Friday, 8 July 2011

Portugal drug law show results ten years on, experts say

Health experts in Portugal said Friday that Portugal's decision 10 years ago to decriminalise drug use and treat addicts rather than punishing them is an experiment that has worked.
"There is no doubt that the phenomenon of addiction is in decline in Portugal," said Joao Goulao, President of the Institute of Drugs and Drugs Addiction, a press conference to mark the 10th anniversary of the law.
The number of addicts considered "problematic" -- those who repeatedly use "hard" drugs and intravenous users -- had fallen by half since the early 1990s, when the figure was estimated at around 100,000 people, Goulao said.
Other factors had also played their part however, Goulao, a medical doctor added.
"This development can not only be attributed to decriminalisation but to a confluence of treatment and risk reduction policies."
Portugal's holistic approach had also led to a "spectacular" reduction in the number of infections among intravenous users and a significant drop in drug-related crimes, he added.
A law that became active on July 1, 2001 did not legalise drug use, but forced users caught with banned substances to appear in front of special addiction panels rather than in a criminal court.
The panels composed of psychologists, judges and social workers recommended action based on the specifics of each case.
Since then, government panels have recommended a response based largely on whether the individual is an occasional drug user or an addict.
Of the nearly 40,000 people currently being treated, "the vast majority of problematic users are today supported by a system that does not treat them as delinquents but as sick people," Goulao said.
In a report published last week, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) said Portugal had dealt with this issue "in a pragmatic and innovative way."
Drug use statistics in Portugal are generally "below the European average and much lower than its only European neighbour, Spain," the report also said.
"The changes that were made in Portugal provide an interesting before-and-after study on the possible effects of decriminalisation," EMCDDA said.
@'Yahoo'

World drug report 2011

Today there is widespread recognition among Member States and United Nations entities that drugs, together with organized crime, jeopardize the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. It is increasingly clear that drug control must become an essential element of our joint efforts to achieve peace, security and development. At the same time, we must reinforce our commitment to shared responsibility and the basic principles of health and human rights.
The World Drug Report documents developments in global drug markets and tries to explain the factors that drive them. Its analysis of trends and emerging challenges informs national and international drug and crime priorities and policies, and provides a solid foundation of evidence for counternarcotics interventions. Drug markets and drug use patterns change rapidly, so measures to stop them must also be quick to adapt. Thus the more comprehensive the drug data we collect and the stronger our capacity to analyse the problem, the better prepared the international community will be to respond to new challenges.
World drug report 2011 (PDF)

The Supreme Court's Cocaine Problem

Ask a chemist the difference between cocaine and crack, you’ll likely hear about acid-base chemistry. Ask the other type of chemist and you’ll likely hear “about 5 years”. It is mainly the sentencing differences, rather than the chemical differences, that dominate discussions on cocaine and crack. Those sentencing differences were kicked-off by The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 (eventually Public Law No: 99-570), which resulted in vastly different mandatory sentences for federal cocaine versus crack crimes (US Code § 841).

How different? It took 500 grams of cocaine to get a nickel in the Big House, but only took 5 grams of crack to land you in the clink for the same time (see A, B & C). Clearly, it was legally advantageous to do and deal in blow rather than rocks. Based on this 100-to-1 sentencing difference, belies how chemically similar these compounds are...

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drrubidium @'Scientopia'

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Exclusive: News International official went to data store in Chennai, India and asked if data could be deleted. Request was denied

Hacked To Death

Via

Is Murdoch free to destroy tabloid’s records?

Here’s some News of the World news to spin the heads of American lawyers. According to British media law star Mark Stephens of Finers Stephens Innocent (whom The Times of London has dubbed “Mr Media”), Rupert Murdoch’s soon-to-be shuttered tabloid may not be obliged to retain documents that could be relevant to civil and criminal claims against the newspaper—even in cases that are already underway. That could mean that dozens of sports, media, and political celebrities who claim News of the World hacked into their telephone accounts won’t be able to find out exactly what the tabloid knew and how it got the information.
If News of the World is to be liquidated, Stephens told Reuters, it “is a stroke of genius—perhaps evil genius.”
Under British law, Stephens explained, all of the assets of the shuttered newspaper, including its records, will be transferred to a professional liquidator (such as a global accounting firm). The liquidator’s obligation is to maximize the estate’s assets and minimize its liabilities. So the liquidator could be well within its discretion to decide News of the World would be best served by defaulting on pending claims rather than defending them. That way, the paper could simply destroy its documents to avoid the cost of warehousing them—and to preclude any other time bombs contained in News of the World’s records from exploding.
“Why would the liquidator want to keep [the records]?” Stephens said. “Minimizing liability is the liquidator’s job.”
That’s a very different scenario, Stephens said, from what would happen if a newspaper in the U.S. went into bankruptcy. In the U.S., a plaintiff (or, for that matter, a criminal investigator) could obtain a court order barring that kind of document destruction. In the U.K., there’s no requirement that the estate retain its records, nor any law granting plaintiffs a right to stop the liquidator from getting rid of them.
Alison Frankel @'Reuters'