Analysis of the Decriminalization in the Development of Thai Policy on Drug

Abstract

Decriminalization is technique that several countries have recently
implemented in order to alleviate their drug problems, and reduce the
consequences of such problems. In this current study, researchers examine
decriminalization policy in 14 countries including: Argentina, Australia,
Brazil, Canada, China, Ecuador, England, Malaysia, Mexico, the Netherlands,
Portugal, Taiwan, the United States, and Vietnam. It was found that, the
success of the drug decriminalization policy in Portugal was largely due
to the fact that the stigma of drug use was lessened, which helped increase
the number of users checking into rehabilitation. This research modeled
the effect of drug decriminalization policy on the change of inflow of
users into rehabilitation and inflow of new users using a Markov transition
matrix. Estimation results using aggregate data from Thailand suggests that
a successful decriminalization policy requires at least 181 users checking
into rehabilitation for every 100 new users