The Global Commission on Drug Policy tells the truth.

The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world. Fifty years after the initiation of the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, and 40 years after President Nixon launched the US government’s war on drugs, fundamental reforms in national and global drug control policies are urgently needed.

Vast expenditures on criminalization and repressive measures directed at producers, traffickers and consumers of illegal drugs have clearly failed to effectively curtail supply or consumption. Apparent victories in eliminating one source or trafficking organization are negated almost instantly by the emergence of other sources and traffickers. Repressive efforts directed at consumers impede public health measures to reduce HIV/AIDS, overdose fatalities
and other harmful consequences of
drug use. Government expenditures on
futile supply reduction strategies and incarceration displace more cost-effective and evidence-based investments in
demand and harm reduction.

Our principles and recommendations can be summarized as follows:
End the criminalization, marginalization
and stigmatization of people who use drugs but who do no harm to others. Challenge rather than reinforce common misconceptions about drug markets, drug use and
drug dependence.

The findings are unassailable. The commissioners are blue chip. Here they are:

Asma Jahangir, human rights activist, former UN Special Rapporteur on Arbitrary, Extrajudicial and Summary Executions, Pakistan Carlos Fuentes, writer and public intellectual, Mexico César Gaviria, former President of Colombia Ernesto Zedillo, former President of Mexico Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former President of Brazil (chair) George Papandreou, Prime Minister of Greece George P. Shultz, former Secretary of State, United States (honorary chair) Javier Solana, former European Union High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy, Spain John Whitehead, banker and civil servant, chair of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation, United States Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the United Nations, Ghana Louise Arbour, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, President of the International Crisis Group, Canada Maria Cattaui, Petroplus Holdings Board member, former Secretary-General of the International Chamber of Commerce, Switzerland Mario Vargas Llosa, writer and public intellectual, Peru Marion Caspers-Merk, former State Secretary at the German Federal Ministry of Health Michel Kazatchkine, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, France Paul Volcker, former Chairman of the United States Federal Reserve and of the Economic Recovery Board Richard Branson, entrepreneur, advocate for social causes, founder of the Virgin Group, co-founder of The Elders, United Kingdom Ruth Dreifuss, former President of Switzerland and Minister of Home Affairs Thorvald Stoltenberg, former Minister of Foreign Affairs and UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Norway

Posted by Jay Hancock at 7:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: War on Drugs
        

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox is correctly calling for the U.S. to end the war on drugs, which is killing his country, by legalizing them. Here he is in San Antonio:

"As a country, we are going through problems due to the fact that the United States consumes too many drugs," Fox, who served as Mexico's president from 2000-2006, told reporters Monday night before a speech at the Turkish-American Chamber of Commerce in San Antonio.

"I would recommend to legalize, de-penalize all drugs," Fox added.

Here he is in Houston:

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox said in Houston on Tuesday that the United States should legalize drugs to end the violence in Mexico.

During a speech at the University of Houston, Fox noted that Mexico is located between drug-producing nations in South America and the world's largest drug-consuming nation, the United States.

"We just happen to be in between," Fox said.

In the last few years, drug cartel violence has tarnished Mexico's image — hurting tourism and foreign direct investment, he said.

"We're paying a huge price," Fox told the audience of mostly students, who applauded his suggestion that the United States decriminalize drug consumption to reduce violence — as occurred when the U.S. repealed alcohol Prohibition in the 1930s.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 2:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: War on Drugs
        

Justin Fenton's excellent story on the trial of Jose Cavazos and Wade Coats portrays the deadly supply chain, rarely chronicled, that gets drugs from Latin America to Baltimore. In this case it's Mexico's infamous Gulf Cartel that was picking up checks at the Capitol Grille and ferrying a mobile home jammed with cocaine across America.

You've probably heard news about "drug wars" or "drug-related violence" in Mexico. It's a vastly underplayed story in the United States. It is tearing Mexico apart, and the Gulf Cartel is at the center of the evil. Members of the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas cartel are fighting it out for supremacy, killing each other, police and innocent bystanders by hundreds.

If you can stomach extremely gruesome photographs (and a few four-letter words, which are, juxtaposed with what's described, entirely inoffensive) check out the eXiled's new piece by Pancho Montana, its drug-war correspondent. He describes the war between the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel in brutal detail.

This is what your drug habit and your outlawing of drugs does, America. Your money finances the killing. Your refusal to set up a legal competitor to the cartels keeps them in business. Your war on drugs to stop them has failed. Legalize cocaine and heroin -- dispense it to addicts from government-controlled clinics -- and the Gulf Cartel and its rivals go out of business. Here's Montana:

First, let’s go over what happened last year: 2010 was the bloodiest, most violent year in recent history in my home state of Nuevo Leon–Monterrey is the capital of this state, for you short-memoried gringos out there. Official figures estimate there’ve been around 700 deaths in the wars between cops and narcos, but knowing how the Zetas operate in this state it’s safe to say the real figure is at least double or triple that amount. The violence has only accelerated due to the ugly split between the big players—the Zetas and the Gulf Cartel–a break-up that’s dragged the entire state into in a war-like situation, in which every day the news was filled with stories of more shootouts, more executions, more kidnappings, more good ol’ family feuding between the two cartels.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 9:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Categories: War on Drugs
        

Excellent post on the Audacious Ideas blog by Dan Morhaim, emergency medicine physician and state delegate from Baltimore County, on the failed war on drugs. Go read it.

Jammed prisons, AIDS, destroyed families, crime victims, terrorist funding: the toll is immense. Addiction treatment is a critical step but just a beginning. Isn’t it time our society had a full, open, honest, and intense discussion about drugs? Shouldn’t we admit that the War on Drugs has failed and that other policies deserve exploration?

The answer, of course, is hell yes. Carefully controlled legalization of heroin and cocaine would improve society from Baltimore to Mexico to Colombia to Afghanistan. It's a radical move, but it can't be any worse than what we have now. Just do it.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 6:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: War on Drugs
        

Libertarian and George Mason University Professor Don Boudreaux sends this sensible letter to the New York Times:

While in Mexico, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will pledge U.S. help in the fight against violent Mexican drug suppliers ("Clinton Says U.S. Feeds Mexico Drug Trade," March 26).

It's interesting to reflect that when Mrs. Clinton visits France she need not pledge U.S. help in the fight against violent French wine suppliers. Or that when she visits Belgium she need not pledge help against violent Belgian chocolate suppliers. Or that when she visits Colombia she need not pledge help against violent Colombian coffee suppliers. Or that when she visits Japan she need not pledge help against violent Japanese automobile suppliers.

I detect a pattern! When goods and services can be produced, sold, and consumed legally, suppliers of these goods and services are peaceful and not violent.

Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux

Imagine the overnight plunge in killings, government expense and support for terrorism -- from Baltimore to Bogota to Kabul -- if cocaine, heroin etc. were legalized and carefully regulated.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Categories: War on Drugs