Virtually Legal

Virtually legal

[SIZE=-2][FONT=verdana,geneva,arial,sans serif]Nov 12th 2009 [/FONT]
[SIZE=-2][FONT=verdana,geneva,arial,sans serif]From The Economist print edition[/FONT][/SIZE]
[/SIZE]
[FONT=verdana,geneva,arial,sans serif][SIZE=-1]In many countries, full jails, stretched budgets and a general weariness with the war on drugs have made prohibition harder to enforce.[/SIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=verdana,geneva,arial,sans serif][SIZE=-1]The Green Relief “natural health clinic” in a bohemian part of San Francisco doesn’t sound like an ordinary doctor’s surgery. For those who wonder about the sort of relief provided, its logo—a cannabis leaf—is a clue. Inside, in under an hour and for $99, patients can get a doctor’s letter allowing them to smoke marijuana in California with no fear of prosecution. In a state that pioneered bans on smoking tobacco, smoking cannabis is now easier than almost anywhere in the world.[/SIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=verdana,geneva,arial,sans serif][SIZE=-1]California, with its network of pot-friendly physicians, offers the most visible evidence of a tentative worldwide shift towards a more liberal policy on drugs. Although most countries remain bound by a trio of United Nations conventions that prohibit the sale and possession of narcotics, laws are increasingly being bent or ignored. That is true even in the United States, where the Obama administration has announced that registered cannabis dispensaries will no longer be raided by federal authorities.[/SIZE][/FONT]

...

[FONT=verdana,geneva,arial,sans serif][SIZE=-1]Reformers are in a bold mood. Earlier this year a report by ex-presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico called for alternatives to prohibition. On November 12th a British think-tank, Transform, launched a report* setting out ideas on how drugs could be legally regulated. For every substance from cannabis to crack, it suggests a form of regulation, via doctors’ prescriptions, pharmacy sales or consumption on licensed premises.[/SIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=verdana,geneva,arial,sans serif][SIZE=-1]That world is still some way off. But a debate about regulation is increasingly drowning out the one about enforcement.[/SIZE][/FONT]

...

[FONT=verdana,geneva,arial,sans serif][SIZE=-1]Elsewhere in the United States, there are many signs of prohibition ebbing away. Some 14 states have decriminalised the possession of marijuana for personal use (medical or otherwise), though most keep the option of a $100 civil penalty. Three states—New Mexico, Rhode Island and Massachusetts—license non-profit corporations to grow medical marijuana. Most radically, some states are considering legalising the drug completely. California and Massachusetts are holding committee hearings on bills to legalise pot outright; Oregon is expected to introduce such a bill within the next couple of weeks.[/SIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=verdana,geneva,arial,sans serif][SIZE=-1]One reason for the sudden popularity of cannabis is financial. Tom Ammiano, the California assemblyman who introduced the bill to legalise marijuana earlier this year, points out that were it taxed it could raise some $1.3 billion a year for state coffers, based on a $50 per ounce levy on sales. As an added benefit to the public purse, lots of police time and prison space would be freed up. California’s jails heave with 170,000 inmates, almost a fifth of them inside for drug-related crimes, albeit mostly worse than just possessing a spliff. [/SIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=verdana,geneva,arial,sans serif][SIZE=-1]In Europe, the authorities face similar pressures: the difficulty of enforcement, and bursting courts and prisons. So the tough sentences recommended in the laws of many European countries are seldom handed out. London’s police chief said last week that law-breakers of all kinds were escaping with cautions or on-the-spot fines, because of pressure on the courts.[/SIZE][/FONT]

...

[FONT=verdana,geneva,arial,sans serif][SIZE=-1]Decriminalising personal possession, though helpful in other ways, won’t do much to tackle organised crime, which retains its grip on the market. But America’s tentative moves in the direction of legalising the supply of drugs, rather than just going easy on users, could start to change things. Sanho Tree, of the Institute for Policy Studies, an American think-tank, notes that Mexico’s cartels are thought to get about 70% of their income from sending marijuana north. The higher the legal production, the harder that will be.[/SIZE][/FONT]

[FONT=verdana,geneva,arial,sans serif][SIZE=-1]If California’s hippies long for legalisation, the bullet-weary citizens of Mexico’s poorest barrios are even keener.[/SIZE][/FONT]

- more at www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14845095