José Miguel Cruz

La victimización por violencia urbana: niveles y factores asociados en ciudades de América Latina y España

En este articulo se comparan los niveles de victimizacion por diversas causas y se identifican los factores asociados con ella en ocho ciudades de America Latina y Espana. Con este proposito se utilizaron los datos del estudio multicentrico ACTIVA, que se realizo en 1996 bajo la coordinacion de la Organizacion Panamericana de la Salud. La muestra estudiada estuvo constituida por 10821 personas, repartidas entre las ciudades de Salvador de Bahia y Rio de Janeiro, Brasil; Cali, Colombia; Caracas, Venezuela; Madrid, Espana; San Jose, Costa Rica; San Salvador, El Salvador, y Santiago, Chile, que representan a la poblacion de cada ciudad entre los 18 y 70 anos de edad. Los resultados revelan que los niveles de victimizacion por diversos tipos de violencia son diferentes en cada ciudad y que las variables asociadas con la victimizacion con mas frecuencia en las ciudades, aunque no en todas, son el sexo, la edad y el consumo de alcohol.

Cannabis clubs in Uruguay: The challenges of regulation.

BACKGROUND The Uruguayan Cannabis Clubs (UCCs) constitute one of three ways to obtain cannabis under the new cannabis regulation laws. These organizations, formed by up to 45 adults and with a legal limit to grow up to 99 plants, appear to provide a safe method of procuring cannabis in a country that is trying to regulate aspects of cannabis production and distribution. This article describes the operations of the UCCs and the challenges these organizations face. METHODS The paper draws on data from in-depth interviews conducted with representatives of UCCs and conversations with government officials conducted between March and August of 2015. We collected information about membership, facilities and forms of organization, methods of cannabis cultivation and distribution, and activities within the community. RESULTS This article describes how UCCs are formed, their resources, rules for cannabis production and distribution; and their relationships with government institutions and the community. Data show that UCCs face four main challenges: compliance with the extant regulation, financial sustainability, tolerance from the community, and collective action dilemmas. CONCLUSIONS Organizational challenges are as frequent in Uruguay as in other country where cannabis clubs exist, however this paper shows that in order to be sustainable, UCCs need to address issues of collective action, financial sustainability, and possible competition with cannabis distribution via pharmacies that could diminish membership. In the case of Uruguay, UCCs are part of a regulation effort, though they may not be preferred over other legal alternatives already in place.

Determinants of Public Support for Marijuana Legalization in Uruguay, the United States, and El Salvador

What are the determinants of public support for marijuana legalization? In the last 3 years, Uruguay and the states of Colorado and Washington have legalized the production, sale, and consumption of recreational marijuana. Although Uruguay and the United States have followed different paths toward legalization, these cases provide an excellent opportunity to explore the relationship between drug policy implementation and public opinion in different political contexts. Using logistic regressions on data from the 2014 AmericasBarometer cross-national surveys conducted in Uruguay, the United States, and El Salvador, this article examines citizen views toward marijuana regulation and the individual determinants of support for legalization in a comparative fashion. Results underline the role of political socialization variables in those countries in which legalization is being debated. Across countries, some of the most important factors for predicting positive attitudes toward marijuana regulation are related to political tolerance, ideology, and the views toward the government.

Hearing the Voice of the People: Human Rights as if People Mattered

When we study human rights empirically, what do we mean to study? The existence of institutions that enable the realization of rights or the enjoyment of those rights? The absence of flagrant violations of some of the basic individual rights or the sense that ones rights will not be flagrantly violated? What theory of human rights should we use? Most positive theory of human rights—for example, empirical theories about the correlation between political institutions or economic conditions on human rights recognition—are based on the first kind of normative human rights theory, the one that defines rights outside of the struggle for them. This article puts forward a methodology for the empirical study of human rights from the inside: do people enjoy their human rights? Using the Latin American Public Opinion Project democracy survey database, the authors propose a new way to measure human rights.

El impacto psicosocial de la violencia en San Salvador

En este estudio se busca lograr dos objetivos: primero, describir los niveles de victimizacion de la poblacion salvadorena a causa de la violencia delictiva y el tipo de poblacion mas afectada por ella; segundo, averiguar si estos niveles de victimizacion estan relacionados con la presencia de normas, actitudes y comportamientos que favorecen la aparicion de la violencia. Para ello se utilizaron los datos del proyecto ACTIVA de El Salvador, que fue realizado por el Instituto Universitario de Opinion Publica entre los meses de octubre y noviembre de 1996 con una muestra de 1 290 entrevistas personales, presuntamente representativa de las personas entre los 18 y 70 anos de edad que residen en el Area Metropolitana de San Salvador. La muestra se obtuvo mediante un muestreo probabilistico y multietapico. Los resultados revelan que el nivel de victimizacion por la violencia es bastante alto en San Salvador y que afecta sobre todo a los hombres y a los jovenes, y sugieren que las personas que han sido victimas de agresiones graves suelen mostrar con mas frecuencia que el resto normas de justificacion y aprobacion del uso de la violencia, inclinacion por el uso de armas, y conductas de agresion hacia otras personas.

Cannabis consumption patterns among frequent consumers in Uruguay

BACKGROUND In 2013, Uruguay became the first country to fully regulate the cannabis market, which now operates under state control. Cannabis can be legally acquired in three ways: growing it for personal use (self-cultivation), cannabis club membership, and from pharmacies (not yet implemented). Users must be entered into a confidential official registry to gain access. METHODS This article presents findings of a Respondent Driven Sample survey of 294 high-frequency cannabis consumers in the Montevideo metropolitan area. RESULTS Frequent consumers resort to more than one method for acquiring cannabis, with illegal means still predominating after 1 year of the new regulation law. Cannabis users overwhelmingly support the current regulation, but many of them are reluctant to register. CONCLUSIONS Some of the attitudes and behaviors of the high-frequency consumers pose a challenge to the success of the cannabis law. Individuals relying on more than one method of access defy the single access clause, a prerequisite for legal use, while the maximum amount of cannabis individuals can access monthly seems too high even for most frequent consumers, which might promote the emergence of a grey market. Reluctance to register among a significant proportion of high-frequency consumers raises doubts about the laws ability to achieve its stated objectives.

Saying no to weed: Public opinion towards cannabis legalisation in Uruguay

Abstract Aims: This research aimed to explore people’s beliefs associated with opposition to cannabis legalisation in Uruguay. In 2014, Uruguay passed a national law regulating the production, sale and consumption of recreational marijuana. However, two-thirds of the Uruguayan public expressed disagreement towards the government’s new policy. Methods: This study used logistic regressions on data from a national probabilistic sample of 1512 adults in Uruguay. Opinions and beliefs towards cannabis legalisation were collected in face-to-face interviews, using a battery of questions included in Vanderbilt University’s AmericasBarometer national survey in 2014. Findings: Results showed that opposition to legalisation in Uruguay is independently associated with the beliefs that the new cannabis law will worsen the public security conditions in the country, that it will serve as a gateway to the use of harder drugs, and that the law will ultimately be ineffective to curb illegal trafficking. They also showed the importance of political ideology. Conclusions: Public views towards cannabis liberalisation are more intertwined with concerns about public security and apprehension that it will open the gate to heavier drugs than with concerns about individual health and demographic factors. The paper underscores the importance of belief systems and political socialisation over personal behaviour of use.

The status of support for cannabis regulation in Uruguay 4 years after reform: Evidence from public opinion surveys: Support for cannabis regulation

INTRODUCTION AND AIMS The objective of this study was to measure the public support for marijuana legalisation in Uruguay, both overall and in its provisions, in nearly 4 years after its implementation. DESIGN AND METHODS Three separate cross-national surveys were conducted in early 2014, late 2015 and mid-2017 with national representative samples of adults. The first study was carried out during the initial months of implementation of the law and used face-to-face interviews (N = 1490); the second survey was conducted using a computer-assisted telephone interviewing system (N = 703); and the third study (N = 1515), using face-to-face interviews, was completed just before the implementation of pharmacy sales. RESULTS About 60.7% of respondents in 2014 were against marijuana legalisation; in 2017, 54.1% remained opposed to the marijuana law. In 2015, half of the people interviewed (49.9%) supported access to marijuana through self-cultivation, while 38.6% favoured the provision of cannabis clubs and 33.1% agreed with the pharmacy retail provision. Support for medical cannabis was high in 2015, with 74.5% favouring it. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS This study shows a change in the public opinion toward legalisation of marijuana although most people still remain opposed to the law. However, the data do not provide indication of a significant change in its use. Results suggest that opposition to legalisation may be focused on the pharmacy retail provision.

Overcoming Stigma and Discrimination: Challenges for Reinsertion of Gang Members in Developing Countries:

This article is an effort to better understand the discrimination mechanisms that ex-gang members perceive upon leaving the gang and seeking to reinsert themselves into a society marked by high levels of violence and inequality, as in Central America. Based on 24 in-depth interviews with former members of MS-13, the 18th Street gang, and other street gangs in El Salvador, this article analyzes the different mechanisms of discrimination perceived by respondents as a result of the stigma of past gang membership. This article also documents how these perceptions of discrimination can affect individuals who are searching for employment opportunities and seeking to reinsert themselves into society.