This is a very encouraging report. In Portugal there was a significant drop in drug usage, hospitalization, and deaths after decriminalization. The savings in enforcement paid for improved treatment. Selling drugs was not decriminalized.<p>The situation here in CA is insane. Medical use of marijuana is legal, but the feds raid the shops. We spend billions turning minor drug dealers and users into prisoners and billions more building new prisons. The prison guards union is one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the state. I remember reading around the turn of the century that nationally 40% of black males, teens to early 20's, were on parole, in jail, or awaiting trial. Insane.<p>It seems that decriminalization reduces the attractiveness of drugs. I speculate that it reduces peer pressure, hard sell drug dealers, and the profitability of drug sales.
The title is wrong. Portugal hasn't legalised drugs, but rather decriminalised possession for personal use. In effect they have the same laws, but whereas users could be sent to prison before they will now instead be assessed and treated by the state. Proper legalisation would remove all consequences of drug use, rather than just reducing penalties. To argue that this proves any arguments for or against legalisation is wrong in my opinion.
Uh, so, I usually really hate comments about how an article isn't related to HN, but with this submission and the one about China on the front page, I felt like I needed to write one too.<p>I sort of feel like I'm looking at the front page of CNN or the NYT when I see stories about national legalization of drugs and the problems in a nation's infrastructure.<p>I think some of us have taken the guideline of 'stories that are interesting to hackers' to a bit of an extreme. It's almost become 'ok, some hackers take drugs, this story is about drugs, it should be interesting.' I still think that stories submitted should have a basic level of hackishness to them. As someone who'd consider himself a non-hacker, I find more hack related stories to be much more interesting than any of these Time/etc. articles, and I come here to read them because I wouldn't have been able to find them elsewhere, whereas these globally related articles are relatively easy to come by.<p>So, flag. And the other one.
Wow, I didn't know the Netherlands had never really legalized cannabis...<p>Also, I'm from Portugal, and although I knew being caught using some drugs would take no action from the police, I didn't know we were that liberal...<p>Anyway, whoever is caught selling goes to jail...
The big red flag is the sponsor - the CATO institute is hardcore pro-legalization. I love the findings as much as the next libertarian but the report would be more persuasive if it came from a neutral commission.
Link to the Cato Institute, where you can download the report they sponsored: <a href="http://cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10080" rel="nofollow">http://cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10080</a>