Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

To the Editor:

Re “Latin America Weighs Less Punitive Path to Curb Drug Use” (news article, Aug. 27):

In recent weeks Mexico and Argentina made news by putting into effect a law and making a major Supreme Court ruling calling for low-level drug offenders to receive treatment instead of jail.

Mexico’s new law to decriminalize personal possession of small amounts of illicit drugs and the ruling in Argentina are consistent with the trend in Western Europe, Canada and other parts of Latin America to stop treating drug use and possession as a criminal problem.

The United States continues its backward approach and arrested 775,137 in 2007 for marijuana possession alone.

Locking up people for a substance abuse problem is inhumane and counterproductive. It is time for the United States to stop ruining so many lives and wasting so much money and to follow the example of our allies abroad.

Tony Newman
Director, Media Relations
Drug Policy Alliance
New York, Aug. 28, 2009

Note from KBJ: That other countries are doing X is no reason for us to do X. For consider: Either there is good reason to do X or there is not good reason to do X. If there is good reason to do X, then it's for that reason, and not the fact that other countries are doing X, that we should do X. If there is not good reason to do X, then obviously we should not be doing X, even if other countries are doing X.