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The new drug warriors

S.J.B.

S.J.B.

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Jan 22, 2011
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The new drug warriors
The Economist
May 2nd, 2015

THE war on drugs, it seems, is edging towards a truce. Half of Americans want to lift the ban on cannabis, the world’s favourite illicit drug. Four states have legalised it, as has Washington, DC. Latin American presidents whose countries once battled narcos with helicopter gunships now openly wonder if prohibition was a mistake; Uruguay has legalised weed. Much of Europe has decriminalised it; Portugal has decriminalised all drug-use (though not drug-dealing). Heroin addicts in Western countries usually have access to clean needles, substitutes such as methadone and, in parts of Europe, heroin prescriptions. Many governments are starting to believe that managing drug use causes less harm than trying to stamp it out.

In Indonesia, things look very different. On April 29th eight convicted drug offenders, seven of them foreign, were executed by firing squad. Joko Widodo, the president, became convinced of the need for a hard line on drugs as mayor of Solo, a city in central Java, and governor of Jakarta, the capital. Since taking office he has promised “no clemency” for traffickers, despite intense lobbying by other governments and the UN. His seven months in office have seen 14 executions, more than twice as many as in the previous 15 years.

Indonesia is only the highest-profile example of a trend across Asia and the Middle East, the only regions that routinely execute drug offenders. Saudi Arabia beheads smugglers of cannabis, a drug which is not conclusively linked to a single fatality among the 200m or so who use it each year. China’s president, Xi Jinping, called last year for “forceful measures to wipe [drugs] out”. In the first five months of 2014 nearly 40,000 people were sentenced for drug offences in China, 27% more than in the same period in 2013. In June most countries will mark the UN’s “international day against drug abuse” with speeches; China often celebrates it with a round of executions.

More enthusiastic still is Iran, where the government is increasingly alarmed about high rates of addiction. Since 2011 possession of as little as 30g of some drugs has been a hanging offence. According to Harm Reduction International (HRI), a drug-focused NGO, in 2008 Iran executed at least 96 people for drug crimes. In 2011 the figure was 540. Amnesty International has counted 241 so far this year. Drug offenders account for a “large majority” of all those put to death in Iran, says HRI; the country may execute as many drug traffickers as China, despite having a population only 6% as big. Afghan smugglers of heroin, some as young as 15, have been hanged near the border as a cautionary spectacle.

Over the past two decades Singapore has reduced its drug executions from several dozen a year to one or two; and Malaysia is using the death penalty less. But these are rare bright spots in a darkening picture. Execution-watchers are now nervously eyeing Pakistan, which in March ended an informal moratorium on the death penalty (having lifted it last year for terrorism offences). It is not known whether drug offenders among the 8,000 on its death row will have their sentences carried out.
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Read the full story here.
 
Anyone smuggling weed into a country with the penalty of death for trafficking is a hero in my book. Either that or just dumb.

Killing someone merely for possessing a substance is pretty barbaric. Luckily that opinion (supporting capital punishment for drug offenses) would be considered very extreme where I live.
 
Burnt Offerings said:
Anyone smuggling weed into a country with the penalty of death for trafficking is a hero in my book. Either that or just dumb.

Killing someone merely for possessing a substance is pretty barbaric. Luckily that opinion (supporting capital punishment for drug offenses) would be considered very extreme where I live.
Click to expand...

Im sure that if the tea party had their way pot smokers would be executed
 
Burnt Offerings said:
Anyone smuggling weed into a country with the penalty of death for trafficking is a hero in my book. Either that or just dumb.

Killing someone merely for possessing a substance is pretty barbaric. Luckily that opinion (supporting capital punishment for drug offenses) would be considered very extreme where I live.
Click to expand...


It could ruin your holiday I suppose?
This is 'Harm Reduction' I assume.
 
"This is oregano, I swear! I use it to cook in my imaginary kitchen down by the beach."

"I'm also planning on making some rope... you know... just because it's fun and all. Yeah..."
 
Better than "but it's for my MS/neuralgia/migranes/glaucoma etc etc", then indignantly shout: "But... but Queen Victoria used to take it every month for PMS?", as you are dragged to the scaffold. Likewise, probably no point mentioning President Clinton, birdseed, macrobiotics, Whirling Dervishes or the Assasins, good Muslims though they were.
 
At this point drug users and addicts have to be the largest group of persicuted people in history.

Its ugly, discusting, and totally unacceptable.
 
I absolutely agree. And reluctant though I am to say anything in support of the lazy, greedy and arrogant Psychiatric Profession, the few who really are interested in advancing and improving their vocation (all half dozen of them?), have been hampered and hanstrung no end by petty rrestrictions and stupid bans. Scandalous, they rarely do any good as it is!
 
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