lunes, abril 20, 2009

Portugal y su exitosa lección sobre descriminalización del consumo de drogas



Glenn Greenwald es un analista del liberal think tank The Cato Institute, y ha escrito un informe sobre la exitosa política de Portugal sobre descriminalización del consumo de drogas. Aquí lo entrevista la revista Reason al respecto, y cómo se podría beneficiar Estados Unidos de una política semejante.

Mientras tanto, hoy el New York Times reporta sobre la mayor visibilidad de personas reconocidas que defienden la legalización del mercado de consumo de drogas. Copio un fragmento:

the signs of change are everywhere, from the nation’s statehouses — where more than a dozen legislatures have taken up measures to allow some medical use of marijuana or some easing of penalties for recreational use — to its swimming pools, where an admission of marijuana use by the Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps was largely forgiven with a shrug.

Long stigmatized as political poison, the marijuana movement has found new allies in prominent politicians, including Representatives Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Ron Paul, Republican of Texas, who co-wrote a bill last year to decrease federal penalties for possession and to give medical users new protections.

The bill failed, but with the recession prompting bulging budget deficits, some legislators in California and Massachusetts have gone further, suggesting that the drug could be legalized and taxed, a concept that has intrigued even such ideologically opposed pundits as Glenn Beck of Fox News and Jack Cafferty of CNN.

“Look, I’m a libertarian,” Mr. Beck said on his Feb. 26 program. “You want to legalize marijuana, you want to legalize drugs — that’s fine.”

All of which has longtime proponents of the drug feeling oddly optimistic and even overexposed.

“We’ve been on national cable news more in the first three months than we typically are in an entire year,” said Bruce Mirken, the director of communications for the Marijuana Policy Project, a reform group based in Washington. “And any time you’ve got Glenn Beck and Barney Frank agreeing on something, it’s either a sign that change is impending or that the end times are here.”


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