Pubdate: Mon, 12 May 2014
Source: Calgary Herald (CN AB)
Copyright: 2014 Postmedia Network
Contact:  http://www.calgaryherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/66
Author: Kevin Brooker
Cited: http://mapinc.org/url/t4FrTmuU
Page: A10

FOOD SHOPPERS PAYING PRICE FOR WAR ON DRUGS

Have you gone to buy any Mexican limes or avocados lately? The price
for both has skyrocketed in recent months, with a wholesale case of
limes worth as much as four times what it cost just a year ago.

So what's the culprit? Bad weather? Trade embargo? Greedy
farmers?

No, according to Mexican sources, it has much to do with a drug
cartel, calling itself the Knights Templar, which has recently decided
that extorting money directly from growers in the lucrative lime and
avocado export business is a great way to diversify their "industry."
Thus, the artificially inflated price of these items on Calgary's
supermarket shelves can properly be described as a collateral effect
of the war on drugs.

That's just one of the negative consequences which are being roundly 
denounced in a new report called "Ending the Drug Wars: Report of the 
London School of Economics' Expert Group on the Economics of Drug 
Policy." Other consequences, the report says, "include mass 
incarceration in the U.S., highly repressive policies in Asia, vast 
corruption and political destabilization in Afghanistan and West Africa, 
immense violence in Latin America, an HIV epidemic in Russia, an acute 
global shortage of pain medication and the propagation of systematic 
human rights abuses around the world."

As if to underline that situation, the first page of the report
features a photograph of an obviously healthy field of Afghan opium
poppies being guarded by U.S. soldiers.

Written by a blue-ribbon team of economists, politicians and drug
policy experts - five of whom are Nobel laureates - they describe the
war as a failure on its own terms, i.e., that the goal of reducing
drugs on the street has never been met, and indeed, drugs are more
plentiful and powerful than ever before.

Meanwhile, the unintended consequences of prohibition continue to
proliferate. Take those Michoacan gangsters - had they never been
enticed into the hyper-profitable world of supplying illicit drugs to
the U.S., they wouldn't possess the battalions of armed thugs that it
takes to intimidate orchardists into handing over money for nothing.

The 84-page report concludes that "a new global drug strategy should
be based on principles of public health, harm reduction, illicit
market impact reduction, expanded access to essential medicines,
minimization of problematic consumption, rigorously monitored
regulatory experimentation and an unwavering commitment to principles
of human rights."

Not that any of this is news to people who have worked in the drug war
trenches. But you have to wonder if people like Prime Minister Stephen
Harper and his fellow tough-on-crime ideologues will even bother to
read this very readable document, in spite of its blue-ribbon
provenance. You will recall back in 2011, when he was presented with
the conclusions of another high-profile group with a similar message,
B.C.'s Stop the Violence coalition, comprised of former police
officers, a judge, medical leaders and a former chief coroner, the PM
made it clear there would never be cannabis decriminalization on his
watch.

Instead, Harper's government has presided over a dramatic expansion of
the so-called prison industrial complex. In their first five years,
the Tories increased spending on correctional facilities by 86 per
cent. And at a time when U.S. lawmakers are reconsidering their
botched experiments with mandatory minimum sentencing, Harper's crew
is rowing in the opposite direction.

Six scrawny cannabis plants in some otherwise law-abiding dad's closet
will fetch an automatic six months' jail time. And you know what that
produces - collateral damage. Man loses job, wife has to work two
jobs, kids get in trouble and wind up in foster care, a.k.a. crime
school.

For what it's worth, a vast majority of commenters on Canadian news
sites agree with the conclusions of the London School of Economics
report, and are demanding that federal politicians respond
appropriately. The next election must and will turn on a future
government's willingness to understand the degree of damage visited
upon us all by drug prohibition. Unless he somehow learns something
new, I don't fancy Harper's prospects.
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MAP posted-by: Matt