Common Sense Outbreak

The 19-members of the The Global Commission on Drug Policy (which includes Mexico's former President Ernesto Zedillo, Brazil's ex-President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria, as well as the former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker and the current Prime Minister of Greece George Papandreou, Billionaire Richard Branson, and former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan) has finally come to the same conclusion  as many of us (including us at PC Towers), namely that the 'War On Drugs' has not only failed, but is actually part of the problem.

The Global Commission's latest 24-page report argues strongly that anti-drug policy has failed by fuelling organised crime, costing taxpayers millions of dollars and causing thousands of deaths .... frankly that's putting the failure mildly. Many countries are simply overwhelmed by the power of the drugs cartels which can out fight the states forces ..... or buy them off. The failure has been on such a scale the the the UN estimates that opiate use increased 35% worldwide from 1998 to 2008, cocaine by 27%, and cannabis by 8.5%.

The prime driver of all of this is US, and to a lesser extent, Western demand .... so we are culpable in all of  this misery. The United States alone spends some $40 billion each year on trying to eliminate the supply of drugs. It arrests 1.5m of its citizens each year for drug offences, locking up half a million of them; tougher drug laws are the main reason why one in five black American men spend some time behind bars.

Worldwide, the 'war on drugs' has caused Opium production to simply be moved from Turkey and Thailand, to Myanmar (Burma) and southern Afghanistan, where it undermines the West’s efforts to defeat the Taliban, and finances the killing of NATO soldiers. Indeed the prohibition policies, far from reducing crime, have fostered gangsterism on a scale that the world has never seen before.


Armed Police Commandos Burn Drugs - A drop in the ocean

According to the UN’s  estimate, the illegal drug industry is worth some $320 billion a year and growing. In the West it makes criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens  ..... its a fact the several US Presidents could easily have ended up in prison for their youthful experiments with 'grass', 'blow', 'weed' or whatever the euphemism was in their youth'.

We also tried various youthful experiments in these waters, but grew out of them, and feel that legalising drugs (for adults, not minors), in the same manner as Tobacco and Alcohol, is the answer .... Legalisation would not only drive away the gangsters; it would also transform drug usage from a police  problem into a public-health problem, which is how we deal with the side effects of smoking and drinking. Governments should tax and regulate the drug trade, and use the revenues (and the billions saved on law-enforcement), to educate the drug using public about the risks of drug-taking, and to treat the addictions.

Recently, Portugal has tried this approach and has seen dramatic and positive results ..... Surely this makes sense to anyone who still has brain cells?