A rebuttal of information by John Stossel of Fox News. 2nd March 2012
Mr Stossel. You are welcome to publish my response if you wish.
Your article about drugs is not backed up by the evidence, there is plenty of scope for drugs use to increase under a change of system where drugs use is normalised (either decrimininalisation or various legalization models). The evidence is in the tobacco/alcohol model /as variously applied/ around the world. Tobacco and alcohol cause far more /total harm/ than the illegal drugs simply through prevalence.
Your remarks about Portugal are not supported by a critical examination of what has taken place there. All the hyperbole about Portugal as a model is based on one flawed study, assiduously reported around the world as a “meme” by the George Soros financed, world-wide, legalisation campaign. You have been hoodwinked. Not surprising really, millions of dollars have been spent to do that to you.
Portugal and decriminalisation appears now to be “the new orthodoxy” for those with a certain direction of travel and for those “user advocates” who want more freedom to use, regardless of the wider social effects.
Portugal is being misrepresented
1. The number of new cases of HIV and Hepatitis C inPortugalis eight times the average in other EU countries
2.Portugal has the most cases of injected drug related AIDS with 85 new cases per one million citizens. Other EU countries averaging 5 per million.
3. Since decriminalisation, drug related homicides have increased 40%.
4. Drug overdoses have increased substantially, over 30% in 2005
5. There has been an increase of 45% in post mortems testing positive for illegal drugs
6. Amphetamine & cocaine consumption has doubled in Portugal with cocaine seizures increasing sevenfold between 2001 and 2006.
Finally the suggestion made by some, that legalisation would somehow remove criminality from drug supply is ridiculous. Criminality loves use-reinforcing substances and behaviours. More than 20% of the UK tobacco market is smuggled, counterfeit, or both. In some other countries it is much worse.
Legalisation or decriminalisation, of substances unfit for human consumption, should only occur if a demonstrable “public good” can be evidenced.
The problem for the legalisation lobby is that it cannot.
David Raynes.
Member. International Task force on Strategic Drug Policy
http://www.itfsdp.org/members.php