edgarshade
Bluelighter
Guardian
Fidel Cano Correa
The Observer, Saturday 15 December 2012 17.55 GMT
With reader comments
The prime minister's belief that the war on drugs is working ignores Britain's complicity in the trade.
More...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/15/colombia-david-cameron-drugs?commentpage=1
Fidel Cano Correa
The Observer, Saturday 15 December 2012 17.55 GMT
With reader comments
The prime minister's belief that the war on drugs is working ignores Britain's complicity in the trade.
Twenty-six years ago, on 17 December 1986, my uncle, Guillermo Cano Isaza, editor of the Colombian daily newspaper, El Espectador, was killed by gunmen paid by Pablo Escobar and his drug trafficking cartel. He had led a journalistic crusade to denounce the corruptive and violent power of drug trafficking. He paid with his life. The newspaper he edited was bombed and became a target as we lived through the bloody years of the so-called "war on drugs".
It is disappointing, then, to hear that David Cameron has decided to reject the report of a cross-party committee on the UK's drug policy, published last week, which recommended the establishment of a royal commission to review UK drug policies and explore alternatives, such as decriminalisation and legalisation. The prime minister has decided to move in precisely the opposite way from where the world is, and should be, heading.
That same cynicism is evident in David Cameron's defence of the current policy, "which actually is working in Britain", he says. That policy is not working in the world. Colombia shows concrete advances in, for example, a decrease of 60% in hectares cultivated for coca during the past decade or a similar drop in homicides. But how could anybody go from there to say that the war on drugs "is working"? Consumption keeps growing and other countries – Mexico among them – are now following the same painful path that Colombia went through several years ago.
More...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/15/colombia-david-cameron-drugs?commentpage=1
