Pubdate: Mon, 30 May 2011
Source: Hindu, The (India)
Copyright: 2011 The Hindu
Contact:  http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/874
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

DRUGS NEED NEW THINKING

The Global Commission on Drug Policy, a group that includes former 
United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan and several former Latin 
American presidents, is expected to announce soon that the "war on 
drugs" has been a failure.

The Mexican government states that since President Felipe Calderon 
took office in 2006 and implemented a crackdown, trafficking has been 
a factor in 35,000 deaths, and drug-related corruption is out of control.

In the United States, which has the world's highest levels of use, 
the NGO Drug Policy Alliance estimates that official bodies spend $51 
billion a year fighting drugs. The political context is also 
significant. In India, regions like the Northeast reveal connections 
between conflict and opportunities for trafficking, as also between 
injected drugs and HIV/AIDS transmission. Furthermore, law and policy 
are no deterrents; research on cannabis use has found that the most 
important factor is the social context.

With illegal drugs now a major source of income for organised crime, 
governments cannot curb the trade and often resort to torture and 
extra-judicial killings.

State agencies also seem to deal in deadly drugs. The crashes in 
Latin America of two aircraft used by the CIA for the rendition of 
terrorism suspects for torture elsewhere revealed cargoes totalling 
four tonnes of cocaine.

The human cost of the failed war on drugs is incalculable, and the 
need for radical new approaches can no longer be denied.

The main international instrument, the 1961 U.N. Single Convention on 
Narcotic Drugs, has no enforcement mechanism and is almost toothless. 
Legalisation is controversial, with few politicians ready to support 
it publicly. Fortunately, a broad consensus across ideological lines 
is emerging in the form of decriminalisation, which makes drug use an 
administrative violation but treats trafficking as a criminal 
offence. In Portugal, the only European Union state to legislate to 
this effect, it has been assessed as an undisputed success.

Drug use and drug-related deaths and diseases have declined over the 
last decade, and the use of harm-reduction services has increased greatly.

Several Latin American countries -- which have been ravaged by the 
drug trade -- as well as some EU states and a few regional 
governments elsewhere have got good results from de facto 
decriminalisation. The strategy may, however, encounter resistance 
from powerful vested interests, including police and other security 
forces, politicians fearful of public disapproval, and drug cartels. 
The Global Commission's statement will be awaited with interest, as 
it could signal an overdue change in the world's attitude to drugs.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom