11 ms·

Kofi Annan: Stop 'war on drugs'

357 points by weedow 13y ago

tlongren 13y ago
Easy to say, but it'll never happen, especially in the US (at least not in my lifetime, hopefully my daughters). Too many jobs would be unnecessary if the "war on drugs" was over.
- nicholassmith 13y ago
  Not really, whilst you'd lose some in enforcement you'd still need to police for blackmarket knock off product. You'd also create jobs in administrating the sales, production and supply chain etc.
  - MichaelGG 13y ago
    The DEA has a budget of nearly $3BN. I doubt that money would go to the same types of jobs or companies if Bayer and Pfizer and others were licensed to sell Morphine and Amphetamines to the public. Seems like the FDA might get some more work, there'd be a bit larger need for customs inspections. But enforcement would go way down, especially without diversion control. How much money and weapons are used in protecting bootlegged alcohol these days?
    - declan 13y ago
      Yep. But that may be understanding the case. If you're part of the anti-drug-war-industrial-complex, the worse thing in the world would be for enforcement to "go way down." Look at state and local cops, federal prison guards and the BOP, state and local prison guards, federal prosecutors, state and local prosecutors, privately owned prisons operated under contract, government employee unions, state and local police departments receiving billions in tax dollars via "drug war" grants and gear from FedGov, companies manufacturing battering rams for those 4am no-knock SWAT drug raids, etc. Let's not forget the U.S. military and border police. At least at the federal level, over half of prisoners are there for "drug offenses": http://www.bop.gov/news/quick.jsp http://www.bop.gov/news/quick.jsp What would happen to all those jobs if non-violent "drug offenders" were released from prison? That would be a tragedy, really.
- k-mcgrady 13y ago
  I'd love to see figures on this but my guess is it would create more jobs that it would make unnecessary.
  - tlongren 13y ago
    You're probably right, no administration would ever admit that, though.
    - k-mcgrady 13y ago
      True. I can't remember the exact details but when a leading UK government advisor on drugs advised changes to the governments ridiculous classification of drugs and favoured one based on evidence of the harm they cause he was fired "because he cannot be both a government adviser and a campaigner against government policy"[1] Governments aren't willing to be forward thinking or even rational on the issue. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt#Dismissal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt#Dismissal
- rayiner 13y ago
  We had far more invested in prohibition, with far more outright corruption (politicians on the take from bootleggers), but managed to end that somehow. The difference was that alcohol consumption was mainstream so ordinary voters cared about the impact of prohibition. Drug consumption is not mainstream and enforcement largely affects minorities, so ordinary voters don't care.
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    >We had far more invested in prohibition Is this actually true? We've invested an enormous amount in the war on drugs.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      This is a must-see documentary, not just for its coverage of prohibition, but for the historical insights you can glean about American politics: http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition. In a nutshell, prohibition was far more invasive and far more corrupt than today's drug war. Al Capone was a billionaire in today's money, and the drug lords of yore were willing to exert political influence in a way that maybe happens today in Mexico, but certainly does not in the U.S. Al Capone once walked into City Hall and pushed the Mayor of Cicero (which was a former independent city in the Chicago area) down the stairs and nobody touched him. Politicians and police were openly on the take from bootleggers in a way that is totally foreign to our modern sensibilities (unless you have any familiarity with the developing world).
Roboprog 13y ago
Prohibition was great ... for Al Capone. Cue Homer Simpson sound bite: "I haven't learned a thing"
pstuart 13y ago
Part of the problem is too many people have been brainwashed into the "protecting us from dangerous drugs" lie. Your average Jane/Joe will say "legalize pot, but ew, meth is bad!" The fact that we collectively choose to participate in this madness is, well, maddening.
- phaer 13y ago
  > "legalize pot, but ew, meth is bad!" Which, I would say, is true. Our argument should be where the facts are: It's bad, but it should be handled like a public health problem, not like a criminal problem, because criminalizing it does not protect you from dangerous drugs as the last century shows, but it primarily finances mafia groups which cost even more lives than even the most evil drugs.
tokenizer 13y ago
IMO the battle is won in stages, and the first step in the legalization of Marijuana at the Federal level. The next step is when we recognize the victims of the War on Drugs, specifically persons who were sent to jail because of Marijuana. You expand the affected to be people who've committed all non-violent crimes, and advocate for reform from that angle. I don't care what the law really has to say regarding Heroin, as long as victims/addicts get helped instead of aggregated and exploited by a pseudo-warrior class.
- pstuart 13y ago
  I care what the law has to say regarding heroin. Legalize it, regulate it just like alcohol. Being illegal didn't keep my brother from becoming addicted and dying from it. If it was legal and pure he might have had a chance. But on the other hand, nobody is trying to outlaw tobacco and alcohol, which are the biggest killers of all. Thats what did my mom in. So yes, legalize it and keep it pure. Educate people on proper drug use and spend money on health resources for those who need it rather than jail.
  - mildtrepidation 13y ago
    Without judging the sentiment, "legalize it and keep it pure" does not mesh at all with tobacco and alcohol, which are legal (and 'pure,' at least in the case of alcohol), being "the biggest killers of all" as an argument for legalization. Discussion on legalization of controlled substances like heroin is fraught with bias and misinformation. It's a discussion worth having, but clouding it with contradictions makes an already difficult topic that much harder to address.
    - icebraining 13y ago
      Uh, pure alcohol does kill, but poisoned alcohol is worse and much more effective (as the US government knew[1]). There's nothing contradictory about it. pstuart didn't say if heroin had been pure that everything would be fine, just that the user might have a chance. And you definitively have a greater chance of surviving alcohol addition if you don't die from a single bottle[2]. [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2010/02/the_chemists_war.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa... [2] http://www.ibtimes.com/last-call-poor-indians-continue-die-alcohol-poisoning-liquor-laced-industrial-chemicals-1434038 http://www.ibtimes.com/last-call-poor-indians-continue-die-a...
xacaxulu 13y ago
Drug usage is a medical problem. Without medical care, it becomes or has the potential to become a criminal problem. In the USA drug usage and mental illness are generally lumped into the criminal category, sending sick and/or mentally ill people into a the criminal justice system without any chance of treatment or remission.
- pstuart 13y ago
  We should be examining a "medical court" system. It's basically each individual's right to do whatever they want but there's a line that gets crossed when they are truly sick and need help.
oh_sigh 13y ago
I love how whenever a major world leader comes out against the war on drugs, it is always after they are out of office and generally retired from political life.
- dman 13y ago
  Do you risk your career and your livelihood for your innate principles often?
  - mildtrepidation 13y ago
    While I agree with this, it's exactly the reason many governments right now get almost nothing done (and what they do get done is awful): People in power who care more about their job security than their -- or anyone else's -- principles. A politician's career should be based on reconciling principle with reality. Their livelihood should be linked directly to their ability to do this successfully. That comes with a certain level of idealism, true, but without that we have to concede that our lives are in the hands of people we don't even expect to care.
    - rayiner 13y ago
      It's more complicated than that. Politicians have a limited amount of political capital, and in American politics even getting little things done requires spending a lot of it. Obama put up some huge numbers and ultimately spent all his political capital just doing two things: 1) getting us out of Iraq; and 2) passing the Affordable Care Act. Ending the drug war is important to some people, but there are tons of people who support the drug war for moral reasons, on both sides of the aisle. Meanwhile, with an aging populace people are much more concerned with Medicare, Social Security, healthcare, pensions, etc, than the justice or injustice of the drug war. Even a politician who does care sincerely about ending the drug war wouldn't waste his political capital actually doing it, not in face of all the more important things that people want done.
      - proksoup 13y ago
willvarfar 13y ago
Slight tangent but I've been reflecting recently on how many people seek out things they know are dangerous to them for the thrill of it. Its an interesting trait.
grault 13y ago
My idea would be: make them legal, tax them high (or make them accessible only after certain educational exams), from that money educate people, help them recovering. Teach them basic game theory and the term what trap is, what is it like to be the frog in the boiling water, etc. I'm confident I missed many aspects here, although really interested in: What are the problems with this model?
- wavefunction 13y ago
  My problem with your model is the apparent preconception that I (as an adult) shouldn't be able to take whatever drugs I feel like. Your regulatory scheme seems more appropriate for a substance like heroin rather than cannabis, as well.
- fela 13y ago
  One problem with making them too inaccessible and too expensive is that it might make the illegal market attractive again, with the risk of bringing us back to the current situation. So I think the idea is viable but can only be pushed up to a certain point.
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  Taxing them really high will increase the likelihood of black market product, which goes against the public health aspect. You don't want a poor person buying junk and getting sick because they couldn't go to the store and buy proper medicine. Just like you wouldn't heavily tax aspirin or ibuprofen. Basic medical education should be provided as part of national education. Except, properly done, not the factually incorrect, dramatic anti-drug programs they have these days. There also seem to be a bias against drugs here, which I don't believe is founded in research. After all, we encourage people to get treatment for mental illnesses, the treatments which usually involve becoming addicted to very strong medications like SSRIs. Yet there's no education against being "trapped" onto such things.
  - grault 13y ago
    Makes sense. It could be difficult to raise money for prevention and rehabilitation purposes from the tax approach. Although maybe wealthy recreational users would happily "fund" the education / rehabilitation of the poor. Or maybe I'm just completely wrong here :D I agree with the other points you've discussed.
dreamdu5t 13y ago
Kofi Annan does not have any prerogative to tell me or others what to do with their own bodies. Fuck the UN and Kofi Annan.
- x3c 13y ago
  How about helping you make an informed decision?
- bambax 13y ago
  The article isn't about "your body" (about which I'd rather know as little as possible); it's about the so-called "war on drugs" (which is actually a war on the poor). Did you read the article before commenting?
  - dreamdu5t 13y ago
    Yes I read the article. The UN asserts the authority to interfere with what other people do to their own bodies and with their own property (drug use, manufacture, and consumption). This comes from "The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs" and later "The United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances." The UN, including Kofi Annon, is used as an instrument by the US to further US drug policy. The Global Commission on Drug Policy and its recommendations are nothing more than a ruse.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- alayne 13y ago
  Sorry, but your libertarian utopia is never going to happen.
  - dreamdu5t 13y ago
    So, what, I should just shut up and get in line like you?
mlyang 13y ago
I feel like politicians are to their constituents what parents are like to teenage kids with respect to substance use advice/"laws." Parents of teenagers ban their kids from substances even though they themselves definitely did them when they were younger. The hypocrisy is kind of funny to me-- it's like there are two different worlds going on (one public facing, one the reality) that everyone just plays along with for reputation's sake even though we all know we're kidding ourselves -- it's ridiculous that this social play we put on actually seriously affects the lives of those touched by the global drug trade.
Eleutheria 13y ago
While we're at it, end the war on terror, war on poverty, war on sex, war on religion. But above all, end the war on liberty.
- josefresco 13y ago
  How about we end assigning meaningless catchy phrases to boring but important US policies. There is no "war on sex" or "war on religion" in the US only news organizations framing policies in that manor to get ratings.
tokenadult 13y ago
"We called on governments to adopt more humane and effective ways of controlling and regulating drugs. We recommended that the criminalization of drug use should be replaced by a public health approach." So the request here is not to say that everyone should use drugs however they wish without regulation, but rather that use of certain drugs should no longer be subject to criminal penalties. A few years ago, Richard Branson's blog post on drug regulation[1] similarly pointed to reducing criminal penalties without saying that drugs should be entirely unregulated, by looking at the example of Portugal. (How is Portugal doing these days?) The state I live in in the United States, Minnesota, has a low rate of incarceration in large part because it has a low rate of criminal prosecution of drug offenses, with even the small number of persons convicted of drug offenses being unlikely to do time in prison. But this state has a thriving private industry of drug treatment centers, drawing in people from all over the world who want to become clean, and responses to drug use often include judicially ordered drug treatment. Stopping a war on drugs waged by the police and courts and prisons doesn't have to include giving up on discouraging drug use. [1] http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/time-to-end-the-war-on-drugs http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/time-to-end-the-war-on... AFTER EDIT: I'll use the last bit of my edit window to post two more links to news reports about the experience of Portugal. These links are in chronological order, and newer than Richard Branson's blog post. http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/evaluating-drug-decriminalization-in-portugal-12-years-later-a-891060.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/evaluating-drug-d... http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-05-01/news/ct-met-portugal-drugs-20130502_1_treatment-facility-portugal-drug-policy http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-05-01/news/ct-met-po...
- ryanatkn 13y ago
  "Ten Years After Decriminalization, Drug Abuse Down by Half in Portugal" http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/07/05/ten-years-after-decriminalization-drug-abuse-down-by-half-in-portugal/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/07/05/ten-years-af...
- mgkimsal 13y ago
  "Stopping a war on drugs waged by the police and courts and prisons doesn't have to include giving up on discouraging drug use." There's big business in prisons and law enforcement. There's also big business in rehab and pharma. Getting the monied interests to shift their focus from one of incarceration to one of health shouldn't be this hard. We just need to shift dollars from one big industry to another. Perhaps pharma and health companies need bigger lobbying efforts?
hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
This legalization talk is flawed. Alcohol is legal, and that doesn't stop people, specially teenagers, from abusing it. It's also proven tobacco addiction starts during adolescence. In this case, legalization is just removing responsibility from the people who profit from it, since in practice the law isn't protecting who it's supposed to protect. Just because something is legal doesn't make it ethical. Then, we know legalizing certain drugs will only move traffic to worse drugs. Legalize marijuana and dealers will move more crack, just like the mafia moved from alcohol to cocaine after they lifted the prohibition in the US. Now what, the government will legalize crack too? Make even more unethical businesses operate under the law, knowing these products will be abused by teenagers just like alcohol and tobacco today? There's no easy solution, and no one is addressing the real issue: that substance abuse is cultural and heavily promoted. You talk to young people, and their concept of having a good time is "getting wasted". Dysfunctional families and poverty only worsen the issue.
- girvo 13y ago
  I respect that you have that opinion, even though I disagree with it personally. The big question to me, is what causes more harm: drug use, or the criminals that it funds? I'd wager the latter; drug use can be dealt with as a medical problem (I'm living proof) to some extent, murderous cartels, warlords, and corruption around the world can't be. Something to think about anyway!
  - hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
    You know what's one of the most trafficked products in Brazil? Tobacco. Tons of counterfeit cigarettes cross the border between Paraguay and Brazil, and that funds crime syndicates. A legal and regulated product. Now imagine if marijuana or anything else is legalized... they will do the same thing to avoid taxation, which would go to fund health assistance, and buyers won't care about where it comes from - they'll just care that their fix is available for cheap. That drugs should be dealt with as a health issue, I don't disagree with, but legalizing substances isn't a silver bullet to stop crime, crime is rooted on other issues (education, poverty, lack of assistance).
tiagobraw 13y ago
The article is co-written by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former president of Brazil. I didn't like him when he was the president, but I do like very much his approach to legalize/decriminalize drugs... Kudos for them!
knodi 13y ago
No one in the government cares because this only effects poor people and they don't have the money to make a difference. If Obama wanted to make a real change he would have stopped the war on drugs already.
jdimov 13y ago
Unfortunately, the "mighty" USA is utterly incapable of functioning economically without wars, so this will never happen.
api 13y ago
At this point I think a big reason prohibition is kept alive is to save face. To end it, they'd have to admit they were wrong.
rodolphoarruda 13y ago
I believe the results of decriminalization may vary according to your social context. I live in Brazil and I don't think decriminalization would reduce violence around here, it would, at its best, move the focus away from the drug addict to other parts of the society. Collaborators from large drug organizations (tens of thousands of criminals, running millionaire operations, heavily armed) won't simply boo-hoo, go home and look for real jobs once drugs are decriminalized. They would look for the new weaker link of the chain and then concentrate all their violence on it. Once drugs are legalized and are freely sold on public points of sale (whatever government calls them), criminals would target the "supply chain" and distribution network. All of the sudden drug organizations would find themselves operating wholesale, not retail anymore. They would steal cargo to sell it at poor city areas or in places where official suppliers haven't established POSes yet. Stealing (buying for zero) and selling is much more attractive than "cooking" and selling. It's like outsourcing your production the bad way, keeping the benefit of higher profit margins. Higher margins lead to more competition, thus guns, thus violence among organizations (this is the current scenario in cities like Rio where drug organizations fight for territory dominance[1]). On the bright side, anyone interested in consuming drugs would be spared of this fight. They would be the same people who ever bought drugs, but now with the benefit of new regulations, treatment and care from the government. [1] This video shows a battle between two drug organizations in Rio that mobilized around 100 members coming from different slums. You can see a great deal of collateral damage in the local population, and this is what my point is all about. Watch from 1:00 onwards (sorry, Portuguese language all the way). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etu6YWC-rT4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etu6YWC-rT4 Criminals were even able to shot down a police helicopter killing two officers. Drug war at its finest.
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  I'm unfamiliar with Brazil drug operations. But certainly these other crimes have significantly less profit/risk than the huge markup on illegal drugs? If they are properly legalized, the price should plummet. So even stealing or going wholesale is far less lucrative. You can already steal other goods. You could hijack a shipment of beer - but end-users aren't going to pay $15 a bottle for it because the normal price is known to be far less. So even if these organizations moved into theft, they wouldn't be able to finance huge armies anymore. I'd also note that stealing does not have a cost of zero. You need to finance people to attack, pay for their weapons, etc. And the cap on pricing means even if stealing was cheaper, the absolute profit still won't be as high, overall. Unless Brazil has a problem with criminal gangs already monopolizing distribution of other goods (like aspirin, tabacco, or alcohol), it seems like a stretch to say they'd do this for drugs. Even in the US, people have been killed in hijackings of trucks containing Intel processors.
volune 13y ago
I'm tired of these cowards coming out against the war on drugs after they no longer hold a position of power to do anything about it.
jmerton 13y ago
Here's an analogy some may find crazy: I've been collecting data that classifies sugar (cane / corn / etc.) as a drug, rather than a food. Considering that type 2 diabetes is a self induced illness caused by sugar abuse, should we imprison sugar addicts? I know, I know, that may be a bit of a stretch for some persons. Still, think about it.
arca_vorago 13y ago
The real issue that needs to be discussed, but no one wants to, is how one particular three letter uses drugs as a source of black ops funding, so that it is beyond congressional oversight. Of course, congress is so compromised they are much less afraid of oversight these days, but until people understand that the drug war is about money more than just in regards to asset forfeiture and other LEA uses, and the very top structures in government benefit from it.
duncan_bayne 13y ago
I'm reminded of a scene from The Assignment, where two characters are arguing at an official function: - How about "fuck you, pal"? - I'd believe it, if it was louder. In other news, I'm a bit sick of public figures coming out against the War on Drugs after their careers are functionally over.
aianus 13y ago
I've always wondered: what would drug dealers do if drugs were legalized? Would they throw their hands up and go get jobs at McDonald's? Or would they turn to robbery, kidnapping, etc? Maybe black markets are useful for providing an income for people that have criminal records and no skills.

357 points by weedow 13y ago

Easy to say, but it'll never happen, especially in the US (at least not in my lifetime, hopefully my daughters). Too many jobs would be unnecessary if the "war on drugs" was over.

nicholassmith 13y ago
Not really, whilst you'd lose some in enforcement you'd still need to police for blackmarket knock off product. You'd also create jobs in administrating the sales, production and supply chain etc.
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  The DEA has a budget of nearly $3BN. I doubt that money would go to the same types of jobs or companies if Bayer and Pfizer and others were licensed to sell Morphine and Amphetamines to the public. Seems like the FDA might get some more work, there'd be a bit larger need for customs inspections. But enforcement would go way down, especially without diversion control. How much money and weapons are used in protecting bootlegged alcohol these days?
  - declan 13y ago
    Yep. But that may be understanding the case. If you're part of the anti-drug-war-industrial-complex, the worse thing in the world would be for enforcement to "go way down." Look at state and local cops, federal prison guards and the BOP, state and local prison guards, federal prosecutors, state and local prosecutors, privately owned prisons operated under contract, government employee unions, state and local police departments receiving billions in tax dollars via "drug war" grants and gear from FedGov, companies manufacturing battering rams for those 4am no-knock SWAT drug raids, etc. Let's not forget the U.S. military and border police. At least at the federal level, over half of prisoners are there for "drug offenses": http://www.bop.gov/news/quick.jsp http://www.bop.gov/news/quick.jsp What would happen to all those jobs if non-violent "drug offenders" were released from prison? That would be a tragedy, really.
k-mcgrady 13y ago
I'd love to see figures on this but my guess is it would create more jobs that it would make unnecessary.
- tlongren 13y ago
  You're probably right, no administration would ever admit that, though.
  - k-mcgrady 13y ago
    True. I can't remember the exact details but when a leading UK government advisor on drugs advised changes to the governments ridiculous classification of drugs and favoured one based on evidence of the harm they cause he was fired "because he cannot be both a government adviser and a campaigner against government policy"[1] Governments aren't willing to be forward thinking or even rational on the issue. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt#Dismissal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Nutt#Dismissal
rayiner 13y ago
We had far more invested in prohibition, with far more outright corruption (politicians on the take from bootleggers), but managed to end that somehow. The difference was that alcohol consumption was mainstream so ordinary voters cared about the impact of prohibition. Drug consumption is not mainstream and enforcement largely affects minorities, so ordinary voters don't care.
- pessimizer 13y ago
  >We had far more invested in prohibition Is this actually true? We've invested an enormous amount in the war on drugs.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    This is a must-see documentary, not just for its coverage of prohibition, but for the historical insights you can glean about American politics: http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/prohibition. In a nutshell, prohibition was far more invasive and far more corrupt than today's drug war. Al Capone was a billionaire in today's money, and the drug lords of yore were willing to exert political influence in a way that maybe happens today in Mexico, but certainly does not in the U.S. Al Capone once walked into City Hall and pushed the Mayor of Cicero (which was a former independent city in the Chicago area) down the stairs and nobody touched him. Politicians and police were openly on the take from bootleggers in a way that is totally foreign to our modern sensibilities (unless you have any familiarity with the developing world).

Roboprog 13y ago

Prohibition was great ... for Al Capone. Cue Homer Simpson sound bite: "I haven't learned a thing"

pstuart 13y ago

Part of the problem is too many people have been brainwashed into the "protecting us from dangerous drugs" lie. Your average Jane/Joe will say "legalize pot, but ew, meth is bad!" The fact that we collectively choose to participate in this madness is, well, maddening.

phaer 13y ago
> "legalize pot, but ew, meth is bad!" Which, I would say, is true. Our argument should be where the facts are: It's bad, but it should be handled like a public health problem, not like a criminal problem, because criminalizing it does not protect you from dangerous drugs as the last century shows, but it primarily finances mafia groups which cost even more lives than even the most evil drugs.

tokenizer 13y ago

IMO the battle is won in stages, and the first step in the legalization of Marijuana at the Federal level. The next step is when we recognize the victims of the War on Drugs, specifically persons who were sent to jail because of Marijuana. You expand the affected to be people who've committed all non-violent crimes, and advocate for reform from that angle. I don't care what the law really has to say regarding Heroin, as long as victims/addicts get helped instead of aggregated and exploited by a pseudo-warrior class.

pstuart 13y ago
I care what the law has to say regarding heroin. Legalize it, regulate it just like alcohol. Being illegal didn't keep my brother from becoming addicted and dying from it. If it was legal and pure he might have had a chance. But on the other hand, nobody is trying to outlaw tobacco and alcohol, which are the biggest killers of all. Thats what did my mom in. So yes, legalize it and keep it pure. Educate people on proper drug use and spend money on health resources for those who need it rather than jail.
- mildtrepidation 13y ago
  Without judging the sentiment, "legalize it and keep it pure" does not mesh at all with tobacco and alcohol, which are legal (and 'pure,' at least in the case of alcohol), being "the biggest killers of all" as an argument for legalization. Discussion on legalization of controlled substances like heroin is fraught with bias and misinformation. It's a discussion worth having, but clouding it with contradictions makes an already difficult topic that much harder to address.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    Uh, pure alcohol does kill, but poisoned alcohol is worse and much more effective (as the US government knew[1]). There's nothing contradictory about it. pstuart didn't say if heroin had been pure that everything would be fine, just that the user might have a chance. And you definitively have a greater chance of surviving alcohol addition if you don't die from a single bottle[2]. [1] http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2010/02/the_chemists_war.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa... [2] http://www.ibtimes.com/last-call-poor-indians-continue-die-alcohol-poisoning-liquor-laced-industrial-chemicals-1434038 http://www.ibtimes.com/last-call-poor-indians-continue-die-a...

xacaxulu 13y ago

Drug usage is a medical problem. Without medical care, it becomes or has the potential to become a criminal problem. In the USA drug usage and mental illness are generally lumped into the criminal category, sending sick and/or mentally ill people into a the criminal justice system without any chance of treatment or remission.

pstuart 13y ago
We should be examining a "medical court" system. It's basically each individual's right to do whatever they want but there's a line that gets crossed when they are truly sick and need help.

oh_sigh 13y ago

I love how whenever a major world leader comes out against the war on drugs, it is always after they are out of office and generally retired from political life.

dman 13y ago
Do you risk your career and your livelihood for your innate principles often?
- mildtrepidation 13y ago
  While I agree with this, it's exactly the reason many governments right now get almost nothing done (and what they do get done is awful): People in power who care more about their job security than their -- or anyone else's -- principles. A politician's career should be based on reconciling principle with reality. Their livelihood should be linked directly to their ability to do this successfully. That comes with a certain level of idealism, true, but without that we have to concede that our lives are in the hands of people we don't even expect to care.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    It's more complicated than that. Politicians have a limited amount of political capital, and in American politics even getting little things done requires spending a lot of it. Obama put up some huge numbers and ultimately spent all his political capital just doing two things: 1) getting us out of Iraq; and 2) passing the Affordable Care Act. Ending the drug war is important to some people, but there are tons of people who support the drug war for moral reasons, on both sides of the aisle. Meanwhile, with an aging populace people are much more concerned with Medicare, Social Security, healthcare, pensions, etc, than the justice or injustice of the drug war. Even a politician who does care sincerely about ending the drug war wouldn't waste his political capital actually doing it, not in face of all the more important things that people want done.
    - proksoup 13y ago

willvarfar 13y ago

Slight tangent but I've been reflecting recently on how many people seek out things they know are dangerous to them for the thrill of it. Its an interesting trait.

grault 13y ago

My idea would be: make them legal, tax them high (or make them accessible only after certain educational exams), from that money educate people, help them recovering. Teach them basic game theory and the term what trap is, what is it like to be the frog in the boiling water, etc. I'm confident I missed many aspects here, although really interested in: What are the problems with this model?

wavefunction 13y ago
My problem with your model is the apparent preconception that I (as an adult) shouldn't be able to take whatever drugs I feel like. Your regulatory scheme seems more appropriate for a substance like heroin rather than cannabis, as well.
fela 13y ago
One problem with making them too inaccessible and too expensive is that it might make the illegal market attractive again, with the risk of bringing us back to the current situation. So I think the idea is viable but can only be pushed up to a certain point.
MichaelGG 13y ago
Taxing them really high will increase the likelihood of black market product, which goes against the public health aspect. You don't want a poor person buying junk and getting sick because they couldn't go to the store and buy proper medicine. Just like you wouldn't heavily tax aspirin or ibuprofen. Basic medical education should be provided as part of national education. Except, properly done, not the factually incorrect, dramatic anti-drug programs they have these days. There also seem to be a bias against drugs here, which I don't believe is founded in research. After all, we encourage people to get treatment for mental illnesses, the treatments which usually involve becoming addicted to very strong medications like SSRIs. Yet there's no education against being "trapped" onto such things.
- grault 13y ago
  Makes sense. It could be difficult to raise money for prevention and rehabilitation purposes from the tax approach. Although maybe wealthy recreational users would happily "fund" the education / rehabilitation of the poor. Or maybe I'm just completely wrong here :D I agree with the other points you've discussed.

dreamdu5t 13y ago

Kofi Annan does not have any prerogative to tell me or others what to do with their own bodies. Fuck the UN and Kofi Annan.

x3c 13y ago
How about helping you make an informed decision?
bambax 13y ago
The article isn't about "your body" (about which I'd rather know as little as possible); it's about the so-called "war on drugs" (which is actually a war on the poor). Did you read the article before commenting?
- dreamdu5t 13y ago
  Yes I read the article. The UN asserts the authority to interfere with what other people do to their own bodies and with their own property (drug use, manufacture, and consumption). This comes from "The Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs" and later "The United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances." The UN, including Kofi Annon, is used as an instrument by the US to further US drug policy. The Global Commission on Drug Policy and its recommendations are nothing more than a ruse.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
alayne 13y ago
Sorry, but your libertarian utopia is never going to happen.
- dreamdu5t 13y ago
  So, what, I should just shut up and get in line like you?

mlyang 13y ago

I feel like politicians are to their constituents what parents are like to teenage kids with respect to substance use advice/"laws." Parents of teenagers ban their kids from substances even though they themselves definitely did them when they were younger. The hypocrisy is kind of funny to me-- it's like there are two different worlds going on (one public facing, one the reality) that everyone just plays along with for reputation's sake even though we all know we're kidding ourselves -- it's ridiculous that this social play we put on actually seriously affects the lives of those touched by the global drug trade.

Eleutheria 13y ago

While we're at it, end the war on terror, war on poverty, war on sex, war on religion. But above all, end the war on liberty.

josefresco 13y ago
How about we end assigning meaningless catchy phrases to boring but important US policies. There is no "war on sex" or "war on religion" in the US only news organizations framing policies in that manor to get ratings.

tokenadult 13y ago

"We called on governments to adopt more humane and effective ways of controlling and regulating drugs. We recommended that the criminalization of drug use should be replaced by a public health approach." So the request here is not to say that everyone should use drugs however they wish without regulation, but rather that use of certain drugs should no longer be subject to criminal penalties. A few years ago, Richard Branson's blog post on drug regulation[1] similarly pointed to reducing criminal penalties without saying that drugs should be entirely unregulated, by looking at the example of Portugal. (How is Portugal doing these days?) The state I live in in the United States, Minnesota, has a low rate of incarceration in large part because it has a low rate of criminal prosecution of drug offenses, with even the small number of persons convicted of drug offenses being unlikely to do time in prison. But this state has a thriving private industry of drug treatment centers, drawing in people from all over the world who want to become clean, and responses to drug use often include judicially ordered drug treatment. Stopping a war on drugs waged by the police and courts and prisons doesn't have to include giving up on discouraging drug use. [1] http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/time-to-end-the-war-on-drugs http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/time-to-end-the-war-on... AFTER EDIT: I'll use the last bit of my edit window to post two more links to news reports about the experience of Portugal. These links are in chronological order, and newer than Richard Branson's blog post. http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/evaluating-drug-decriminalization-in-portugal-12-years-later-a-891060.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/evaluating-drug-d... http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-05-01/news/ct-met-portugal-drugs-20130502_1_treatment-facility-portugal-drug-policy http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-05-01/news/ct-met-po...

ryanatkn 13y ago
"Ten Years After Decriminalization, Drug Abuse Down by Half in Portugal" http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/07/05/ten-years-after-decriminalization-drug-abuse-down-by-half-in-portugal/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/07/05/ten-years-af...
mgkimsal 13y ago
"Stopping a war on drugs waged by the police and courts and prisons doesn't have to include giving up on discouraging drug use." There's big business in prisons and law enforcement. There's also big business in rehab and pharma. Getting the monied interests to shift their focus from one of incarceration to one of health shouldn't be this hard. We just need to shift dollars from one big industry to another. Perhaps pharma and health companies need bigger lobbying efforts?

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago

This legalization talk is flawed. Alcohol is legal, and that doesn't stop people, specially teenagers, from abusing it. It's also proven tobacco addiction starts during adolescence. In this case, legalization is just removing responsibility from the people who profit from it, since in practice the law isn't protecting who it's supposed to protect. Just because something is legal doesn't make it ethical. Then, we know legalizing certain drugs will only move traffic to worse drugs. Legalize marijuana and dealers will move more crack, just like the mafia moved from alcohol to cocaine after they lifted the prohibition in the US. Now what, the government will legalize crack too? Make even more unethical businesses operate under the law, knowing these products will be abused by teenagers just like alcohol and tobacco today? There's no easy solution, and no one is addressing the real issue: that substance abuse is cultural and heavily promoted. You talk to young people, and their concept of having a good time is "getting wasted". Dysfunctional families and poverty only worsen the issue.

girvo 13y ago
I respect that you have that opinion, even though I disagree with it personally. The big question to me, is what causes more harm: drug use, or the criminals that it funds? I'd wager the latter; drug use can be dealt with as a medical problem (I'm living proof) to some extent, murderous cartels, warlords, and corruption around the world can't be. Something to think about anyway!
- hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
  You know what's one of the most trafficked products in Brazil? Tobacco. Tons of counterfeit cigarettes cross the border between Paraguay and Brazil, and that funds crime syndicates. A legal and regulated product. Now imagine if marijuana or anything else is legalized... they will do the same thing to avoid taxation, which would go to fund health assistance, and buyers won't care about where it comes from - they'll just care that their fix is available for cheap. That drugs should be dealt with as a health issue, I don't disagree with, but legalizing substances isn't a silver bullet to stop crime, crime is rooted on other issues (education, poverty, lack of assistance).

tiagobraw 13y ago

The article is co-written by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former president of Brazil. I didn't like him when he was the president, but I do like very much his approach to legalize/decriminalize drugs... Kudos for them!

knodi 13y ago

No one in the government cares because this only effects poor people and they don't have the money to make a difference. If Obama wanted to make a real change he would have stopped the war on drugs already.

jdimov 13y ago

Unfortunately, the "mighty" USA is utterly incapable of functioning economically without wars, so this will never happen.

api 13y ago

At this point I think a big reason prohibition is kept alive is to save face. To end it, they'd have to admit they were wrong.

rodolphoarruda 13y ago

I believe the results of decriminalization may vary according to your social context. I live in Brazil and I don't think decriminalization would reduce violence around here, it would, at its best, move the focus away from the drug addict to other parts of the society. Collaborators from large drug organizations (tens of thousands of criminals, running millionaire operations, heavily armed) won't simply boo-hoo, go home and look for real jobs once drugs are decriminalized. They would look for the new weaker link of the chain and then concentrate all their violence on it. Once drugs are legalized and are freely sold on public points of sale (whatever government calls them), criminals would target the "supply chain" and distribution network. All of the sudden drug organizations would find themselves operating wholesale, not retail anymore. They would steal cargo to sell it at poor city areas or in places where official suppliers haven't established POSes yet. Stealing (buying for zero) and selling is much more attractive than "cooking" and selling. It's like outsourcing your production the bad way, keeping the benefit of higher profit margins. Higher margins lead to more competition, thus guns, thus violence among organizations (this is the current scenario in cities like Rio where drug organizations fight for territory dominance[1]). On the bright side, anyone interested in consuming drugs would be spared of this fight. They would be the same people who ever bought drugs, but now with the benefit of new regulations, treatment and care from the government. [1] This video shows a battle between two drug organizations in Rio that mobilized around 100 members coming from different slums. You can see a great deal of collateral damage in the local population, and this is what my point is all about. Watch from 1:00 onwards (sorry, Portuguese language all the way). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etu6YWC-rT4 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etu6YWC-rT4 Criminals were even able to shot down a police helicopter killing two officers. Drug war at its finest.

MichaelGG 13y ago
I'm unfamiliar with Brazil drug operations. But certainly these other crimes have significantly less profit/risk than the huge markup on illegal drugs? If they are properly legalized, the price should plummet. So even stealing or going wholesale is far less lucrative. You can already steal other goods. You could hijack a shipment of beer - but end-users aren't going to pay $15 a bottle for it because the normal price is known to be far less. So even if these organizations moved into theft, they wouldn't be able to finance huge armies anymore. I'd also note that stealing does not have a cost of zero. You need to finance people to attack, pay for their weapons, etc. And the cap on pricing means even if stealing was cheaper, the absolute profit still won't be as high, overall. Unless Brazil has a problem with criminal gangs already monopolizing distribution of other goods (like aspirin, tabacco, or alcohol), it seems like a stretch to say they'd do this for drugs. Even in the US, people have been killed in hijackings of trucks containing Intel processors.

volune 13y ago

I'm tired of these cowards coming out against the war on drugs after they no longer hold a position of power to do anything about it.

jmerton 13y ago

Here's an analogy some may find crazy: I've been collecting data that classifies sugar (cane / corn / etc.) as a drug, rather than a food. Considering that type 2 diabetes is a self induced illness caused by sugar abuse, should we imprison sugar addicts? I know, I know, that may be a bit of a stretch for some persons. Still, think about it.

arca_vorago 13y ago

The real issue that needs to be discussed, but no one wants to, is how one particular three letter uses drugs as a source of black ops funding, so that it is beyond congressional oversight. Of course, congress is so compromised they are much less afraid of oversight these days, but until people understand that the drug war is about money more than just in regards to asset forfeiture and other LEA uses, and the very top structures in government benefit from it.

duncan_bayne 13y ago

I'm reminded of a scene from The Assignment, where two characters are arguing at an official function: - How about "fuck you, pal"? - I'd believe it, if it was louder. In other news, I'm a bit sick of public figures coming out against the War on Drugs after their careers are functionally over.

aianus 13y ago

I've always wondered: what would drug dealers do if drugs were legalized? Would they throw their hands up and go get jobs at McDonald's? Or would they turn to robbery, kidnapping, etc? Maybe black markets are useful for providing an income for people that have criminal records and no skills.