War On Drugs = Dismal Failure

Why has it taken SOOOOOOOOOOOOO long to get to the truth of this matter?

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/drugs+dismal+failure/4894005/story.html


On Thursday, a panel of eminent persons released a report calling on the world's governments to dramatically change how they deal with illicit drugs. "The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world," concluded the Global Commission on Drug Policy.

The 19 members of the commission include former presidents of Colombia, Mexico and Brazil, as well legendary former United States Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, former Canadian Supreme Court justice Louise Arbour, and former secretary of state under Ronald Reagan, George Shultz. But for those who know the history of the war on drugs, and the central role played by the United Nations, the most striking name on the list is that of Kofi Annan.

As secretary general of the United Nations in 1998, Kofi Annan presided over a special United Nations assembly on illicit drugs, which brought together leaders from all over the world. Shortly before that historic event, a letter of protest was delivered to the UN chief.

"We believe that the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself," the letter began. Trying to stop the harms done by drug consumption by banning drugs had only succeeded in producing a massive international black market. "This industry has empowered organized criminals, corrupted governments at all levels, eroded internal security, stimulated violence, and distorted both economic markets and moral values." These were not the consequences "of drug use per se, but of decades of failed and futile drug war policies."

"Mr. Secretary General," the letter concluded, "we appeal to you to initiate a truly open and honest dialogue regarding the failure of global drug policies -one in which fear, prejudice, and punitive prohibitions yield to common sense, science, public health, and human rights."

The letter was signed by a remarkable list of eminent statesmen, officials, and intellectuals, including four former presidents from Latin America, Nobel laureates Milton Friedman and Adolfo Perez Esquivel and former U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders. But Annan must have been impressed by one signatory in particular. It was Javier Perez de Cuellar, former United Nations secretary general.

What Annan thought at the time is not clear. But the UN did not "initiate a truly open and honest dialogue."

In fact, the critics were dismissed out of hand.

"There are naysayers who believe a global fight against illegal drugs is unwinnable," said Pino Arlacchi, the top UN drug official. "I say emphatically they are wrong."

American officials were particularly contemptuous. U.S. president Bill Clinton's drug czar dismissed the signatories as airy intellectuals. The war on drugs was making great progress, he insisted.

The UN special assembly went ahead, following a script largely written by the government of the United States. The war on drugs would not only continue, it would escalate, with the nations of the world -Canada very much included -agreeing to increase the already enormous sums they were spending on the suppression of drugs. And they set an ambitious goal: " . eliminating or significantly reducing the illicit cultivation of the coca bush, the cannabis plant, and the opium poppy by the year 2008."

A decade later, the world was not drug-free. In fact, the UN's own estimates showed marijuana consumption had risen 8.5 per cent, cocaine consumption had increased 27 per cent, and opiate consumption had soared 34.5 per cent.

There were no consequences for this abject failure. In 2008, the UN hardly mentioned the goal it had set in 1998. The UN's drug agency even lied about it, and spun the data in order to claim success. But few journalists noticed or cared. They had long since forgotten an event that had been major news at the time. And governments weren't about to remind them.

And so we're back to eminent people, including a former UN secretary general, pleading with the world's governments to reconsider. Only the names have changed.

It would be appalling if this were the first instance in which the UN and the world's governments ignored criticism, spent vast sums of money on the suppression of drugs, and refused to take responsibility for -or even acknowledge -abject failure. But it's not the first instance. Far from it.

The modern system of international drug control began 50 years ago, with the creation of the UN Convention which is still its foundation. There were critics in 1961, too. But they were dismissed as naysayers.

Years passed. The amount of money spent on the war on drugs soared. So did drug production, consumption, and distribution. Richard Nixon coined the phrase "war on drugs" and further ramped up drug control efforts. The drug trade kept growing. Ronald Reagan launched his war on drugs. Things got worse.

On and on it goes. Occasionally there's a new wrinkle, like the advent of the AIDS epidemic, which most epidemiologists agree was made much worse by the criminalization of drugs. But for the most part, only the names change. In the 1990s, Colombia was torn apart; now it's Mexico. Turkish opium production ebbed and Afghanistan's surged, providing a bountiful source of funding for the weapons that kill Canadian soldiers.

It's the same at the national level. The current Canadian debate between critics who want an approach focused on public health and prohibitionists who want to scale up law enforcement and punishment has happened many times before. The prohibitionists always win. And their policies always fail. In the early 1960s, harsh new punishments, including severe mandatory minimum sentences, came into force. Shortly after, drug trafficking and consumption soared.



Read more: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Global+drugs+dismal+failure/4894005/story.html#ixzz1OJxP0Qww

 

Gonna be boots onna ground in Mexico...

Mexican public warming to US military aid in drug war?
September 1, 2011 - Although a broad majority of Mexicans still oppose US troop support to maintain law and order in Mexico, a new survey indicates a growing percentage of the Mexican public support US assistance.

 

Instead of implementing effective measure such as drug counseling and needle exchange programs the Republican **********s have pushed this insane lock everyone up policy. At least we can compete with the Chinese in regards to the percentage of our citizens locked up in prisons. Thank you Republicans for truly making this the land of the free.

 

It's part of the moralization of medicine that conservatives are soaking in. If you treat addiction like a disease (which is basically what it is), then you have to treat it. And that means clinics, public health care, and putting aside the claims of moral superiority that the insecure **********s need to sustain their selfesteem in a world in which they are rapidly being outcompeted.

They prefer to punish addicts, kids with ADS, and AIDs patients, etc. rather than treat them.

It's part of the conservative pschosis.

 

What I find so counter intuitive about the whole situation is we could save BILLIONS of dollars a year if we legalized marijuana and taxed it. By some estimates it is the biggest money maker for Mexican cartels. If legalized it that would be billions of dollars in our coffers instead of the coffers of narco terrorists. Why in the world would **********s oppose this? Plus we would save billions more by releasing all the nonviolent pot smokers from prison. Plus if people bought marijuana grown in the USA the money would be recirculated back into the broader economy.

********** policies just don't make any sense.

 

Not surrendering Mexico to drug cartels...

Why a truce between Mexico and the drug cartels makes no sense
September 2, 2011 - After the latest massacre of Mexican citizens, former President Fox said authorities should seek a truce with the gangs – a suggestion that isn't feasible, says guest blogger Patrick Corcoran.

See also:

Key Gulf Cartel figure is killed in northern Mexico
Sun, Sep 04, 2011 - DRUG WAR CASUALTY:Samuel Flores Borrego is believed responsible for the killing that set off the Gulf Cartel-Zeta war, and is believed to have been killed by his own cartel

 

just speaking for myself I would not mind seeing weed legalized, especially now that I am retired and don't have to worry about being anyplace in particular at any given time

But yeah the war on drugs has been a tremendous boondoggle and like most morality laws will continue to be

 

Typical knee-jerk reaction from the leftist who are ignorant of the fact that National Review led by WFB were among the first voices to call for legalization of drugs and many conservatives have supported at least decriminlaztion just as many liberals have called stopping illegal drugs. In fact the only persons running for national office supporting such measures calling for the issue to be openly and honestly discussed ARE Republican conservatives/libertarians.

 

Amazing that you blame a small fraction of people in power for the continuance of the worthless drug war. Drop the partisanship and admit that the democrats are also social authoritarians. Obama, the neo-con warmonger is president. Ask him how he scoffed at the idea of legalizing marijuana when asked. Ask Hillary why she said "there is way too much money" in the drug war to abandon it.

Ask them why their federal agents are raiding legal shops in California. While you're at it, ask them why federal agents let guns fall into the hands of Mexican drug cartels and then proceeded to cover up the evidence of their wrongdoings...I just want an answer for this one.

 

The modern "liberals", which are really no more than a bunch of power-grabbing statists, cannot let go of any amount of federal power. They deem it all to be absolutely necessary to the implementation of their centrally-planned nightmare society. Neo-cons and progressives are one and the same, they want central power over all aspects of our lives and dominance over the entire globe.

 

Good post, great info. Too bad it will be overlooked by those who will not accpet the facts and go by their ongoing retoric.

In some South American countries they have stopped the war on drugs (particularly weed and cocaine), as they have determined it is halting their development and growth, as well as costing massive amounts of money and lives. Mexico is on the verge of comming to the reality Colombia did with the war on drugs. And they will need to determine if all those lives and cost of money to fight it is worth the fight.

In the USA there is the Meth and Crack epidemic that eats away at the finances of each State, and takes up major space in the judicial and corrctional system. The former USA Drug Czar William Bennet once said that the war on drugs can never be won, and that some other form of legeslation other than criminalizing drugs would be in order. Fact is pharmasutical companies make too much money to allow natural remidies to be legal. Why, because pot/weed/chronic can be home grown (unlike pharmasuticals), and you can't make profit off it once you legalize pot.

Some in the USA buy into all that terrorism and illegal immigration propaganda and avoid the issues that realy affect their community and the future of their State/Country. In the USA the two big problems are massive cost of k-12 education and the cost of drug addiction. Most only buy into the propaganda of the media, and do not have the intelligence to look at the whole picture of what is involved and why so much money is being wasted.

Lets face it the drug user, pot smoker, and illegal alien are the ideal prisoners, they are meek and obedient and will follow directions without drama. Hence prisons like them, and will parole a violent criminal drama perp before the stoner or the illegal. As a result, in the USA you have a lot of private owned prisons housing the mild ones for a lot of tax money, and the State funded prisons are where they hold the hard core ones, and they are way to filled up to do any rehab, it is all just housing.

If Canada is smart they can learn from the mistakes of the USA when it comes to the war on drugs, as well as the successes of Colombia and Chile And learn from Mexico on how that is working out for them.

 

National Review 1996

http://old.nationalreview.com/12feb96/drug.html

NATIONAL REVIEW has attempted during its tenure as, so to speak, keeper of the conservative tablets to analyze public problems and to recommend intelligent thought. The magazine has acknowledged a variety of positions by right-minded thinkers and analysts who sometimes reach conflicting conclusions about public policy. As recently as on the question of troops to Bosnia, there was dissent within the family from our corporate conclusion that we'd be best off staying home.

For many years we have published analyses of the drug problem. An important and frequently cited essay by Professor Michael Gazzaniga (Feb. 5, 1990) brought a scientist's discipline into the picture, shedding light on matters vital to an understanding of the drug question. He wrote, for instance, about different rates of addiction, and about ambient pressures that bear on addiction. Elsewhere, Professor James Q. Wilson, now of UCLA, has written eloquently in defense of the drug war. Milton Friedman from the beginning said it would not work, and would do damage.

We have found Dr. Gazzaniga and others who have written on the subject persuasive in arguing that the weight of the evidence is against the current attempt to prohibit drugs. But NATIONAL REVIEW has not, until now, opined formally on the subject. We do so at this point. To put off a declarative judgment would be morally and intellectually weak-kneed.

Things being as they are, and people as they are, there is no way to prevent somebody, somewhere, from concluding that ``NATIONAL REVIEW favors drugs.'' We don't; we deplore their use; we urge the stiffest feasible sentences against anyone convicted of selling a drug to a minor. But that said, it is our judgment that the war on drugs has failed, that it is diverting intelligent energy away from how to deal with the problem of addiction, that it is wasting our resources, and that it is encouraging civil, judicial, and penal procedures associated with police states. We all agree on movement toward legalization, even though we may differ on just how far.

We are joined in our judgment by Ethan A. Nadelmann, a scholar and researcher; Kurt Schmoke, a mayor and former prosecutor; Joseph D. McNamara, a former police chief; Robert W. Sweet, a federal judge and former prosecutor; Thomas Szasz, a psychiatrist; and Steven B. Duke, a law professor. Each has his own emphases, as one might expect. All agree that the celebrated war has failed, and that it is time to go home, and to mobilize fresh thought on the drug problem in the context of a free society. This symposium is our contribution to such thought.
--THE EDITORS

cont. in the link

 

El Loco Barrera, last of the Colombian drug kingpins nabbed...

Colombia arrests ‘last’ drug lord
Thu, Sep 20, 2012 - FOLLOW THE MONEY: A global security forces operation caught Daniel Barrera, whose drug empire grew on the back of lucrative narcotics markets in both the US and Europe

 

IOW, the UN's Drug Kickback Payments from Third World Drug Lords have stopped...These people have no interest in anyhting besides their own wallets...Volcker being the ONE POSSIBLE exception...

 

Caught `em in Haiti...

DEA agents arrest members of Venezuelan president's family
Nov. 12, 2015 -- U.S. agents arrested members of the Venezuelan president's family in Haiti on charges of drug smuggling, officials said.

 

Put the Cartels and drug dealers out of business overnight by legalizing drugs. Take away it's mystery by putting the money used in the "war on drugs" towards education, outreach, counseling and re-rehabilitation. Allow the government the ability to provide drugs and equipment for free ... all drug users who get their free drugs are then assign counselors are offered 12 step programs, and I'm confident we'd see drug use plummet. Those who wish to continue to use drugs will be a vast minority.

Such a view is very counter intuitive, but I would guarantee it's less expensive, more productive and more effective than what we're doing right now. As well, we can identify people who need help and at least offer it, versus them staying the dark and buying illegal drugs off some drug dealer on the corner who makes it in his dirty rat infested home, cutting it with potentially poison or who knows what.

 

I do not agree with the gov handing out "free" drugs if they end prohibition anymore then handing out free alcohol when they ended prohibition in the past

now offering treatment for both for those that request help, I am for that

I have no problem what putting people in jail for committing crimes on drugs, just like someone committing crimes off drugs... just not for the drugs themselves

.

 

Yeah I kind of regret I posted that statement that way --- The capitalist and free market person inside me cringed a little. The point though is how can the cartels be hurt the most and removed from the equation. My view is by cutting the Cartels out of the equation, we not only reduce smuggling and drug manufacturing, we reduce crimes associated with drugs as well as deal serious blows to gang activity and their ability to sustain violent gang activity in the US.

Agreed. Possession and personal use should not be a crime in and of itself.

 

definitely agree, if we stop funneling billions into gangs, cartels and terrorist via are war on drugs, it would help to defund those very same groups

 

Sounds like what happened to Jeb Bush's family.

 

Coast Guard intercepts smuggled cocaine...

Coast Guard Seizes Major Cocaine Loads off Latin America
Nov 19, 2015 -- The U.S. Coast Guard has seized more than 50,000 pounds of cocaine off Latin America during the past four months in what is shaping up to be a record year for seizures in the Pacific.

 

And your point is?

 

Cost of business goes up. Now they can pay even more for their drug and have to rob more houses to support their habit. Or a new source of different purity comes in and people overdose. Hooray... Wait I know, now the coast guard parties will be more fun. That's the silver lining maybe.

 

Granny says, "Dat's right - he looks guilty as sin...

U.S. blacklists Venezuela's vice president as drug trafficker
Mon Feb 13, 2017 | WASHINGTON - The United States blacklisted Venezuela's Vice President Tareck El Aissami for drug trafficking, the first crackdown by the Trump administration against a top official in President Nicolas Maduro's government for money laundering and the drug trade.

 

Granny says, "Dat's right - he grinnin' like a possum eatin' a persimmon...

Venezuela's VP shrugs off drug sanctions as US weighs policy
Feb 14,`17 -- Venezuela's vice president shrugged off U.S. sanctions identifying him as a major international drug trafficker, saying Tuesday that the actions by the Trump administration only deepen his commitment to the anti-imperialist revolution started by the late Hugo Chavez.