http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=13237193
How to stop the drug wars
Prohibition has failed; legalisation is the least bad solution
A HUNDRED years ago a group of foreign diplomats gathered in Shanghai for the first-ever international effort to ban trade in a narcotic drug. On February 26th 1909 they agreed to set up the International Opium Commission—just a few decades after Britain had fought a war with China to assert its right to peddle the stuff. Many other bans of mood-altering drugs have followed. In 1998 the UN General Assembly committed member countries to achieving a “drug-free world” and to “eliminating or significantly reducing” the production of opium, cocaine and cannabis by 2008.
That is the kind of promise politicians love to make. It assuages the sense of moral panic that has been the handmaiden of prohibition for a century. It is intended to reassure the parents of teenagers across the world. Yet it is a hugely irresponsible promise, because it cannot be fulfilled.
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.
“Least bad” does not mean good. Legalisation, though clearly better for producer countries, would bring (different) risks to consumer countries. As we outline below, many vulnerable drug-takers would suffer. But in our view, more would gain.
The evidence of failure
Nowadays the UN Office on Drugs and Crime no longer talks about a drug-free world. Its boast is that the drug market has “stabilised”, meaning that 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. (Like most purported drug facts, this one is just an educated guess: evidential rigour is another casualty of illegality.) The production of cocaine and opium is probably about the same as it was a decade ago; that of cannabis is higher. Consumption of cocaine has declined gradually in the United States from its peak in the early 1980s, but the path is uneven (it remains higher than in the mid-1990s), and it is rising in many places, including Europe.
By providing honest information about the health risks of different drugs, and pricing them accordingly, governments could steer consumers towards the least harmful ones. Prohibition has failed to prevent the proliferation of designer drugs, dreamed up in laboratories. Legalisation might encourage legitimate drug companies to try to improve the stuff that people take. The resources gained from tax and saved on repression would allow governments to guarantee treatment to addicts—a way of making legalisation more politically palatable. The success of developed countries in stopping people smoking tobacco, which is similarly subject to tax and regulation, provides grounds for hope.
A calculated gamble, or another century of failure?
This newspaper first argued for legalisation 20 years ago . Reviewing the evidence again, prohibition seems even more harmful, especially for the poor and weak of the world. Legalisation would not drive gangsters completely out of drugs; as with alcohol and cigarettes, there would be taxes to avoid and rules to subvert. Nor would it automatically cure failed states like Afghanistan. Our solution is a messy one; but a century of manifest failure argues for trying it.
Originally posted by generalissimoWell said! If only America's lawmakers would abandon there "feel good" policies in this area, many drug lords would be out of business, and many overcrowded jails would be not be necessary.😏
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=13237193
[b]How to stop the drug wars
Prohibition has failed; legalisation is the least bad solution
A HUNDRED years ago a group of foreign diplomats gathered in Shanghai for the first-ever international effort to ban trade in a narcotic drug. On February 26th 1909 they ...[text shortened]... fghanistan. Our solution is a messy one; but a century of manifest failure argues for trying it.[/b]
Originally posted by bill718The American public is too scared of what "other people" would do if drugs were legalized or decriminalized.
Well said! If only America's lawmakers would abandon there "feel good" policies in this area, many drug lords would be out of business, and many overcrowded jails would be not be necessary.😏
It's a classic case of assuming the worst in other people.
"You can't make drugs legal because then too many people would become addicts and crime would go through the roof and I won't be safe anymore..."
That's the attitude of your typical american voter...and votes are all that matter if you're a politician.
Originally posted by uzlessThat's the attitude of your typical american voter...and votes are all that matter if you're a politician.
The American public is too scared of what "other people" would do if drugs were legalized or decriminalized.
It's a classic case of assuming the worst in other people.
"You can't make drugs legal because then too many people would become addicts and crime would go through the roof and I won't be safe anymore..."
That's the attitude of your typical american voter...and votes are all that matter if you're a politician.
Thats unfortunately the truth in most cases.
Americans often blame the drug for the problem that is caused by the prohibition of the drug. For example, if someone robs someone that has a pound of cannabis it is often the cannabis that is blamed and people think it is much more addictive than it is. But it is actually the prohibition that causes the cannabis to become worth it's weight in gold.
People would steal gold too. Does that mean that gold is an addictive drug? Of course not. Crime and violence follows money, not drugs. Make tobacco and coffee illegal and crime and violence will follow that too.
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13234144
Continuing...
In America, lessons learned
HIS memories are addled, but the young member of Cocaine Anonymous can just about recall his formal drug education. When he was about 11, he says, a police officer made several visits to his school to give warning of the dangers posed by illicit substances. Although he remembers thinking the cop was “something of a Dudley-Do-Right” he agreed with him that drugs were best avoided. He recalls no further lessons. By his late teens he was addicted to crack cocaine and methamphetamine.
By far the best way of reducing the harm that drugs can do is to convince people not to take them. Spraying crops, seizing shipments and arresting dealers can drive up prices and create temporary shortages. But it does not stop drug use. Addicts simply pay more for crummier product or switch to other, often more harmful, substances. Cocaine-takers may move to powder amphetamine or crystal meth; heroin addicts experiment with oxycodone. “It’s like a water-bed. Push down in one place and another drug pops up,” says Rod Skager, who surveys teenagers’ drug-taking for the California state government.
Most attempts to reduce drug demand in America are aimed at 11- to 14-year-olds. The principle is that children should be reached while they are still fairly pliable and before they begin to take drugs—not just the hard stuff but alcohol, marijuana and tobacco. The hope is that they will develop a broad aversion to harmful substances that will stay with them through their late teens and early 20s, when drug use peaks. Only when an immensely damaging drug emerges suddenly, as crystal meth did in some western states a few years ago, are concerted efforts made to communicate with older teenagers.
Until recently the dominant approach was Drug Avoidance Resistance Education (DARE), a programme developed in Los Angeles in 1983 and quickly exported to the rest of America. Cops would arrive in schools, sometimes driving cars confiscated from drug-dealers, and tell 11- and 12-year-olds about the dangers of illicit substances. They drew little or no distinction between marijuana and methamphetamine. Teachers liked DARE because they felt uncomfortable tackling the topic themselves, and because they got a break. Parents liked it because they felt their children would listen to police officers.
Unfortunately, they did not. A string of academic studies labelled DARE pointless at best. Some academics—and former drug-takers—argue that efforts to scare young children about drugs that they may not have heard of are actually counter-productive. “They’re a challenge,” says Taylor, a Los Angeles native who is recovering from an addiction to crack cocaine and heroin. The federal government opted not to pay for the programme. It survives (DARE claims it is still used in 72% of America’s school districts), but in an altered form. It has even been dropped by the Los Angeles school district, where it began.
The new approach to drug education, reflected in the remodelled DARE, is more oblique. By means of role-playing, cops and teachers try to provide children with the confidence to resist pressures of all kinds, from drugs to internet bullying. Rather than telling children that drugs are dangerous, teachers assure them that they are rare. Drugs are no longer treated as a unique, self-contained threat—which indeed they are often not. “Kids do not normally walk in with a drug problem who do not have other problems,” says Lori Vollandt, who co-ordinates health programmes in Los Angeles’ schools.
The new programmes are mostly intended to reduce alcohol, marijuana and tobacco use, and are evaluated in those terms. There is a good reason for that. Because they are so widespread, the total harm caused to teenagers by alcohol and tobacco is much greater than the total harm caused by harder drugs. There is also a less good reason. Educators worry about the “boomerang effect”, in which talk about drugs feeds curiosity about them.
The success of the campaign against methamphetamine suggests the boomerang effect is overdone, at least for older teenagers. Meth is an old drug that suddenly became popular again in the late 1990s. It is generally made by cooking ammonia, lithium and pseudoephedrine, a decongestant. The manufacturing process is extremely dangerous and the finished product hardly safer. Faced with an epidemic, Montana and other western states rolled out advertising campaigns. But rather than emphasise the drug’s addictiveness and long-term effects on the brain, as earlier anti-drug campaigns had done, these pointed out that meth users often had rotten teeth. It worked: in the past five years attitudes to the drug have hardened and use has dropped steeply.
It may seem odd that the campaign against tobacco, a legal drug, has displayed so much more élan than the war on illegal drugs. Yet this is natural. Making a drug illegal may discourage some people from taking it, but it also discourages frank conversation and clear thinking. It is much easier to attack something if it is brought into the light.