Drug decriminalisation Blunt talk Apr 16th 2012, 20:16 by M.S.

THERE'S been speculation that the recent push by Colombia, Guatemala and other governments in South and Central America towards drug decriminalisation, which we wrote about last month, might open up leeway for the United States to move in the same direction. On Saturday at the Summit of the Americas, Juan Manuel Santos, the president of Colombia (pictured), said leaders should look at drug policy as a spectrum: One side can be all the consumers go to jail. On the other extreme is legalisation. On the middle ground, we may have more practical policies. But Barack Obamapoured cold water on hopes for any radical shift in American policy (full transcript h/t the Weed Blog): I personally, and my administrations position, is that legalisation is not the answer; that, in fact, if you think about how it would end up operating, that the capacity of a large-scale drug trade to dominate certain countries if they were allowed to operate legally without any constraint could be just as corrupting if not more corrupting than the status quo. It's hardly surprising that Mr Obama is taking this line, but it's still a major bummer. The claim that it is drug tolerance, rather than the "war on drugs" itself, that is the greater threat to the rule of law and to public health in the world today is bogus. "Faker than some flour in a powder bag," as Lil Wayne would put it. Of course, by ruling out "legalisation" rather than "decriminalisation", Mr Obama leaves himself a lot of wiggle room. Governments that have pursued successful harm-reduction strategies with marijuana, cocaine and other drugs haven't allowed providers of those drugs "to operate legally without any constraint"; possession or sale of marijuana in commercial quantities is still illegal in the Netherlands, Portugal and so on. Drug manufacturers and dealers are still pursued and prosecuted (in the Dutch case, when they violate tacit agreements about restricting activity to certain zones), but merely using or possessing drugs in small quantities shifts from a criminal to an administrative offence, and is treated as a health issue. In Portugal's widely admired model, since 2001, people caught with small quantities of drugs for personal use become the responsibility of the charmingly named district-level Commissions for the Dissuasion of Drug Abuse. Still, Mr Obama seems to be pushing in the wrong direction here. There is one industry in which harmreduction strategies based on decriminalisation have proven disappointingwhere the adoption of publichealth-based approaches involving legalisation, regulation, inspection, inclusion in the tax base and so forth has arguably led to higher levels of exploitation and the empowerment of abusive, violent international criminal networks. That industry is sex work. Up through the 1990s, there seemed to be a strong case that legalising brothels could destigmatise prostitution and allow sex workers to enjoy employment rights and establish normal relations with police and the justice system, drive down human trafficking, keep underage girls out of the business, and so forth. But the sense at this point, in countries like Spain, the Netherlands and Germany that have been trying this approach for over a decade, is that decriminalisation isn't delivering as

promised. Opinions are divided, but there's evidence of an increase in the rackets of "loverboys" luring girls from poorer countries (Romania, Colombia) into forced sex work. Brothels that play by the rules must employ high-wage locals with work permits; they find it hard to compete with pimps bringing in low-wage illegal immigrants. Internet-based escort services are impossible to force into the legal framework. Because prostitution itself is not illegal, police and prosecutors have a harder time making cases against traffickers. It is, at least, a very mixed bag. Drug decriminalisation, in contrast, has been a success everywhere it has been implemented. At some point this has got to become a fully recognised fact of public discourse, and perhaps some time after that it will penetrate through to a policy level. Unfortunately, America's massive investments over the past 40 years in building up the machinery of the war on drugs have created powerful constituencies that have so far been effective in sabotaging moves in this direction. One might have hoped that Mr Obama would have taken Mr Wayne's example to heart and acted as more of a "limit pusher" in this regard, though any rhyme-induced associations with Ashton Kutcher would be unfortunate. Obama Says Legalization Is Not the Answer on Drugs By JACKIE CALMES Published: April 14, 2012 CARTAGENA, Colombia Leaders at a summit meeting of many of the Western Hemisphere nations on Saturday discussed alternatives to what many consider a failed war on drugs that is too reliant on military action and imprisonment. But President Obama said flatly that legalization is not the answer. The issue was placed on the agenda of the Summit of the Americas this weekend by the host, Colombias president, Juan Manuel Santos. Even so, Mr. Santos suggested that he had in mind some unspecified middle ground short of fully decriminalizing the drug trade that for years has undermined societies throughout the region, notably in Colombia. We have the obligation to see if were doing the best that we can do, or are there other alternatives that can be much more efficient? Mr. Santos said during an informal panel discussion with Mr. Obama and President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil just before the summit meeting began. One side can be all the consumers go to jail. On the other extreme is legalization. On the middle ground, we may have more practical policies. In his turn, Mr. Obama said, I think it is entirely legitimate to have a conversation about whether the laws in place are ones that are doing more harm than good in certain places. But, he added, I personally, and my administrations position, is that legalization is not the answer. Drug operations could come to dominate certain countries if they were allowed to operate legally without any constraint, he said, and could be just as corrupting if not more corrupting then the status quo. The prominence of the drug-enforcement issue at the meeting, which drew more than 30 leaders from North, Central and South America and Caribbean nations, in part reflected a positive development: the increased prosperity in Latin America in recent years has made economic issues less of a problem, and at the same time has emboldened Latin American leaders to take a bigger role in setting the agenda when they meet.

Mr. Santos, in opening the meeting on Saturday afternoon, said the leaders should stop stalling in reexamining the regions approach to the war on drugs, which he dated more than four decades back to President Richard Nixon in 1971. President Otto Prez Molina of Guatemala has called for full legalization of narcotics, though no specific proposals are on the table here. Despite all of the efforts, the immense efforts, the huge costs, we have to recognize that the illicit drug business is prospering, Mr. Santos told the leaders. This summit is not going to resolve this issue, he added. But it can be a starting point to begin a discussion that we have been postponing for far too long. Mr. Obama, in his remarks at the formal session, before reporters were ushered out, said: I know there are frustrations and that some call for legalization. For the sake of the health and safety of our citizens all our citizens the United States will not be going in this direction. Earlier, on the informal panel before an audience of corporate executives and members of the nations official delegations, Mr. Obama had drawn applause when he said of narcotics trafficking, We cant look at the issue of supply in Latin America without also looking at the issue of demand in the United States. Latin Americans have long complained that the United States criticizes its neighbors antidrug efforts when it is American users and guns that stoke the drug trade and violence. At the formal meeting, Mr. Obama said: As Ive said many times, the United States accepts our share of responsibility for drug violence. Thats why weve dedicated major resources to reducing the southbound flow of money and guns to the region. Its why weve devoted tens of billions of dollars in the United States to reduce the demand for drugs. And I promise you today were not going to relent in our efforts. Absent from the meeting was Venezuelas president, Hugo Chvez, who is battling cancer; officials said he stayed away on his doctors advice. The absence of Mr. Chvez, a fierce critic of the United States, eliminated the potential for a tense meeting with Mr. Obama. After the previous Summit of the Americas in 2009, when the two presidents were photographed shaking hands, Mr. Obama was criticized by some Republicans. Separately, in an interview with Univision, Mr. Obama strongly reiterated a promise to seek an overhaul of immigration policy in a second term. But Mr. Obama, who also pledged in 2008 to seek a new law, said he needed more support in Congress, where Republicans have led the opposition. This is something I care deeply about, he said. Its personal to me. Prostitution in Brazil The wrong signal A court decides some children are less equal than others Apr 7th 2012 | SO PAULO | from the print edition TO HAVE sex with young girls, said Brazils highest criminal court on March 27th, is immoral and reprehensible. But a man who had sex with three 12year-olds in 2002, it decided, had committed no crime. Since 2009 the age of consent in Brazil has been 14, but

at the time there was merely a presumption that sex with a child below that age involved violence and should therefore be regarded as rape. Reversing a previous ruling by other members of the Higher Court of Justice (STJ), the judges decided that this presumption could not be absolute, but must stand or fall on the facts of each case. In this case, all three children worked as prostitutes. The mother of one had previously told a lower court that her daughter often missed school to join the other two turning tricks in the town square. That showed that the girls were far from innocent, naive, ignorant or ill-informed about sexual matters, the judges said. Whether they were mature enough to consent had to be decided with reference to their wide sexual experience, not just their age. The judgment has provoked uproar. A congressional committee said it violates childrens constitutional rights, perhaps opening the way for referral to the supreme court. The government will seek to reverse the rulings effect. The president of the STJ has offered to take another look, though he warned that the judgment was technical and based on the law as it stood. Child prostitution generally starts with rape, points out Atila Roque of Amnesty International. The child is often forced into the work. He worries that the judgment could weaken childrens legal protections. The judges decided that a child who has been brutalised becomes freer to make sexual choices, he says. So a child prostitute is somehow no longer a child. Some of the outrage is misplaced, says Juliana Belloque, a public-defence lawyer in So Paulo. People have the idea that the court has decided that prostitutes cannot be raped. Thats not right. Tackling child prostitution is a matter of enforcing laws that make it a crime to persuade or force under-18s into selling sex, she says. Under-age prostitution is very common in Brazil. Research in 2006 by the University of Braslia, the federal government and Unicef found children and adolescents selling sex in nearly 1,000 municipalities, a sixth of the total. Seaside cities such as Fortaleza, Recife and Rio de Janeiro are hotspots, as are ports and border towns. In 2007 the federal traffic-police said they knew of nearly 2,000 roadside locations where sex with children was for sale. Ahead of the 2014 football World Cup and 2016 Olympics, the tourism ministry is promoting Brazils beaches, food and biodiversity. But the ministry says research into which websites were using its trademarks quickly turned into an attempt to stop many of them promoting Brazil as a destination for sex tourism. It has written to the webservers hosting 1,770 sites asking them to take down such material. It made this public on the same day as the STJs judgment muddied the message.