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R MacCoun

Publications and source records attributed to R MacCoun.

4 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

Evaluating alternative cannabis regimes.

BACKGROUND: Cannabis policy continues to be controversial in North America, Europe and Australia. AIMS: To inform this debate, we examine alternative legal regimes for controlling cannabis availability and use. METHOD: We review evidence on the effects of cannabis depenalisation in the USA, Australia and The Netherlands. We update and extend our previous (MacCoun & Reuter, 1997) empirical comparison of cannabis prevalence statistics in the USA, The Netherlands and other European nations. RESULTS: The available evidence indicates that depenalisation of the possession of small quantities of cannabis does not increase cannabis prevalence. The Dutch experience suggests that commercial promotion and sales may significantly increase cannabis prevalence. CONCLUSIONS: Alternatives to an aggressively enforced cannabis prohibition are feasible and merit serious consideration. A model of depenalised possession and personal cultivation has many of the advantages of outright legalisation with few of its risks.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1997

Interpreting Dutch cannabis policy: reasoning by analogy in the legalization debate.

The Dutch depenalization and subsequent de facto legalization of cannabis since 1976 is used here to highlight the strengths and limitations of reasoning by analogy as a guide for projecting the effects of relaxing drug prohibitions. While the Dutch case and other analogies have flaws, they appear to converge in suggesting that reductions in criminal penalties have limited effects on drug use-at least for marijuana-but that commercial access is associated with growth in the drug-using population.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1996

Assessing alternative drug control regimes.

The debate over alternative regimes for currently illicit psychoactive substances focuses on polar alternatives: harsh prohibition and sweeping legalization. This study presents an array of alternatives that lies between these extremes. The current debate lacks an explicit and inclusive framework for making comparative judgments. In this study, we sketch out such a framework, as a reminder of possible policy levers and their costs and benefits that might otherwise be neglected or go unrecognized. The framework identifies a range of pharmacological and economic characteristics of substances, potential harms and their bearers, and the sources of those harms, including drug use, trafficking, law enforcement, and illegal status per se. The framework highlights the difficulty of making objective, rigorous comparisons among regimes, but we believe that it can serve a useful heuristic role in promoting more constructive debate and identifying fruitful questions for research.

Drug and Narcotic Control↗