Drug Decriminalization in Maryland Through an African Centered Research Paradigm- Analysis and Recommendations

confident that the electorate would be able to see drug dependent persons as people who
were ill, rather than as criminals, and would therefore react favourably to the new policy.”
(Ibid).
At a surface level, this is important for this project, as research projects often assume that creating
by rationally conveying the objective benefits of Portugal’s model, this will help the prospects for
decriminalization in America. These notions should be deemed questionable given the specific
circumstances that created a sense of solidarity in Portugal, i.e. a military dictatorship, do not exist
in America. Moreover, an analysis of whiteness should help further refine an understanding of
why drug addicts were deemed sympathetic, a sense of shared whiteness. Given the analysis of
Karam, Neatherland and Hassan, racialization of addiction, it seems that it is unlikely that
consensus around a genuinely compassionate approach to addiction is likely to flourish in
America, unless it fits Rail and Jette’s model of inculcating productive “biocitizenship”. With this
as a fame, the specifics of Portugal’s legal interventions around decriminalization can be analyzed
within their proper context.
Despite being framed as a “anti-criminalization” model, the Progugese model has
embedded into it numerous points of discretion where criminal legal system authority can assert
itself. For example, officers continue to have discretion to bring relatively minor drug possession
charges back into the preview of the criminal legal system. Domosławski notes that even drug
possession charges at or under the legal limit for deferment, law enforcement officers have the
discretion to determine whether the accused was actually intending to sell the drugs, raising the
charge for possession to possession with intent to distribute and thus mandating criminal legal
system involvement, writing:
“There was initially a disconnect between the thresholds laid down by statute and those
followed by the courts. However, the courts in general were grateful to be relieved of some
of their workload. Under the practice that now prevails, all parties view the threshold
quantities as indicative rather than binding. For example, it should be stressed that the
charts indicate what amount may be for personal use, but it is the task of the police to
determine what a person intended to do with the substances they possess. If a person has
an amount that may be considered for personal usage but he or she is caught selling it, this
remains a crime. (Domosławski, 2011).
While defenders of the model might not that the police typically use appropriate discretion, in the
American context the persistent racial inequities seen in the criminal justice system should make
the prospect of this being equally applied highly dubious. Despite the well established reality that
many individuals who sell drugs are selling to feed their own addiction, the Protuguese model does
not create accommodations for this, deeming intent to distribute, or even the suspicion intent to
distribute through the possession of baggies or scales, as an inherently criminal matter. Despite
how the deferral commissions are portrayed as a solution to overdose, the vast majority of
individuals referred to the commissions are young cannabis users, with 50% under the age of 29
and 73% being sent for cannabis or hashish use (ibid). While this is logical as drug use skews
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