An End to the War on Drugs?

Surely another few hundred billion dollars is all it will take to eradicate all drugs on the planet forever.

A coalition of politicians, thinkers, and business leaders from around the world have proclaimed the “war on drugs” to have failed in calling on governments to finally do something about it. But, as Bernd Debusmann of Reuters concludes, the prospects of change are slim due to “'a built-in vested interest' in continuing with policies that focus on enforcement, interdiction and eradication. It is an entrenched anti-drug establishment that provides employment for thousands of people, from narcotics agents and intelligence analysts to prison wardens.” Prohibition's failures across the world wouldn't mean a damn when supposedly respectable officials stand to lose their jobs.

Contributing to the problem are politicians who should – and do – know better than to continue propping up the drug war, writes Mary Ann Sieghart in the The Independent. In particular, she scolds U.S. President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron, both of whom called their respective nation's drug policies “failures” before taking office, and yet have continued many of the same strategies as their predecessors. “If they're serious about representing a new generation, they should stop bragging about their youth and start doing something about it,” says Sieghart. “Those of us who also came of age in the 1980s don't want to wait till they're ex-leaders serving on a drugs policy commission.”

The Ottawa Citizen's Dan Gardner notes the irony in former UN secretary general Kofi Annan being among the report's signatories. Thirteen years ago, a similar document was presented to him while he was in charge of the UN, yet the organization instead called on member states to pump up anti-drug spending to eradicate cannabis, opium, and coca by 2008. And yet consumption of all three of those drugs has gone up, says Gardner. In Canada, the debate rages on between “critics who want an approach focused on public health and prohibitionists who want to scale up law enforcement and punishment ... The prohibitionists always win. And their policies always fail.” Within the next few months, the Conservatives intend to pass bills introducing mandatory minimum sentences for the cultivation of small amounts of marijuana – a friendly reminder that the drug war, despite all evidence against it, continues apace.