If the purpose of drug policy is to make toxic substances available to anyone who wants them in a flourishing market economy controlled by murderous criminal gangs, the current arrangements are working well.
If, however, the goal is to reduce the amount of drugs being consumed and limit the harm associated with addiction, it is surely time to tear up the current policy. It has failed.
Few nations are untouched by what is, after all, a multibillion pound global industry. Importing countries, such as Britain, must cope with the social effects of addiction and end up squandering the state's resources on a Sisyphean policing task.
But that suffering is mild compared to the destructive forces unleashed on exporting countries.
The article goes on to note that the current and former Presidents of Mexico have called for a debate on current drug policies. Other former Latin American heads of state have called for legalization to stop the flow of money to drug cartels and to decrease violence.
Why did violence subside after the end of prohibition? People who were making and delivering alcohol illegally were able to do so without bribes. They could avail themselves of the legal system to settle disputes, rather than the rough justice of criminality. Makers of alcoholic beverages from other nations were allowed to export their product to formerly closed markets. Those who chose to be criminals, rather than beverage producers, found other areas of criminality to exploit and law enforcement officials were able to focus on other criminal activities.
...The unthinkable is creeping into the realm of the plausible. In the US, several states have relaxed cannabis law, a trend driven by a loose coalition of hard right libertarians and soft left baby-boomers. American society is slowly coming to terms with the fact that drugs are part of its everyday reality and that control might be more effective if use was allowed within the law, not forced outside it.
Politicians have generally shown little courage in confronting inconvenient truths about drugs. And the longer a government is in office, the more it feels bound to defend the status quo; to do otherwise would be admitting complicity in an expensive failure.
Prohibition entails a double dishonesty. First, there is the pretence that the supply and demand can be managed by force. But anyone who has experienced addiction knows that banning a substance restricts neither access nor desire. Usually, it makes matters worse, bringing otherwise law-abiding people into contact with professional criminals. Most addicts, meanwhile, say their problems start with the need to annihilate feelings of despair or memories of trauma. Prosecuting them for those problems solves nothing.
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