1. .

2. Abstract

3. Introduction

4. Methods

5. Results
The criminalization of the use of drugs only worsens the situation of the addict,
has a high economical cost for society and it haven’t accomplish its purposes.
The actual approach to dealing with the consumption of illegal drugs not only
haven’t shown that it have fail to avoid the use of the drugs but also have
worsen the already bad situations of many addicts by alienating them from the
existing resources for treatment of their disease and from society itself. The
amount of money that government is spending on law enforcement, the legal
system and medical treatment is high and growing, and not necessarily cost
effective. Today Puerto Rico is more affected with all the difficulties that the
illegal drug business brings that what it were on 1971 when President Nixon
declared the war on drugs, this only shows its ineffectiveness and how important
is for Puerto Ricans to open their minds to different ideologies of how to deal
with this problem. For this and many other reasons Puerto Rico needs to look for
an alternative to drug criminalization, may the courageous minded take the first
step forward.

6. The official posture of the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the
United States about drug addiction is that “Drug Addiction is a chronic
disease like diabetes type II, were factors as biological, environmental
and life style contributes.”(C.Albizu, G.Negrón, A.González, S. Santiago.
Revista jurídica UPR). Drug addiction is seems by the world as a
sickness but is being treated as a criminal matter instead of a health
problem. They way that governments are trying to solve this problem
is by imprisoning law offenders to exclude them from society, in this
way freeing the rest of society from this allegedly criminals, but often
drug addicts are none violent, with no criminal backgrounds who
happened to get caught while using the drug or having it on them
while being searched by the police. The problem with this scenario is
that while they might get treatment at the prison, the prison itself
might lead them to other crimes, mixing none violent offenders with
violent ones, puts pressure on the none violent offenders to be more
aggressive to survive while behind bars and once they get out of prison
society might have change a none violent drug addict by a violent
criminal. The criminalization of drugs is proven to be not very effective
on healing drug addicts.

7. The recommended consolidated budget for the year 2011-
2012 for the Department of Correction and Rehabilitation
(Departamento de Corrección y Rehabilitación) and attached
agencies is of $520,560,000.00. The estimate cost for each
prisoner per year in Puerto Rico is about $40,000 the first year
and about $28,000 every other year (Gisela Negrón,
Exportación de reos, El Nuevo Día, 2012). This means that
Puerto Rico is spending more than half a billion dollars a year
dealing with the penitentiary system only, not counting the
budget for the Police Department and the judicial system, all
of them part of the structure, and still the crime rates related
to drugs trafficking and usage keeps growing each year. In
contrast the rest of the population perceives their personal
security decreasing, and the drug trafficking business is left
with not many methods to solve their problems but the use of
violence.

8. The Institute of Forensic Sciences of Ponce in their publication
“Jóvenes y armas de fuego”, the first chart that it shows is about the
distribution of homicides by genre per year since the year 2000, here
they have a total of 735 (661 male and 74 female) for the year 2000,
climbing up to 845 homicides (777 males and 68 females) for the year
2004 a slowing down to 779 killings in 2008 (729 male and 50 female)
and a sudden uphill climb of 1182 murders (1099 male and 82 females)
for the year 2011. Not all this killings can be related to drug use or
trafficking but is well accepted by experts that the drug criminalization
is directly or indirectly connected with a majority of the cases due to
gang wars or the social deterioration that the business of selling drugs
brings to communities.
There’s no obvious solution to the problem of drug trafficking and
consumptions but there’s two mayor options being discussed by the
world community, Decriminalization or Legalization of drug use and/or
trafficking. The most problematic part of this discussion is that just one
country in the world has experimented with the decriminalization and
none have legalized the use and trafficking of drugs.

9. Portugal wish decriminalized the use and possession for personal use
in 2001, has had a mixed bag of results but primordially positive, like a
decline in heroine related disease as HIV/AIDS and hepatitis B and C
infections and an increase in people seeking treatment “from 6,040 in
1999 to 14,877 in 2003, an increase of 147%” (G.Greenwald, 2009) and
as Greenwald also writes, “In fact, for those two critical groups of
youth (13–15 years and 16–18 years), prevalence rates have declined
for virtually every substance since decriminalization”. In the other hand
the Legalization of drugs hasn’t been tested and no country is near
approving it. This option is attractive to many because is believed that
it might get similar results as the decriminalization would but in
addition it might end the drug trafficking business and all the violence
that comes with it, also “Legalization would reduce state and federal
deficits by eliminating expenditure on prohibition enforcement --
arrests, prosecutions, and incarceration -- and by allowing
governments to collect tax revenue on legalized sales,” (J. Miron, K.
Waldock, 2010). Of course this hasn’t been proven yet and neither
Puerto Rico, the U.S. or any other country is getting near to try it,
being the U.S. the principal opponent to the Idea.

10. Conclusion.
All in all, Puerto Rico and the world are in front of a very complex
choice, and there’s no decision that will satisfy every senate seat,
every vote or every citizen. The future is uncertain sometimes
unpredictable, and it looks dark and scary for many in the world
especially does that have surfer the pain of the violence that the drug
business and abuse carries with it, but also there’s two sides on every
coin and many people has surfer in their life the collateral damage that
the criminalization of drugs brings within. If something is for certain is
that the status quo is not the consensus the experts and probably
within the community. There’s a real need for the world to decide for a
new strategy to deal with the drug business problem, it might be
possible that the real solution is not the decriminalization or the
legalization of drugs but those are the two options that the world has
right now in front of it. There will always be space for new ideas and
open ears to listen to them but what is always hard to find are the
brave leaders that take the decisions, the actions and the
responsibilities that comes with them and that with courageous hearts
take the first step towards the future.