The debate about the criminalization of the ‘personal dose’ – the legal amount of recreational drugs a person can possess – is again the talk of the town. On March 16 the bill will be introduced for the fifth time (under the current government) in congress, despite previous failures. This attempt also comes after a widely publicized report found one in ten Colombians have consumed an illegal drug at least once in their lives.
This pathetic
attempt to introduce the law is a slap in the face of the
Constitutional Court that ratified the ‘personal dose’ five years ago
and also of congress, which despite the negative image, is the most
representative institution of different sectors of society. This seems
to be another of Uribe’s dogmatic crusades against laws and customs
that contravene his entrenched religious values. The vice-president
Francisco Santos is, after all, a self-confessed pothead and the former High Peace Commissioner, Juan Carlos Restrepo, was a vociferous opponent of criminalizing drug consumption.
In an effort to understand the government’s good faith is worth analyzing the official statement for introducing the bill, “…considering the serious and disturbing results of the survey … and to be consistent with the policy of President Álvaro Uribe in an effort to comprehensively combat the world drug problem, both from the perspective of production and demand the Government has decided to submit [the bill] to Congress…” However, this argument is naïve at best or shamelessly misleading at worst.
First, the survey is
not as disturbing as this official statement asserts. The survey showed
that 2.3 and 0.7 per cent of the population consumed marijuana and
cocaine respectively in the previous year. In contrast, Argentina,
Chile and Uruguay showed a 6 to 7.5 per cent (marijuana) and 1.3 to 2.7
per cent (cocaine) annual consumption. If the government believes these
figures scandalous then alcohol and tobacco ought to be criminalized
too given that 35 and 17 per cent of the population respectively
consumed them in the previous 30 days. Licit drugs are by far much more
harmful to a person’s health and society than illicit drugs.
Second, combating the drug issue from the perspective of production and demand has infamously failed. The 2009 report
by the International Narcotics Control Board indicated that cocaine
production increased by 27 per cent from one year earlier. The European
Commission released a report
a few days ago claiming the UN ten-year long campaign to curb
production and demand of drugs has failed. The report also stated that
“Cannabis use has become a ‘normal’ part of young people's lives…”
With such reports it
is natural that three Latin American former presidents, among them
Colombian ex-president Gaviria, published a report
calling for the legalization of marijuana. They claim that drug use is
a health issues not a criminal one. Health professionals should be
given the resources to treat patients when they are ready and education
would increase awareness of the health risks attributed to drug use.
The criminalizing would only worsen the situation as in the United
States, which has the highest rate of prison inmates in the world and
49 per cent increase from 1995 to 2003 was due to drug offenses that in
most European countries would not deserve jail time.
Third, the economic resources spent in this criminalization would be better spent in other areas. The current plan is to send drug dealers to jail and users to mandatory drug therapy. A special ‘treatment tribunal’ composed of judges, prosecutors, doctors, psychologist and toxicologist advising on an appropriate treatment would also be created. However, how can the government reliably discriminate between dealers and users? Isn't the justice and system already overextended? Besides, Colombian jails are notorious for being schools of crime and drug centers.
The government should deviate from its moralistic view and stop justifying the failed US-backed "war on drugs" by implementing a counterproductive personal dose criminalization. At the current pace this war is being wage not on drugs, but on otherwise innocent people and to the detriment of society.
Author Sebastian Castaneda is Colombian studies psychology and political economy at the University of Hong Kong
