Minimum Drug Dose, Maximum Controversy

John and Ariana sniff glue, a legal drug, on a sidewalk in central Bogota. 

The government is rewriting the National Drug Statute and considering bringing back the old 'minimum dosage,' which permitted the carrying of small amounts of drugs for personal use.

The old minimum dosage right was ended in 2010 by Pres. Alvaro Uribe, a strong advocate of prohibitionism who argued that drug dealers hid behind the minimum dose law by carrying only that amount on their persons. The law permitted possession and consumption, but not buying and selling.

A few of the countless studies about
illegal drugs and Colombia.

Uribe's succesor, Pres. Juan Manuel Santos, has taken a very different tack, pointing out that the War on Drugs has severely injured Colombia and other countries and arguing for consideration of decriminalization and even straight-out legalization.

The proposed new National Drug Statute would permit possession of sharply reduced quantities of illegal drugs: for example, the old law permitted the carrying of 20 grams of marijuana, and the new proposed law only 5 grams. It may also include synthetic drugs.

As a first step toward treating drug addiction as what it is - a disease, rather than a crime, the new statute would be a step forward. But, until Colombia and other countries take the much more risky step of legalizing commerce in now-banned drugs they'll do little to reduce the crime and violence caused by the illegal drug economy.

Drunks recovering from a binge on a Bogotá sidewalk. 

That's why it may be more than coincidence that Colombia and other nations intend to advocate reconsidering prohibitionist policies at the Summit of the Americas, to be held in Cartagena in mid-April. Central American governments, many of which have been wracked by drug-fueled crime, plan to meet in late March to discuss a proposal to make at the summit.

U.S. officials have said they'll listen to alternative viewpoints - but that they're sure that prohibitionism is the best policy (or the least-worse one, anyway). One U.S. official argued that Latin American nations need to strengthen their police forces, legal systems and other public institutions, which often are very corrupt. But this is a Catch-22, since the drug trade is one of the biggest corrupters of these institutions. And, the fact that huge quantities of drugs are imported into the U.S. every year and distributed all across its territory demonstrates that even relatively strong institutions aren't enough.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Un-Decision On the Minimum Drug Dosage

A minimum dose?

Colombia's Constitutional Court has decided to not decide on the legality of carrying a 'minimum dosage' of drugs.  It ruled the other day that a lawsuit aiming to legalize possession of small amounts of drugs was incorrectly written, and must be rewritten and resubmitted.

Carrying a 'minimum dosage' of drugs was legalized in 1994 by the Supreme Court, which ruled that personal drug use was part of the "free development of the personality" guaranteed by Colombia's 1991 Constitution. But opponents of the minimum dose, led by then-Pres. Alvaro Uribe, argued that it promoted drug use and made it hard to arrest drug dealers, who kept only the minimum dose amount on their persons. In Dec. 2009, Congress prohibited the minimum dose, altho it didn't specify punishments for violators and decreed only medical attention for addicts.

The law had depenalized the possession of 20 grams of marijuana or 2 grams of bazuco - a cheap form of crack cocaine - among other drugs.

As a result, today it's common to see police patting down and taking away young men for carrying a bit of pot. But how illegal drug consumption has changed is unclear - I can't find any up-to-date statistics on trends in Colombian drug consumption. According to this 2010 story, Colombian young people consume drugs at a higher rate than the youths neighboring nations. For example, the survey also found that 2.5% of Colombian university students acknowledged using cocaine, compared to a half percent or less in the other countries.  But this applies to both illegal drugs and to alcohol and could reflect economic and cultural differences: Bolivia and Ecuador are substantially poorer than Colombia and those two nations and Peru are much more indigenous. And some of the numbers look doubtful to me: can it really be true that only 11.5% of Colombian university students had used marijuana during the past year - but 90% had consumed alcohol? Or could it be that, because pot was then illegal, many students feared admitting using it?

A 'free development of the personality' strikes me as a rotten way to justify the use of hard drugs such as cocaine and crack. Some people can handle them, but the brilliant singer Amy Winehouse freely developed her personality to death at age 27, and every day I see the wreckage of alcohol and drug addiction wandering Bogotá's streets. Legalizing and regulating drugs is the least-bad policy not because drugs are good, but because users tend to obtain them anyway. And prohibition just turns people with problems, like Winehouse, into criminals. If Winehouse's vices were legal ones, perhaps she would have been more open about her problems and obtained help sooner - perhaps. We just don't know.

If prohibitionism places some barriers against drug consumption, they aren't many, and studies have shown that treatment and education are much more cost effective and humane ways to discourage use. And imprisoning people for using drugs can ruin lots of lives and cost society lots of money, whereas its effect on dissuading users is questionable. However, the legal status of the minimum dosage is really marginal to the broader  impacts of prohibition, which drives the drug trade's huge profits into the coffers of outlaw organizations, such as Colombia's guerrillas, paramilitaries and drug cartels.

Leaders ought to try not only depenalizing the minimum dosage, but legalizing drugs generally, to take them out of the hands of criminals.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours