by Rick Steves
The casual American observer who sees more junkies on the streets of Europe than in the US may conclude they have a bigger drug problem because of their more lenient drug policies. In fact, according to the 2013 UN World Drug Report, the percentage of Western Europeans who use illicit drugs is about half that of Americans. The difference is that theirs are out and about while working with these centers and trying to get their lives back on track. Ours are more often either dead or in jail. Through its busy maintenance centers, Switzerland has provided literally millions of heroin fixes, and they’ve not had a single overdose death. Overall the US loses roughly 18,000 people a year to hard drug overdoses, while Europe (with a much larger population) loses half that—roughly 9,000.
Like my European friends, I believe we can adopt a pragmatic policy toward both marijuana and hard drugs, with a focus on harm reduction and public health, rather than tough-talking but counterproductive criminalization. It’s time to have an honest discussion about our drug laws and their effectiveness. When it comes to drug policy, you can be soft, hard… or smart.
The Portuguese Approach to All Drugs
What if all drugs were legal? One European country has attempted it, with results that may surprise you.
Portugal lived under a repressive right-wing dictator, Antonio Salazar, for a generation. As societies often do after being kept down and then winning their freedom, when the Portuguese rid themselves of their dictator, many went overboard on their newfound freedoms. One consequence: a spike in people addicted to hard drugs.
In the 1980s and 1990s, little Portugal had about 100,000 hard drug addicts. A group of experts came together to find a solution to this problem. With the goal of establishing a legal framework for harm reduction, they enacted “Law 30,” which effectively decriminalized the consumption of all drugs. As of 2001, severe criminal penalties for possessing small amounts of any drug were replaced with slap-on-the-wrist punishments.
After a decade, the new conservative government (which had, by then, replaced the more progressive government that established Law 30) assessed the law they once opposed, and deemed it to be smart and effective. The number of people who reported that they had tried various drugs increased a little (possibly because it is more comfortable to admit drug use when it’s legal), but there was no significant change in routine use rates from the time when drugs were illegal. While use rates increased shortly after the new law went into effect, it dropped back down a few years later; similar use increases in Italy and Spain during this same time period suggest that the brief spike was unrelated to the new law. And drug use among adolescents actually declined.
Portugal now has half as many addicts, fewer people with HIV, and more people in treatment. The police, now freed up to focus on violent crime, appreciate the measure. The burden on Portugal’s prisons and criminal system has lessened. And the relationship between the Portuguese government and its drug-using population went from adversarial to advocate. Ten years later, even former opponents of the law agreed that its benefits far outweigh its harms. Decriminalized drugs will continue to be Portuguese law of the land.
Every society needs to find its own solutions, and not every solution is a good fit for every society. But it is good to learn from other societies who are thinking out of the box to deal with problems that also plague our society. And Portugal’s Law 30 certainly has drug policy experts paying attention.
Paths—and Barriers—to Legalization
With the thought-provoking success stories in the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Portugal, why don’t more countries take a chance on experimenting with their drug laws? Simply put, they’re afraid of US retribution. The United States, by way of the United Nations, has rigged the system to prevent change: If a country legalizes, it risks being “decertified” by the UN. This means it’s disqualified from receiving foreign aid, and the US Congress is required to vote against them in trade policies—effectively sparking an expensive trade war. Even the United States’ own drug czar is required by our government to vote to keep drugs illegal.
Europe has come up with clever ways around this. That’s why you hear about “decriminalization” rather than “legalization.” It’s all about exploiting loopholes: Many European countries have anti-marijuana laws on the books, but choose not to enforce them. Even in the Netherlands, marijuana is still technically “illegal”; they’ve just legislated themselves around those laws (permitting the “gray area” of the law). Europe wants science over ideology.
Wealthy countries who want to legalize can tinker around this way because if they go too far, they can absorb the potential cost of a trade war with the USA. But poor countries, scraping to get by, simply can’t afford the risk of trade sanctions and must carefully toe the line. In 2012, several Latin American countries (including Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Colombia) began talking about the wisdom of taking the crime out of the drug equation to help alleviate some of the violence wracking their societies. The White House sent emissaries with a strong message to cool off. Latin American leaders find themselves between a rock and a hard place when it comes to taking the violence and money out of their local drug wars. Many observers note that in many ways, current drug laws are enriching organized crime throughout the world.
Perhaps this might change if some bold American states took the initiative to legalize marijuana and test the system. Oh, wait…that already happened.
Washington State Legalizes Pot
While decriminalization efforts in various European countries have tested the waters, legalization on US soil would be a game-changer worldwide. Like our international neighbors, American drug policy reformers had used loopholes to create provisions for medical marijuana in more than a dozen states. For example, in 2003, my hometown of Seattle voted to make enforcement of laws against pot smoking the lowest priority for its police force.
After years of studying this topic, I decided to let my travels inform my actions and bring a European perspective to the drug policy reform movement in the USA. In 2012, I co-sponsored Washington State Initiative 502 (or “I-502” for short), a ballot measure to legalize, regulate, and tax the responsible and recreational use of marijuana among adults. I-502 would allow adults to buy up to one ounce of marijuana from state-licensed stores (much like the liquor store model).
In this scene under the Washington Capitol dome (from Evergreen: The Road to Legalization, a documentary about the effort to pass I-502; www.evergreendocumentary.com), my attempt to explain the wisdom of legalizing marijuana meets with vocal resistance not from the anti-pot lobby… but from the pro-pot crowd.
Legislating legal marijuana in the United States is a prickly proposition. The framers of I-502 learned from mistakes made by previous failed attempts at legalization (such as California’s Prop 19 in 2010). To be passed by Washington voters, the initiative had to thread the needle: legalizing marijuana, but with regulations rigid enough to allay the fears of more conservative voters. Key safeguards of I-502 included ensuring that marijuana remained illegal for those under 21; enforcing strict DUI provisions; assuring employers they could maintain any standards they wanted in their workplace; and levying taxes on the legal sale of marijuana.
In our state, before I-502, marijuana was the second biggest cash crop—rivaling apples. And it was all a black market, empowering organized crime. We wanted to redirect those proceeds to legitimate business…with a cut for the state. Of the $500 million in annual revenue we estimated would flow into our state’s coffers, a certain percentage was earmarked for health care and drug abuse prevention work, including public education, counseling for marijuana abusers, and an ongoing evaluation of the new law.
Surprisingly, I-502 seemed to rankle some marijuana advocates more than it did conservatives. The pro-pot crowd bristled about its DUI provisions (fearing that enforcement against “driving while stoned” would increase). They fretted that the law did not include a home-grow provision; marijuana could be cultivated legally on
ly by licensed producers. And because consumption in public would remain illegal, it would kill the chance of convivial, Amsterdam coffeehouse-type hangouts.
This opposition didn’t surprise us. Rather than “pro-pot,” my partners and I were anti-prohibition. We knew that over time, the legislature can easily fine-tune parts of the law that were either too strict or too loose. For us, the big goal was simply to be the first political entity to actually legalize marijuana, recognizing its adult recreational use as a civil liberty. In other words, we wanted to solve the puzzle of how to break the black market and regulate the production and wholesale of marijuana.
In October of 2012, I went on a fascinating road trip through Washington State—speaking at 10 stops in 7 days in support of I-502. I shared an inspirational message at a Unitarian church in Spokane, hiked across a field with a farmer to see his huge “Hemp for Washington” sign overlooking the freeway outside of Yakima, sipped wine in a trendy Walla Walla winery with a pragmatic Republican legislator open to finding an alternative to our country’s tired war on pot, and shared the stage with a Baptist minister whose African American community was taking the brunt of a war on drugs he considered racist.
Working diligently on our laptops and cellphones as we drove up the Columbia River Gorge, across the Palouse, through Spokane, and over Blewett Pass—and determinedly lobbying legislators, mayors, and city council members each lunch and evening—it occurred to us as kind of funny how different we were from many of the people whose civil liberties we were defending.
I got pretty good at framing legal pot in conservative terms, and it seemed to resonate with lots of people. (You can watch my stump speech by searching for “Rick Steves Spokane” on YouTube.) It wasn’t just liberal newspapers that endorsed I-502. Thoughtful and open-minded people of all political stripes saw the wisdom of taking crime out of the equation. The only vigorous opposition we encountered was at the Washington State Capitol—from a noisy pro-marijuana gang who felt our law didn’t go far enough. I suspect these were what I like to call “Pot Prohibition Profiteers”—people who profited from the fact that marijuana was illegal, and who saw legalization as a threat to their bottom line.
When the results came in on election night, the people of both Washington and Colorado voted to legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana. And it was a decisive win. In fact, more people in both states voted for marijuana than voted to re-elect President Obama.
It soon became clear that the stakes of Washington’s and Colorado’s legalization were global. While the US typically lags behind most of Europe on progressive issues, I-502 thrust Washington State ahead of even the most progressive European countries. Soon after the historic vote, a famously liberal European country (Denmark) imported Seattle know-how (City Attorney Pete Holmes) for help in restructuring its drug laws. And shortly thereafter, Uruguay became the first country on earth to risk the wrath of the US trade policy and legalize marijuana.
Domestically, civic and political leaders nationwide could now openly discuss this issue. Two states legalized… and the sky didn’t fall. We can do it, too!
But, as with other legalization efforts, we found ourselves in a legal “gray area.” Regardless of the will of two states’ voters, federal law still said marijuana was illegal. Drug policy reformers waited tensely to hear whether the Department of Justice would clamp down. We breathed a sigh of relief when President Obama decided not to stand in the way of implementation, reasoning, “We’ve got bigger fish to fry.” The president seemed to recognize that our country was designed for states to be the incubators of change.
The next chapter of drug policy reform—in Washington State, in the United States, and abroad—is yet to be written. And the jury’s still out on the long-term effects of legalization in my own backyard. But I find it heartening that Washington State finally stood up to Washington, DC, and voted to take the crime out of marijuana: treating its abuse as a health and education challenge; ending a massive black market that has enriched and emboldened gangs and organized crime; and finally accepting its use by mature and responsible adults as a civil liberty. For me, my ability to bring a European perspective to drug policy reform in the US has been a good example of making travel a political act. And it’s been fun, too.
Chapter 8
Mission: Understand Iran
The Pilot Said, “We’re Taking this Plane to Tehran”… and Nobody Was Alarmed
Tehran: Iran’s Mile-High Metropolis
Freedom to Film, or to Connect with Locals
Bombast and the “Axis of Evil”
Death to…Whatever!
No Credit Cards, Alcohol…or Urinals
Imagine Every Woman’s a Nun
Iran’s “Revolution of Values”: Living in a Theocracy
Friday: Let Us Pray
Persepolis: Palace of Persia’s King of Kings
Martyrs’ Cemetery: Countless Deaths for God and Country
Back to Europe: Tight Pants, Necklines, Booze… and Freedom
Reflecting on My Motives—and the Real Souvenir I Carried Home
In early 2008, a friend from the Washington State chapter of the United Nations Association called me and asked what I could do to help them build understanding between Iran and the US, and defuse the tension that could lead to war. I answered, “The only thing of any consequence I could do would be to produce a TV show on Iran.” Over the next few months, I wrote a proposal for a public television show—no politics, just travel. The title was Iran: Yesterday and Today.
When this project began, like most Americans, I knew next to nothing about Iran. It was a journey of discovery…all caught on film. My hope was to enjoy a rich and fascinating culture, to get to know a nation that’s a leader in its corner of the world (and has been for 2,500 years), and to better understand the 70 million people who call Iran home.
I’m convinced that people-to-people travel experiences can be a powerful force for peace. Americans traveling to the Soviet Union helped us get through the Cold War without things turning hot. Travel to Vietnam has helped heal wounds left in the aftermath of that war. And, as the USA and Iran continue their dangerous flirtation with an avoidable war, travel there can help build understanding between our nations.
Knowing that many Americans won’t likely actually travel to Iran, my TV crew wanted to bring the travel experience home to America. Rather than focus on Iran’s well-documented offenses—their alleged funding of terrorists, threats to Israel, and nuclear ambitions—I simply wanted to better understand Iran’s people and culture in the hopes that we can sort out our differences peacefully and more smartly. Contrary to the common practice of a nation dehumanizing the enemy as a prelude to war, I believe if you’re going to bomb a place, you should know it first. It should hurt when you kill someone. My Iran mission turned out to be not only an enjoyable travel experience, but one of the most gratifying projects I’ve ever taken on. In addition to addressing some of the deep rifts between our two societies, this chapter also offers a behind-the-scenes peek at traveling and filming in this mysterious country.
The Pilot Said, “We’re Taking this Plane to Tehran”… and Nobody Was Alarmed
Flying from Istanbul’s Atatürk Airport to Tehran’s Khomeini Airport, I thought about other airports my fellow passengers likely used—Reagan and De Gaulle. The airports are named after four very different 20th-century leaders, but each one left an indelible mark on his nation.
The plane was filled with well-off Iranian people. Their features were different from mine, but they dressed and acted just like me. As so often happens when I travel, I was struck by how people—regardless of the shapes of their noses—are so similar the world over. As we all settled into the wide-body jet, I wished the big decision-makers of our world weren’t shielded from an opportunity to share an economy cabin with people like this.
Suddenly it occurs to our producer, Simon, that the plane is filled with Iranians…and everyone has been given a metal knife.
I
had made a similar Istanbul-to-Tehran trip 30 years before. Last time it took three days on a bus, and the Shah was on his last legs. Wandering through Iranian towns in 1978, I remember riot squads in the streets and the Shah’s portrait seeming to hang tenuously in market stalls. Seeing dispirited peasants leaning against high-rise banks, I also recall being struck by the harsh gap between rich and poor in Tehran. I was 23 years old and confronted with realities that my friends who stayed home were oblivious to. I believe that was the first time in my life I was angered by economic injustice.
My Istanbul-Tehran trip was quicker this time—three hours rather than three days. And every main square and street that had been named “Shah” back then was now named “Khomeini.” On my 1978 visit, all denominations of paper money had one face on them. In 2008, they still did…but the face was different.
As the pilot began our descent, rich and elegant Persian women put on their scarves as routinely as buckling their seatbelts. With all that hair suddenly covered, I noticed how striking long hair can be—how it really does grab a man’s attention. Looking out the window into the night, the lights of Tehran’s millions of inhabitants seemed to stretch forever. Greater Tehran has more people than all of Greece (where I had woken up that morning).
I thought of the unlikely path that had led me to this point. The permissions had been so slow in coming that the project only became a certainty about a week before the shoot. Because the US does not maintain a diplomatic relationship with Iran, the only way we could communicate was indirectly, via the Iranian Interest Section at the Pakistani Embassy. It was strange to go into a relaxed, almost no-security Iranian Embassy in Athens…and walk out with visas.