Why we are calling for an end to the war on drugs

[Portillo]

Since 2006, the Mexican government has undertaken a US-backed crackdown on drug cartels. Estimates suggest that around 60,000 people have been murdered, and the number of deaths is still rising. At the same time, in countries like Britain, we're buying more and more of the drugs that flow through Mexico. Our prohibition approach has failed to stop drug use, and it puts money in the hands of narco-terrorists and international criminals.

Despite 50 years of criminalisation, illicit drugs are now the third most valuable industry in the world, after food and oil. Presidents of supply countries, such as Colombia, are desperately calling for a rethink. We're stuck in a pointless "war on drugs". It's not working and it costs us heavily, in human terms – with people addicted, incarcerated and burgled – and in financial terms. The UK spends more on drug policy than any other country in Europe, but has the highest usage of several class A drugs.

Every person who uses drugs in Britain is treated in exactly the same way: as a criminal and a prisoner. Far too little effort and support is given to treatment; to helping people come off addictive drugs. Ultimately, we are neither reducing harm, nor reducing demand. Thoughtless, ineffective and costly, drugs policy in this country and across the globe has been a complete shambles.

Today, the cross-party home affairs select committee publishes a report into drug policy. We have spent a year collecting and evaluating the evidence. Our findings are stark. In short, the government must focus on reducing the damage caused by drugs. That means far more emphasis on effective treatment than on criminal sanction. Turning drug policy into a joint Health and Home Office responsibility, as the committee recommends, would go a long way to achieving that. And we must look to models which actually work.

In Portugal, for example, dealers are still criminalised. Those who possess drugs, however, for personal use, have committed an administrative offence, rather than a criminal one. Instead of courts and jail sentences, users are sent before commissions which combine health policies with rehabilitation. The outcome is tailored to individual cases: treatment for addicts, fines and other sanctions for non-addicted repeat offenders. The prevalence of problem drug use and the number of young people addicted to drugs have fallen. So, too, has the number of users in prison. Astonishingly, the approach is supported across the Portuguese political spectrum. And the police told us that they preferred the new scheme, and could focus on more serious crimes. Portugal seems to have got it right.

The comparative failure of British drugs policy has led the home affairs committee to call for an independent royal commission. Despite the excellent work of bodies such as the UK Drugs Policy Commission, there has been no proper review of the law since the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act. The world has changed since then. Politicians are no longer talking about whether we radically alter drug policy, but how. And a royal commission would make recommendations that the government could not just ignore.

For years, drug reform has been a minority interest. With a few notable exceptions, only the Liberal Democrats called for wholesale reform, adopting it as formal policy last year. Now, the home affairs select committee is calling for a change, and this summer a poll showed that six out of 10 people support a complete review of drug policy.

David Cameron recognised the need for change before he became Tory leader, voting for a report detailing how "drugs policy has been failing for decades". Failure to act now would amount to a display of self-interested politics over evidence. The hypocrisy of the war on drugs must end. The government must help all of us affected by drugs by implementing this report. The time for hardline posturing is over.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/10/end-war-on-drugs

 

[adam west]

portugal has shown how reform works. time to decriminalise possession.

 

[BlueHues]

I think importation and exportation of narcotics should be legalized internationally and taxed.....I don't think the governments should be in control of production....There should be quality control and inspections, etc...It would employ a lot of people and taxing it would pay for any problems that arise from it....It would put these huge criminal enterprises right out of business....Of course, it would probably be immediately corporatized in the US, but hey, it's better than what goes on now!

 

[Jabberwocky]

tl;dr (honestly, i'd read a pro-legalization piece if it were concise, but no interest in reading somethign that's likely boilerplate of what's been read a million times, and force-fed since birth)

The WoD, for a variety of reasons, is utterly incapable of accomplishing its objectives in a society that has any semblance of freedom. Whether you luuuuvvvv getting high, or you're rabidly opposed to it, an objective review of the WoD's objectives and results will convince you that not only does it cause an obscene amount of fallout, but it is automatically going to fail w/o the imposition of rules that simply do not and cannot mesh with any semblance of western ideals. Many drugs cause intoxication that can become dangerous, or addiction and all the evils associated with it, but approaching this issue with a criminal/war mindset is not only inappropriate morally/ethically, it is flat out ineffective. Whether it's usage rates remaining stable for decades on the demand side, or decades' worth of steadily increased purity / reduced prices on the supply side, the reality is that the WoD is an approach that has not, and cannot, cause significant impact upon the societal issue that is drug-dependence (or abuse), and we waste resources on pursuing its fallout as criminal, instead of psych/health, at our own peril. In pursuit of winning this 'war', the soldiers and policy-makers involved don't realize they're abdicating otherwise useful positions of influence to thugs, criminals, and scumbags. It's high-time that the ppl who have power in and influence upon our society realize they can be effective here, and that the vehicles for doing so are nothing close to "war" or criminal approaches. Not only does pursuing getting intoxicated as a criminal matter not work, it makes your influence ineffective in the ways it otherwise could have been. Take 5% of LE budgeting and put it towards things like education, or addiction treatment, etc, and you'd be dumbfounded at how quickly you actually were able to make dents in your stated objectives.

Want to dramatically reduce violence both in our borders and abroad? Want to make the streets safer for citizens and addicts alike? Then stop approaching this from a moral* perspective of 'drugs=wrong=criminality', use some objectivity and you will see what can help our society.
(*the only way one can be logically-consistent, and still say the WoD is the proper approach, is if intoxication<besides alcohol> is morally wrong, and punishing such incidences is worth the fallout)