behind bars
– some say, having no difficulty finding a high while
in prison.

More than ten years ago, Douglas Husak
(2003) came to the conclusion that:

If there is a good reason to
criminalize illicit drug use, we have yet to find it. We need a
better reason to criminalize something other than predictions
about how its frequency would increase if punishments were not
imposed. These predictions are dubious both normatively and (in
this case) empirically. Despite my uncertainty about the future,
there is one prediction about which we can be absolutely
confident. After decriminalization, those who use illicit drugs
will not face arrest and prosecution. The lives of drug users
would not be devastated by a state that is committed to waging
war against them. Punishment, we must always be reminded, is
the
worst thing a state can do to us. The
single prediction we can safely make about decriminalization is
that it will improve the lives of the hundreds of thousands of
people who otherwise would be punished for the crime of using
drugs for recreational purposes
.

A little progress has been made convincing
the public that the "War on Drugs" begs for a ceasefire and new
strategy. Uruguay started a new trend in Latin America when, in
December 2013, it decided to legalize marijuana without any
pretense that it was being done for anything other than
collecting tax revenue and hopefully subverting the violent black
market (see http://qz.com/161903/uruguay-may-
have-started-a-marijuana-legalization-storm-in-latin-america
/).
Before that Colombia, the most important War on Drugs ally the
U.S. has, began questioning the prevailing drug policy wisdom,
admitting that the war is being lost and that the problem is not
theirs but the U.S. population"s insatiable appetite for illegal
drugs. In the United States, state after state is passing some
form of cannabis sale legislation in direct defiance
of federal drug policy. In more ways than one, the message is
getting to Washington that the war was lost a long time
ago.

This brief essay is an appeal for
rationality and a smarter use of public resources to correct the
colossal failure of drug policy and loss of human potential on
the island, and the United States.

The Big
Picture

It is important to first define the terms
used here to explain the "drug problem" in Puerto Rico. When
referring to drugs I am limiting the term to so-called
"street drugs" that are classified as Schedule 1 substances under
the federal Controlled Substances Act; including opium and coca
derivatives, and tens of other synthetic addictive products. The
street drug market has a supply (producer/dealer)
and demand (user) side. The "drug problem" also has to be
viewed from an economic (manufacturer/distributor / dealer
and financial infrastructure within the formal and informal
economy) and criminal justice (prohibition enforcement)
dimension. The matrix of the drug problem, as illustrated
below, is complex but the problem itself is not
insoluble.

The starting point is keeping in mind that
Puerto Rico"s drug problem is within an island that is
geographically small, containable, culturally homogenous, and
rich in treatment intervention know-how.

The island is, of course, greatly
influenced and driven by external forces that go far beyond the
United States. Additionally, not being a sovereign nation, Puerto
Rico cannot control its borders without the consent and
assistance of the United States. Nevertheless, within the
self-governing powers the island has been given by the U.S.
Congress as a constitutionally established "free associated
state," Puerto Rico can create internal drug policy and
intervention strategies with the governing power of a de-facto
state (i.e., acting as if it were a sovereign state).

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The drug problem does not begin or end in
Puerto Rico. It needs to be stipulated that the island"s drug
problem represents a microcosm of global deviancy and malignancy
that is as destructive as that which any pandemic or war can
inflict on humanity. Perhaps worse than war and pestilence,
global narco-trafficking corrupts those whom we think should be
incorruptible: the bankers, elected officials, police enforcement
personnel, and the wonderful family man who is reputed to be the
pillar of our community. The media, of course, turns our eyes to
the junkie, corner peddlers and gangs killing each other in the
streets. But I go ahead of myself. Let us complete the big
picture.

We need to dissect the street drug problem
matrix, focusing first on the reality that it is a criminal
industry created for people with a need that is satisfied by an
addictive substance that can destroy human capacities. There is
no typical addict (Speaker, 2003). Some people are functional
addicts – they hold a job, raise a family, celebrate their
grandchildren"s birthdays, and die of natural or unnatural causes
totally unrelated to illegal drug use. Their numbers may be far
greater than the dysfunctional ones that serve as the
marginalized, scapegoats and objects of disdain that help
reinforce our sense of moral worth, and shape the public imagery
of addiction. That public profile of the addict started to be
formed at the beginning of the 20th century when government
sponsored "researchers increasingly defined addiction as a vice
rather a disease, thus framing it as a problem of criminology,
not medicine." (Speaker) The dysfunctional addict –
stereotypically viewed as "the junkie" – is today labeled
with a disease classified in the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) as substance abuse or
substance dependence. These mental disorders include not only
street drugs but legal substances, such as alcohol, caffeine, and
nicotine; the latter said to be more addictive than heroin and
cocaine (Sandra Blakeslee, New York Times, March 29,
1987). The criminal components of the industry are
1) violent competition for market share,

2) corruption in society"s financial,
political, and governmental environment, and 3) disruption of
agriculturally dependent economies in developing nations that
spark narco-terrorism and, to the extent that it undermines a
country"s economy, push waves of undocumented immigrants to the
United States and Puerto Rico. All three components
are created by the demand for drugs. The supply side of
street drugs arguably contributes far more cost to society than
the street and white collar addict, but drug addiction"s weight
on society should not be minimized either.

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Puerto Rican street addicts are not the
ones to whom we can attribute the wave of homicides on the island
urban centers, few if any are implicated in killing to get a fix.
Most incarcerated offenders, largely the poor and unemployed
among the addicted population, engage in property crimes,
larceny, petty sale of stolen property,
prostitution, and racketeering behavior to pay for their
addiction, and contribute nothing to the island"s tax base. They
are a major contributor to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Many are in
prison for minor drug sales or possession – some serving
life sentences in U.S. federal and state prisons, and in Puerto
Rico costing the taxpayer more than $30,000 per year to keep
locked up. More than anything else, the street addict is a
non-violent, defenseless soul, whose only reason for living is
the next fix. Around them revolves a multi-billion dollar
industry that depends on their addiction and
criminalizes their behavior while making it easier for the
white collar user to remain anonymous (Riga, 1993).
The parasite on society is not the addict, it is the supplier and
all those the industry supports – bankers, real estate
money launderers, corrupt politicians and law enforcers, aberrant
government officials, and even the official War on Drugs
enforcement bureaucracy"s perversities (Weisberg, 2009).
Decapitate the parasite and you radically reduce the homicide
rate in Puerto Rico from 26 per 100,000 to less than 10 per
100,000, because about 70% of the homicides in Puerto Rico are
associated with the supply-side of the drug market. Aside from
that, big savings and humane dividends may be derived from
reframing our view of street drugs from a crime problem to a
public health challenge. That is the basis of drug
decriminalization. How do we do it? The answer is not rocket
science. It is a matter of political will and public
awakening.

How to
decriminalize street drugs in Puerto Rico

Over the past three or four decades there
has been a fair amount of debate and controversy regarding
decriminalization. Most of the oppositional view is speculative
and fraught with irrationality and moralistic baggage. While the
debates drag on, one inescapable reality in the U.S. that applies
to Puerto Rico cannot be ignored:

We have the highest incarceration rate in
the world; over forty percent of our state inmates and a full
half of our federal inmates are incarcerated for nonviolent drug
crimes, drug arrests have tripled in the last three decades, with
over eighty percent essentially for mere possession; the generic
cocaine charge in the federal system will predictably lead to
seven years in prison; and all this while cocaine use rates in
the United States have remained unchanged. . . . . the drug
trafficking industry remains untaxed and undeterred except by
street corner violence and drive-by shootings. The federal
government spends many billions for drug control,
even independent of prosecution and incarceration, but a pittance
for proven programs of inmate rehabilitation.
(Weisberg)

Many who favor decriminalization admit that
adopting the strategy requires preparation to deal with the
unintended consequences that surely follow. Like any invention,
use and time provide the experience to make improvements. There
is also confusion and obfuscation around the meaning of
"decriminalization" and "legalization." They are not
synonymous but both terms carry the ambiguity of words like
"happiness" and "love;" they mean different things to different
people. Here is how I define the concepts.

Legalization of street
drugs means the right to purchase, possess and use street drugs
under free- market defined conditions; like buying beer or
cigarettes at the corner store. The state may regulate its sale
by prohibiting sale to minors, but otherwise allow the forces of
supply and demand to set the price. The state could, and does,
try to make it a revenue generating product by taxing it heavily,
as they do cigarettes (presumably to discourage consumption and
risk black market competition). Both have limited success in the
sense that, in the case of cigarettes, some smokers have been
incentivized to quit and it is harder for minors to buy them.
Yet, addicted adults still pay any price for a pack and kids
manage to obtain them anyway.

Decriminalization is state
action to legislate street drug addiction and dependency as a
disease with mental health impacts that are remedied with a
comprehensive public health and social action response. It
requires developing an implementation strategy that will compete
effectively with the illegal street drug market by:

1) providing free availability of better
quality drug choice for users that have been medically screened
and confirmed as addicted drug users,

2) requiring multi-modal drug treatment
(within a harm reduction framework) and rehabilitation support
for drug-free living and gainful employment,

3) creating case management support for
housing, food, and health care as integral to the treatment of
addiction,

4) development of aggressive public
education and youth development programs,

5) continuing border drug interdiction
efforts, and

6) maintaining job creation and family
support programs for low-income communities.

A decriminalization strategy does not
legalize drugs or attempts to crack down on illegal drug sales.
The strategy works to drive the illegal drug industry out of
business by offering a better product to the addict. Above all,
decriminalization does not punish drug use or possession.
Although there is evidence to the contrary (Boaz, 2011), it
should be anticipated that under a decriminalization policy, as
defined above, addiction, experimentation, and drug use may
actually increase during its initial stages, plateau and then
begin a downward decline. It is also possible that in
non-punitive, decriminalized, environment the anonymous addict
will surface and artificially spike the incidence rate of
addiction. In some ways, such as the creation of Drug Treatment
Courts, principles of decriminalization have been embraced in the
mainland. And programs that have for decades dispensed Methadone,
a heroin antagonist, is consistent with a decriminalization, but
all exist within a prosecutorial paradigm that perpetuates failed
policy at an astronomical cost to society.

Human behavior is difficult, if not
impossible, to predict. Enough is known, however, to devise
experimental intervention designs that will be perfected with
experience for optimal outcomes. At the present time Puerto Rico
is spending more than $400 million dollars per year to keep men
and women locked up and about 30% of them are in prison for petty
street drug sales. If half of them could be diverted from prison
to community treatment, the $60 million of prison expense saved
with the added millions wasted in arrests (for everything from
petty larceny, robbery, breaking and entry, etc.), detention, and
police surveillance, will help pay for the investment required to
effectively treat a problem that is slowly dehumanizing our
treasured island.

Legislation in support of decriminalization
should be preceded by a well thought out process of expert review
and report recommendations to the governor of Puerto Rico,
followed by island-wide education and dialogue that will guide
development of a decriminalization model that takes from the
experience in countries like Portugal that has had a form of
decriminalization since 2001 (Hughes and Stevens, 2010). The
structural and programmatic changes required to successfully
implement a decriminalization strategy are formidable but the
long-term dividends can be even greater.

References

Boaz, David. "Drug Decriminalization Has
Failed? It Just Ain't So!" Freeman Sept. 2011: 6+.
"Getting High in Portugal." The Wilson Quarterly Winter
2011: 73.

Gillespie, Nick. "Drug Decriminalization in
Portugal." Reason July 2009: 13.

Husak, Douglas. "Four Points about Drug
Decriminalization." Criminal Justice Ethics 22.1 (2003):
21+. Kleiman, Mark A.R., Jonathan P. Caulkins, and Angela Hawken.
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone
Needs to Know. New York: Oxford UP,
2011.

Riga, Peter J. "The Drug War Is a Crime:
Let's Try Decriminalization." Commonweal 16 July 1993:
6+. Speaker, Susan L. "Creating the American Junkie: Addiction
Research in the Classic Era of Narcotic Control."
Contemporary Drug Problems 30.4 (2003): 905+.

Weisberg, Robert. "Introduction."
Stanford Law & Policy Review 20.2 (2009):
221+.

Youngers, Coletta A., and John M. Walsh.
"Decriminalization: A Trend Takes Shape." Americas
Quarterly

Fall 2009: 123+.

 

 

Autor:

Anthony Vera

February 2014

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