Pubdate: Tue, 26 Jun 2012
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2012 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/wEtbT4yU
Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Cited: The Global Commission on Drug Policy: 
http://www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/

MAKING WAR ON THE WAR ON DRUGS

Today marks the release of a new report from the Global Commission on 
Drug Policy, a reform minded group that includes many name-brand 
political figures and policy-makers from across the world. One of its 
advisors is Canada's own Evan Wood, a doctor who works at a hospital 
in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside - perhaps the best vantage point in 
Canada from which to observe the human toll in the war on drugs.

"Gang members engaged in drug supply and distribution arrive in the 
emergency room bloody and panicked, after being shot, stabbed or 
beaten," he writes. "On the demand side, impurities and adulterants 
stemming from basement drug labs and uncertainties regarding potency 
keep emergency personnel busy responding to drug overdoses."

No matter what one's position on the war on drugs, it is important to 
state at the outset: Street drugs ruin lives. Except in rare cases 
(legitimate medicinal usage of marijuana by AIDS, cancer and glaucoma 
patients, for instance), using them is a path to addiction, 
impoverishment, job loss, relationship breakdown and sometimes death.

That said, Dr. Wood and his Global Commission on Drug Policy 
colleagues make a strong case for reform. As they point out, the 
negative health and economic effects caused by the war on drugs 
typically exceed the human cost of the drugs themselves. Here in 
Canada, this cost includes the horrors documented by Dr. Wood: 
violent street crime between warring drug syndicates, as well as the 
poisons contained in (unregulated) drug products sold by street 
pushers. But that is only a drop in the bucket compared to the far 
greater harms caused by the war on drugs in other nations such as 
Mexico and Afghanistan. The drug war has claimed 50,000 lives in 
Mexico alone since 2006.

Admittedly, many of those doing the killing do not make attractive 
poster boys for drug reform: Typically, these are hardened criminals 
- - killing one another, and trafficking in products that will end up 
feeding the addictions of Canadians and American drug users. But it 
is the underlying economic incentives that explain this fact: From 
Canada's native reserves to the Juarez, any industry that exists 
outside the law, and which provides massive windfall payouts for 
ruthless players who can kill and bribe their way into a monopoly 
position, is guaranteed to attract the most sadistic members of a 
country's criminal class. Get rid of those incentives, and the 
criminals migrate away. A June 15 New York Times Magazine feature by 
Patrick Radden Keefe helps put concrete numbers to this broad 
principle. Mexico's Sinaloa cartel, the author reports, buys its 
cocaine in the South American highlands for about $2,000 per kilo - 
but can sell the same quantity in the United States for $30,0! 00 - 
which then mushrooms to $100,000 when it is divided up for street 
sale: a 50:1 profit ratio. Almost all of this profit consists of what 
might be called a "criminalization premium" - the surcharge that 
criminals earn when they risk imprisonment or death. In Afghanistan, 
where most of the world's heroin originates, much of this profit is 
funnelled back to the Taliban. In a sense, the war on drugs is 
creating the windfall profits for our enemies that, in turn, 
undermine the war on terror.

Of course, policy-makers have known for years that the war on drugs 
is a failed policy. But there are signs that the tide may finally be 
turning in favour of common sense.

First, there is the fact that government balance sheets are in 
trouble all over the Western world - especially in the United States. 
Prisons in California and other states are beyond their capacity. In 
the face of massive deficits, even many conservatives are wondering 
why non-violent drug offenders are consuming tens of thousands of 
public dollars per year languishing behind bars.

The diminishing stature of the United States on the world stage may 
also be playing a role. For many Latin American countries, it once 
was unthinkable to buck the hardline U.S. approach on drug policy - 
even though it was primarily Latin American soldiers and gangsters 
who were dying in the service of a prohibitionist policy ultimately 
aimed at protecting middle-class American families. But that is 
changing: Latin American politicians are sick and tired of being told 
what to do on this file. In 2009, the former presidents of Brazil, 
Colombia and Mexico jointly declared that "the war on drugs has 
failed," and called for the decriminalization of marijuana. More 
recently, Mexico's Felipe Calderon, Costa Rica's Laura Chinchilla, 
Argentina's Cristina Kirchner and Colombia's Juan Manuel Santos have 
exhibited similar skepticism. And last week, it was announced that 
Uruguay might soon regulate and sell marijuana as a means to 
undermine criminals.

Canada should take a lead role in this movement. While it is too soon 
to propose legalizing, or even decriminalizing, cocaine and other 
hard drugs, the same is not true of marijuana. By joining with Latin 
American nations in championing reform in this area, we might forge 
an alliance for common sense that finally forces Washington to 
reconsider its failed war on drugs.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom