Is the War on Drugs Finally Coming to an End? | Drug War is Global Failure

This is great news for everyone who is affected by the War on Drugs and that includes – EVERYONE.

A panel has gotten together to approach the U.N. and begin the process to end the U.S. Led War on Drugs that puts over a half a million American marijuana smokers in jail each year while putting BILLIONS of U.S. Dollars in the hands of dangerous drug cartels that would not exist if it were not for such laws that create an instant black market for something that apparently, everyone wants.

Check this out…..

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“As spiraling drug violence kills thousands in Mexico and police battle gangs for control of Brazil’s drug-infested slums, an international panel has concluded that the U.S.-led war on drugs is a failure.

“The global war on drugs has failed,” said a report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy due to be released Thursday. The report calls for a frank dialogue on the issue and encourages governments to experiment with the regulation of drugs, especially marijuana.

Read the Report

Read the Global Commission on Drug Policy’s report

The 19-member commission includes a broad spectrum: former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and former NATO Secretary General Javier Solana, and former presidents Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico, Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil and Cesar Gaviria of Colombia—all countries that have faced brutal drug violence. Former Secretary of State George Shultz and former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker are on the commission, as are writers Carlos Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa.

“Our minimum goal is to get the U.S. to discuss the problem in all its magnitude and not to lock itself up in a policy that has failed,” said Mr. Gaviria. “Mexico and Colombia must get the U.S. to debate. The belief that there is no alternative because of electoral reasons is not acceptable.”

A spokesman for the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy said U.S. drug policy wasn’t a result of a “drug war” mentality and that its “balanced drug control efforts are making a big difference,” including recent reductions in the use of drugs such as cocaine.

“Making drugs more available, as this report suggests, will make it harder to keep our communities healthy and safe,” spokesman Rafael Lemaitre said in a statement.

The panel was formed last year as an outgrowth of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy, also led by Mr. Cardoso, which published an influential report in 2009. Its members felt that for their work to be effective, it had to be taken to the global level. The Global Commission is funded by member Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Group Ltd., George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, the Instituto Fernando Henrique Cardoso and the Centro Edelstein de Pesquisas Sociais in Brazil.

In the report, Mr. Gaviria blasted the impact of U.S.-led antidrug efforts on already hard-pressed state institutions like the police and courts in countries throughout Latin America. “We can no longer ignore the extent to which drug-related violence, crime and corruption in Latin America are the results of failed drug war policies,” he wrote.

Guatemala last month declared martial law in the jungle province of Peten after gunmen believed to be members of Mexico’s brutal Zetas cartel, which has spread throughout Latin America, beheaded 27 people. Last year, Brazil, which is getting ready to host the Olympics and the World Cup in Rio de Janeiro, sent nearly 20,000 soldiers and police to take the city’s teeming slums back from drug gangs.

But nowhere is the violence worse than in Mexico, where more than 40,000 people have died in drug-related violence since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon sent out thousands of soldiers and federal police to try to recover large areas of the country under the virtual control of powerful drug cartels. While Mr. Calderon has scored some successes in capturing or killing major drug traffickers, turf wars between cartels have led to a spike in violence and crime in previously peaceful areas, including Monterrey, the country’s can-do business capital.

“Let’s start treating drug addiction as a health issue, reducing drug demand through proven educational initiatives, and legally regulating rather than criminalizing cannabis,” Mr. Cardoso said in a statement.

The drug war has been an expensive failure both abroad and at home, said Bruce Bagley, an expert on drug trafficking and Latin America at the University of Miami. Abroad, Mr. Bagley compared U.S. efforts to a massive game of whack-a-mole in which drug supplies, drug violence and crime are “shuffled from one country to the other.” He said that in the U.S. there is little or nothing to show for it “except for the warehousing of some 600,000 people a year on drug-related offenses in prison at huge cost.”

via Panel Calls War on Drugs a Failure – WSJ.com.

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Compiled by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which includes former heads of state, a former U.N. secretary-general and a business mogul, the report calls on governments to end the criminalization of marijuana and other controlled substances.

“Political leaders and public figures should have the courage to articulate publicly what many of them acknowledge privately: that the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that repressive strategies will not solve the drug problem, and that the war on drugs has not, and cannot, be won,” the report said.

The 19-member commission includes former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and former U.S. official George P. Schultz, who held cabinet posts under U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. Others include former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, former presidents of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, writers Carlos Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa, U.K. business mogul Richard Branson and the current prime minister of Greece.

Instead of punishing users who the report says “do no harm to others,” the commission argues that governments should end criminalization of drug use, experiment with legal models that would undermine organized crime syndicates and offer health and treatment services for drug-users in need.

The commission called for drug policies based on methods empirically proven to reduce crime, lead to better health and promote economic and social development.

The commission is especially critical of the United States, which its members say must lead changing its anti-drug policies from being guided by anti-crime approaches to ones rooted in health care and human rights.

“We hope this country (the U.S.) at least starts to think there are alternatives,” former Colombian president Cesar Gaviria told The Associated Press by phone. “We don’t see the U.S. evolving in a way that is compatible with our (countries’) long-term interests.”

The office of White House drug czar Gil Kerlikowske said the report was misguided.

“Drug addiction is a disease that can be successfully prevented and treated. Making drugs more available – as this report suggests – will make it harder to keep our communities healthy and safe,” Office of National Drug Control Policy spokesman Rafael Lemaitre said.

That office cites statistics showing declines in U.S. drug use compared to 30 years ago, along with a more recent 46 percent drop in current cocaine use among young adults over the last five years.

The report cited U.N. estimates that opiate use increased 34.5 percent worldwide and cocaine 27 percent from 1998 to 2008, while the use of cannabis, or marijuana, was up 8.5 percent.

via Major Panel: Drug War Has Failed, Legalize Marijuana | wltx.com.