Three years ago, the UN Global Commission on Drug Policy announced that the world had lost the long war against illegal drugs. Its 22 eminent members concluded that there remained only one feasible response: legalise the trade.
The evidence they had studied was overwhelming. The fight had resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives in turf wars and in ever-increasing power and wealth for the criminal syndicates. Tens of millions were incarcerated, often in prisons where dangerous drugs were as easily available as on the outside.
It could never have been otherwise.
All through history, human beings have consumed mind-altering substances. In pre-modern times, these were typically mild and caused little physical or mental damage.
But with the advance of science, human minds - as ingenious in bad inventions as in good - found means of producing lethal substances, infinitely more harmful, but also more attractive to those seeking the ultimate "high".
Governments reacted by mounting efforts to disrupt the flow of trafficking. They failed. Attempts at treatment and rehabilitation fared little better. Those who studied the question in depth produced proposals that ranged from permitting the use of "soft" drugs to blanket legalisation.Various countries and some American states have legalised cannabis. But governments and the public have flinched from the idea of legalising heroin, cocaine or crystal meth.
Why are they so determined to ignore the conclusions of expert researchers, culminating in the commission's dramatic announcement? Those who have continued the campaign for legalisation are typically academics, or members of the global elite, like the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Annan has returned to the subject more than once. He raised it at this year's Global Economic Forum in Davos, where he was supported by another former commission member, the Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos. They know all about drugs in Colombia.
Source: James Downey, Irish Independent, 15/08/14
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