Clinton apologises to the Mexicans

Another sign from the Obama administration that it trying to turn back the clock on eight years of Bush


The quote of the day in the New York Times

“Our insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade,” Mrs. Clinton said, using unusually blunt language. “Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians.”

Another approach to the war on drugs

I have made postings in the past about drug policy and in particular whether legalisation may control the problem.

Well one country that tried this approach was Portugal and Glenn Greenwald in this post thinks that the policy has been a success after it became the only EU to follow that path back in 2001.

Evaluating the policy strictly from an empirical perspective, decriminalization has been an unquestionable success, leading to improvements in virtually every relevant category and enabling Portugal to manage drug-related problems (and drug usage rates) far better than most Western nations that continue to treat adult drug consumption as a criminal offense.

Morales sticks up fo the Coca leaf

The President of Bolivia Evo Morales plans to stand up for his country's practice of chewing the Coco leaf.

Following a meeting of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs this week in Vienna Morales writing in the New York Times today says

for the past eight years, the millions of us who maintain the traditional practice of chewing coca have been, according to the convention, criminals who violate international law.

arguing that

The paste or the concentrate that is extracted from the coca leaf, commonly known as cocaine, is indeed a narcotic, but the plant itself is not.

Why should centuries of tradition be wiped away and as he points out

Unlike nicotine or caffeine, it causes no harm to human health nor addiction or altered state, and it is effective in the struggle against obesity, a major problem in many modern societies.

The best solution to the drug problem

This isnt the first time that we have heard this argument but when the call comes from the Economist to legalise drugs,then maybe we should sit up and take notice.

Next week ministers from around the world gather in Vienna to set international drug policy for the next decade. Like first-world-war generals, many will claim that all that is needed is more of the same. In fact the war on drugs has been a disaster, creating failed states in the developing world even as addiction has flourished in the rich world. By any sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless. That is why The Economist continues to believe that the least bad policy is to legalise drugs.

The argument is a simple one,cuurent policy is simply not working

more than 200m people, or almost 5% of the world’s adult population, still take illegal drugs—roughly the same proportion as a decade ago.

Imagine a world.......

Where all drugs are legal

We have heard this arguments before but over at First Post,Duncan Campbell once more puts forward the proposition that by legalising all drugs we could lift the third world out of poverty.

The arguments and statistics are all there.An $18b estimated global business that has a mark up of soemwhere between 200-3000 %.

Examples from both sides of the world

In Afghanistan, we could also have a settlement as poppy farmers, no longer alienated by foreign attempts to deprive them of their living by destroying their crops, might agree to cooperate with the Kabul government

Whereas in America

young people being educated in college rather than jail.

Would it work? Well possibly in principle and

There would be a rash of Daily Mail stories about dead teenagers, but around the world governments would adjust to the fact that they will - perhaps only briefly - have to invest in health education and rehabilitation programmes with the same enthusiasm with which they once built jails;

Of course it would never happen if only because of the worldwide influence of drug cartels who would be unwilling to lose their massive profits.

But for idealism-quite brilliant