Pubdate: Thu, 07 Jul 2011
Source: Bangor Daily News (ME)
Copyright: 2011 Bangor Daily News Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/MWLhV21W
Website: http://www.bangordailynews.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/40

FIXING THE WAR ON DRUGS

A high-powered international commission has declared the war on drugs 
a failure. It urges governments to consider decriminalizing the use 
of drugs, especially marijuana, as a way to combat organized crime.

The report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, issued on June 2, 
attracted little attention and may simply gather dust like other such 
documents. But it is worth considering, not least because two of the 
panel's outspoken members are former Secretary of State George P. 
Shultz and the eminent economist Paul A. Volcker, who after serving 
as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, continues as a one-man 
watch dog on banking and speculation policy.

They signed the report, they wrote in The New York Times, because 
they believe that "drug addiction is harmful to individuals, impairs 
health, and has adverse societal effects." They said they wanted an 
effective program to deal with the problem.

The question is how to go about it. "For 40 years now," they wrote, 
our nation's approach has been to criminalize the entire process of 
producing, transporting, selling and using drugs, with the exception 
of tobacco and alcohol. Our judgment, shared by other members of the 
commission, is that this approach has not worked, just as our 
national experiment with the prohibition of alcohol failed."

Drugs are readily available. Crime rates remain high.

The commission listed unintended consequences of the present 
approach: growth of a huge criminal black market, using scarce 
resources for a vast law enforcement system, pushing drug protection 
to new and less enforced sites, pushing consumers to new addictive 
products, and turning drug users into social outcasts.

Instead, the commission would encourage open debate, confine 
prosecution to the those who run the business, not the users and 
people at the lower end of the distribution system, who are more 
victims than perpetrators. Across-the-board prosecution would be 
replaced by more therapeutic treatment of addiction and more respect 
for the human rights of all concerned.

The report noted that successful operations against organized 
criminals have had little lasting impact on drug prices and 
availability and that eradication of opium, cannabis or coca crops 
merely shoves illicit cultivation elsewhere.

Thus, the commission goes far beyond the mere decriminalization of 
marijuana, which by itself could reduce its street price but might 
spread its use. Portugal stopped prosecuting the use or possession of 
all drugs in 2001. While overall drug use kept pace with use in other 
countries, use of heroin, the Portuguese favorite, declined sharply 
and reduced the law-enforcement burden.

A clear lesson is that the present system needs serious rethinking. 
Treatment can be better than prosecution in dealing with addicts.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart