Pubdate: Mon, 05 Aug 2013
Source: Evening Standard (London, UK)
Copyright: 2013 Associated Newspapers Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/914
Author: Amol Rajan

HAVE THE COURAGE TO GIVE UP THE WAR ON DRUGS

NEXT year the stupidest policy in human history will celebrate its 
centenary in pretty good shape. You can make a convincing case that 
the absurdly named War on Drugs was born in 1914, with the passing of 
the Harrison Narcotics Act in America. Restricting the sale and 
manufacture of substances such as cocaine, heroin and cannabis, this 
was the United States' first federal drug policy.

Of course, 1914 was also the year another Great War broke out. It's a 
grim business comparing wars but needs must. The First World War, as 
it is also known, lasted four years and led to perhaps 37 million 
deaths. The War on Drugs has lasted a century but its casualties 
cannot be calculated.

The wars are united in being unnecessary and divided in one crucial 
respect: the Great War is lamented as a terrible chapter in our 
history whereas the War on Drugs is with us today and continued daily 
by idiots seeking re-election.

We ought to call it off. It cannot be won. It is costing billions 
each month, causing the self-immolation of whole nations, from Mexico 
to Afghanistan, making gangsters rich and funded by you and me. No 
internationally co-ordinated policy has ever brought as much harm and 
suffering.

The case for legalising drugs is a marriage of principle and 
practicality. In principle, the state has no business stopping me 
from getting high, unless I'm harming others. A century of evidence 
shows that prohibition, not the drugs themselves, is the cause of 
harm. It is hilarious watching libertarians on the Right, who spend 
their lives attacking the State, run to it like terrified toddlers 
when it comes to drugs. They should re-read Milton Friedman, who had 
the courage to support legalisation.

On practicality, look at alcohol. If you legalise it, you can 
regulate and control supply. This is why decriminalisation of drugs, 
which leaves production and supply in the hands of gangsters, doesn't 
go far enough.

Middle-class parents who fret that the noses of little Harry or 
Margot might be exposed to ghastly powders should be comforted, not 
scared, by legalisation: it means your children are less, not more, 
exposed to dangerous products and nasty dealers. And anyway, why 
should the anxieties of middle-class parents tomorrow trump the real, 
felt horrors of poorer parents - who live with the consequences of 
prohibition - today?

Aside from Nick Clegg and a few liberals, our politicians are cowards 
and hypocrites on this subject. Luckily, leaders elsewhere are 
showing they've got cojones. Uruguay legalised cannabis last week. 
Washington state and Colorado have done so too. The presidents of 
Colombia and Guatemala favour legalisation of all drugs. In Portugal, 
most drugs have been decriminalised.

We may be approaching a tipping point. And yet, with unforgivable 
ignorance and myopia, our Prime Minister uttered the following words 
last year: "We have a drugs policy that actually is working in 
Britain." This is self-delusion, and beyond parody. For such vanities 
are children murdered, landscapes destroyed and whole cities run 
according to the whim of barons and barbarians.

If a century of failure can't persuade our rulers to reconsider, 
evidence from abroad just might. We ought, then, to wish Uruguay luck 
- - except that they won't need it.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom