#LegalizeIt on the Global Stage
The UN Decides to “Puff, Puff, Pass” on Decriminalization
Over the years, social movements have taken many forms, and have held a distinct place in the history of the world. For movements such as the Women’s Rights Movement and the Black Rights Movement, the reforms that they were fighting for in the classification of what should be considered the boundaries of the government have now completely revolutionized the look of the world from what it was mere decades ago. As technology has advanced, the form and space in which social movements grow and operate has had to change, but the ideals have stayed the same; those sweeping movements mentioned above still have online presences today, in the form of the #BlackLivesMatter and #FreetheNipple movements. In the wake of this change of format, a new, and slightly less traditionally ‘inspiring’ movement has received a lot of public attention in the last few years: the legalization of marijuana, denoted by the hashtag #legalizeit. Movements aiming to legalize marijuana in its many forms, for both medical and recreational usage, have been around for years, but the shift to social platforms like Twitter has brought a new kind of awareness and notoriety to it. The double-edged sword of movements held in the space of social media is their own counter-productivity: while serious activists use the opportunity that these platforms provide to spread the message of the movement and make a difference, others use it to cartoonize that effort. This makes it easy for the movement to be downgraded to its most ridiculous common denominator, and dismissed regardless of its benefits.
This is harmful in the case of the United States, where the movement is at its strongest, because that dismissal means that the medical benefits of the plant will not be able to be researched and utilized to their full capacity, and citizens of certain states face spending years in prison for mere possession of marijuana. On a global scale, however, the prevalence of the Legalize It movement has served as both a call for a conversation to be had, not only about the legalization of marijuana but all drugs, and also as a distraction from a bigger issue. This was highlighted in recent news by the UN hosting their first general assembly special session on drugs in almost two years. The event is termed UNgass 2016, and its mission is to provide an opportunity for all nations to convene and create a more cohesive solution to the major drug problems in Mexico, Guatemala, and Colombia, and craft a better international drug policy to make up for the failings of the current “war on drugs”.
The countries at the center of this session were also the ones who had called for the meeting to begin with, in a desperate attempt to find a more realistic and tolerant approach to the major drug problem that these countries are facing. In Mexico alone, the number of narco-trafficking murders had gotten so high that, between 2010 and 2016, the average life expectancy for men in the country fell by half a year. When countries are so thoroughly ruled by the violence of their drug cartels, it further emphasizes the need for a different approach and a different solution. Sibylla Brodzinsky expanded on the plans for a solution in her article “After 30 Years on the Frontline, Colombia Looks Beyond the Failed War on Drugs”, saying:
“At the session the Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, will propose a more ‘human solution’ to the drugs problem that aims to fight the root causes of the problem in all its stages rather than just focusing on enforcement and prohibitionist policies.”
Though the intentions going into this conversation were intelligent and well-meant, the discussion was a difficult one to have when so many of the participants stood on opposite ends of the spectrum. Countries such as Portugal, Uruguay, Switzerland, and Canada, who all have decriminalized drugs to some degree, or are in the process of doing so, are fighting for a more progressive approach to the problem, with the intention of altering the decision made by the UN in 1998 to aim for a “drug-free world” to be more appropriate to the modern reality. Russian delegates, on the other hand, strongly favored a solution that would be more oriented toward “humankind”, while still keeping with the main ideas of the 1998 decision. In her article which covered the session, Jessica Glenza said that, “…the rift between countries interested in drug policy reform and those with repressive drug control regimes was evident.”
Out of these differing stances, the plan that has been adopted focuses on reform and cooperation between nations but still maintains the old policies that criminalize non-medical or scientific drug use. It has all the markings of a placeholder for actual progress, for all that the summit has been heralded as a possible end to the “war on drugs” — even the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) acknowledged that something more needed to be done, saying:
“Global drug control efforts have had a dramatic unintended consequence: a criminal black market of staggering proportions. Organised crime is a threat to security. Criminal organisations have the power to destabilise society and governments. The illicit drug business is worth billions of dollars a year, part of which is used to corrupt government officials and to poison economies.”
With this in mind and many medical experts calling for a complete decriminalization of drugs and a rethinking of current policies, the recent ruling made by the UN falls flat. The decision agreed upon by the United Nations in 1998 to fight for a totally drug-free world might have all of the beauty and sparkle of a perfect ideal, but in reality, a more complete overhaul of the system might be what is actually needed. Such perfect ideals don’t tend to do well when faced with the real world, and a refusal to modernize them to keep up with the actual problem could turn out to be a mistake. After all, in the words of William Shakespeare:
“For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.”
And so, social movements like the Legalize It movement may not have the standard level of respectability necessary for a stereotypical call to action, championed as they are by equal amounts of humor and content, but they are already doing their part to introduce the topic into legislature in the United States and other countries, and into global discourse as a stepping stone to worldwide decriminalization of drugs, even if the world isn’t ready for it yet. While changes will likely need to be made within the movement in order for it to take on both traditional government anti-drug policy and big bad villains like drug cartels that profit off of such systems’ unwillingness to change, it is off to a decent start. In the end, if there is a transformation of communication in society, there is a transformation of the mind — and #legalizeit is already halfway there.
