A peaceful approach to the war on some drugs

Polly Toynbee has a brilliant piece up at the UK Guardian this week suggesting Europe come to its senses and reject the ill-advised UN conventions while forming its own approach to the war on some drugs. She points out.

"A drugs-free world - we can do it!" is the slogan of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. It is, it says daftly, "on target to reach its goals". What goals? To eradicate drug abuse and the cultivation of coca, cannabis and opium by the year 2008. Yes, in just four years.
Prohibition not only hasn't worked, it makes things ever worse.

...Under the conventions, all countries are obliged to pursue growers, dealers and users in an expensive attempt to hold back an unstoppable tide. Prohibition has bred crime on an unimaginable global scale. Bravely, most countries have to pretend that they are winning - when it is painfully obvious there are only losers.

Polly goes on to examine the absurdity of the current policies and throws in a reality check.

Meanwhile, out there in the real world far from UN or Home Office fantasy targets, Time magazine reports that the revenue from opium grown in Afghanistan this year is $30bn already; 95% of the crop is destined for Europe, and it is the source of most of the heroin arriving in Britain. But how is Hamid Karzai supposed to prevent it? Who can stop the poorest country on earth from growing the only crop that brings in wealth?

...Drugs harm individuals, but it is not drugs that cause social calamity. It is their prohibition that brings a wave of criminality and corruption, chasing profits of up to 3,000%.

But here's the money quote,

There is now a free market in the most dangerous drugs - absurdly known as "controlled drugs" when the opposite is the case. Their availability is in the hands of the worst people on any street corner on the globe. A rational, evidence-based policy would seek to kill the market, put dealers out of business and put control of these drugs into the safe hands of pharmacists.

...Most citizens only care about stopping addicts committing crimes and rescuing inner-city zones that have become battlegrounds for drug gangs and pimps running drug-addicted prostitutes. No one is suggesting selling the stuff in corner shops, but destroying the market by making it easy to register for controlled drug use is the only hope left.

Our country meanwhile, is involved in more than enough losing wars already. It's time also for our legislators to admit this war has failed and to make peace with drugs and drug consumers.