GOOD RECEPTION

Clifford Thornton, Director of Efficacy, a US drug reform organization, is touring New Zealand urging its leaders to Just Say No to obviously failed prohibition strategies.

According to Mr Thornton the war on drugs fosters a black market, which in turn spawns crime.

....He says a better way to approach drug control would be to decriminalise, medicalise and legalise.

....Once the profit goes out it so does the underworld?s interest, Mr Thornton says.
He advocates laws like those currently surrounding alcohol sales to control consumption in pub[l]ic and driving or operating machinery while intoxicated.

Clifford started out as an advocate for prohibition and incarceration.

At 18 he had to identify his mother's body, after she died of a heroin overdose. That galvanised his belief that drugs needed to be combated.

However, as he studied the problem, his views changed.

Over time he has seen how these policies have made little or no dent in the proliferation of drugs and says they are now more potent, readily available and cheaper than ever before.

...."The drug war has absolutely nothing to do with drugs, it's about power, it's about coercion, and it's about money."

By all accounts Thornton's common sense views have been well received by New Zealand's policy makers. I wish we could say the same for our own in the US.