freedom-maniac
06-19-2011, 07:33 AM
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/201161613337193611.html
Some excerpts:
While hard decriminalisation might be difficult to imagine, the door for "soft drugs", such as marijuana, has been cracked open for decades, most famously in the Netherlands.
New policy initiatives in several US states are jumping on the Dutch bandwagon, but in May, the Netherlands announced a marijuana policy shift.
According to the Amsterdam-based Netherlands Tourism and Convention Board, at least seven per cent of tourists who visit the city go exclusively for easy access to cannabis, which is served up in "coffee shops" offering long menus of high-inducing options.
The city of Juarez, on the border of El Paso, Texas, sees about 3,000 murders every year - no thanks to tight drug policies, says Gibler.
"Illegality has done nothing to stop [the violence], but has done the opposite - fuelling it by creating the profit margins associated with that much wealth," he told Al Jazeera
A world away in Connecticut, a US state riddled with Ivy League universities and a murder rate incomparable to Mexico's, marijuana decriminalisation is high on the state's priorities.
In the coming days, the state's governor is set to sign Senate Bill 1014 (SB1014), which would decriminalise small-scale marijuana possession, making it unpunishable to have one ounce (28g) or less of the drug, and punishable by up to $1000 for possession of between one and four ounces.
The US Supreme Court decided, on May 23, 2011, that California prisons were overcrowded to the point that they were a physical and mental health risk to those incarcerated.
According to the close 5-4 decision in Brown v Plata [PDF], a sentence resulting in a term in California's prison system is a violation of the US constitution's "cruel and unusual punishment" clause. According to Rebekah Evenson of the Prison Law Project, one of the two co-counsels to Plata, the case was about providing California's prison population "constitutionally adequate healthcare … so you're not essentially charging them with death".
The decision requires that California change the status of about 32,000 non-violent offenders, which would bring the population down to 137.5 per cent of design capacity.
Some excerpts:
While hard decriminalisation might be difficult to imagine, the door for "soft drugs", such as marijuana, has been cracked open for decades, most famously in the Netherlands.
New policy initiatives in several US states are jumping on the Dutch bandwagon, but in May, the Netherlands announced a marijuana policy shift.
According to the Amsterdam-based Netherlands Tourism and Convention Board, at least seven per cent of tourists who visit the city go exclusively for easy access to cannabis, which is served up in "coffee shops" offering long menus of high-inducing options.
The city of Juarez, on the border of El Paso, Texas, sees about 3,000 murders every year - no thanks to tight drug policies, says Gibler.
"Illegality has done nothing to stop [the violence], but has done the opposite - fuelling it by creating the profit margins associated with that much wealth," he told Al Jazeera
A world away in Connecticut, a US state riddled with Ivy League universities and a murder rate incomparable to Mexico's, marijuana decriminalisation is high on the state's priorities.
In the coming days, the state's governor is set to sign Senate Bill 1014 (SB1014), which would decriminalise small-scale marijuana possession, making it unpunishable to have one ounce (28g) or less of the drug, and punishable by up to $1000 for possession of between one and four ounces.
The US Supreme Court decided, on May 23, 2011, that California prisons were overcrowded to the point that they were a physical and mental health risk to those incarcerated.
According to the close 5-4 decision in Brown v Plata [PDF], a sentence resulting in a term in California's prison system is a violation of the US constitution's "cruel and unusual punishment" clause. According to Rebekah Evenson of the Prison Law Project, one of the two co-counsels to Plata, the case was about providing California's prison population "constitutionally adequate healthcare … so you're not essentially charging them with death".
The decision requires that California change the status of about 32,000 non-violent offenders, which would bring the population down to 137.5 per cent of design capacity.