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As the United States reconsiders its stance on mass incarceration, misdemeanor decriminalization has emerged as an increasingly popular reform. Seen as a potential cure for crowded jails and an overburdened defense bar, many states are eliminating jail time for minor offenses such as marijuana possession and driving violations, replacing those crimes with so-called "nonjailable" or "fine-only" offenses. This form of reclassification is widely perceived as a way of saving millions of state dollars-nonjailable offenses do not trigger the right to counsel-while easing the punitive impact on defendants, and it has strong support from progressives and conservatives alike. But decriminalization has a little-known dark side. Unlike full legalization, decriminalization preserves many of the punitive features and collateral consequences of the criminal misdemeanor experience, even as it strips defendants of counsel and other procedural protections. It actually expands the reach of the criminal apparatus by making it easier-both logistically and normatively-to impose fines and supervision on an ever- widening population, a population that ironically often ends up incarcerated anyway when they cannot afford fines or comply with supervisory conditions. The turn to fine-only offenses and supervision, moreover, has distributive implications. It captures poor, underemployed, drug-dependent, and otherwise disadvantaged defendants for whom fines and supervision are especially burdensome, while permitting well-resourced offenders to exit the process quickly and relatively unscathed. Finally, as courts turn increasingly to fines and fees to fund their own operations, decriminalization threatens to become a kind of regressive tax, turning the poorest populations into funding fodder for the judiciary and other government budgets. In sum, while decriminalization appears to offer relief from the punitive legacy of overcriminalization and mass incarceration, upon closer inspection it turns out to be a highly conflicted regulatory ...

The history of alcohol in the United States is a perfect illustration; violence in the alcohol trade was absent both before and after Prohibition, and accidental overdoses soared during Prohibition.

Canada and the United States have recently evaluated the decriminalization of drugs as multiple provinces and states put motions forward to consider drug decriminalization legislation. The influence of factors such as demographics, substance use, perceived substance use risk, and personality have not been widely studied in predicting attitudes toward drug decriminalization. A total of 504 participants were drawn from university ( n = 269, 53.37%) and community samples ( n = 235, 46.63%) through online social media groups and posts (i.e., Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc). Analyses indicated that male gender, single or non-married relationship status, living outside of Atlantic Canada, higher problematic alcohol use scores, lower Extraversion, higher Open-mindedness, and lower perceived risk of using substances emerged as significant predictors of support for drug decriminalization. These findings have important implications as public attitudes toward a substance influence drug policy.

Drawing on Soviet criminal legislation (1960-1990), the Report on Decriminalization of the Council of Europe (1980), materials from the Soviet-English Symposium (1986), & the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), three issues are researched: (1) reasons for decriminalization of particular acts: (2) methods of legislative technique to achieve decriminalization; & (3) reasons for criminalization of a respective act. Specific arguments for decriminalization & methods for achieving it are detailed. Also discussed are processes of criminalization that are specific to a certain period of state development; regarding Soviet criminal legislation, the processes cited include perestroika (restructuring), renewal of society, & a return to humanist & universal human values. Modified AA

RésuméLa politique américaine sur les drogues continue de créer des tensions entre les Etats-Unis et d'autres pays. À partir du rapport du mois d'août 2001 de la Commission jamaïcaine, cet article suit la procédure de certification pour mettre en lumière certaines tensions inhérentes à la posture du gouvernement fédéral américain contre la légalisation de la marijuana. Il débat de la probabilité que le gouvernement fédéral américain change le paysage légal concernant la marijuana. En conclusion, l'article recommande comme solutions éventuelles au conflit entre les Etats-Unis et ses voisins régionaux de régionaliser le contrôle des drogues et de remplacer la procédure de certification par le Mécanisme d'évaluation multilatérale (MEM). La question demeure de trouver un entrepreneur politique prêt à se battre pour un changement de l'environnement politique.

AbstractWhy are sex worker rights groups advocating for decriminalizing sex work, but not for legalizing it? In this paper, I will explain why efforts to decriminalize sex work deserve the same support as efforts to decriminalize abortion, marijuana, or polygamy. Many human rights advocates now recognize that decriminalizing sexual transactions which take place among consenting adults in private, including informally contracting for sexual services, is necessary for protecting our fundamental human and civil rights. Yet decriminalizing individual acts of prostitution opens the door to various kinds of organized and public market activities, and there is little consensus among progressive reformers about how wide this door should be pushed opened. A consensus has been forming, nevertheless, among sex worker rights organizations. These groups generally hold that regulatory restrictions specific to sex work ("legalization"), which limit where and how contracting for sexual services can take place, leads to practices that are punitive toward sex workers in ways similar to criminalization. In this paper, I will consider the arguments for decriminalization and against legalization, and argue that accepting levels of governmental oversight above the norm may be a necessary compromise in order to change policies regarding a controversial activity.

This article explores the activities of George Soros and his charitable organization, Open Society Foundations (OSF), in advocating for the full decriminalization of the sex trade industry. Research finds that OSF spends only a small amount of money on grass roots "sex worker" groups around the world advocating for full decriminalization, but the foundation awards larger amounts of funds to large human rights groups whose reports and policies have a wider reach. OSF's rationale for full decriminalization fails to consider violence and coercion in the sex trade industry, misreads research, and does not include research from venues where full decriminalization of prostitution has occurred. Thus OSF and its grantees have created a partial view on prostitution that they advocate to the public. Those concerned with trafficking for sexual exploitation, violence, coercion, and abuse in prostitution should be cognizant of these strategies used by decriminalization advocates funded by OSF and be prepared to point out the unsupported assumptions and meet OSF's allegations with proven facts.

In a discussion of possible solutions to the drug problem in the US, the view that increased prosecution & incarceration would serve to deter abusers is discussed, then shown to be ineffective & too expensive to implement. Decriminalization & legalization are then discussed, concluding that decriminalization would be a positive step in reducing the irrationality & inhumanity of the war on drugs; legalization, however, would not decrease crime, & would probably result in an increase of drug users. E. Mortenson

Opioid overdose mortality rates in Western states

The UN should call for total legalization, the only approach that will fully resolve the harms identified in its report.