4.12.07

Rethinking the War on Drugs - opendemocracy.net

Some of you may know that I have been known to read a wonderful website called Open Democracy. It has a tendency towards the leftist critical thinking as well as some radical feminism but meh, its a regularly updated, often clear concise look at international politics.

 

Article in question.

 

Anyway. It seems like the concept of drug enforcement may be about to change. With the (laughable) title  of The Coalition of the Healing, the United Nations office on Drugs has looked at the undoubted failings in drug enforcement and is now searching for a new paradigm. That is one which doesn't punish Joe Blogs recreational drug user and actually targets the organised crime groups that are making insane amounts of money and getting away largely scott free.

 

The most interesting aspect of this is that it may not actually be in the form of total enforcement; that has already been done as the article points out with most of the major Columbian cartel bosses either dead or behind bars. What may be looked at is a more realistic approach to drugs past prohibition...

 

How this may be formed I am unsure. Total relaxation of laws seems unlikely. Even what was begun by the change of Cannabis from a Class B to a Class C in the UK looks to be on the verge of a reversal... All I can say is that most people in this country see the effects of 'softer' drugs in their real life and blatantly don't see what all the fuss is about when compared to alcohol and (some would say, though not me) the excessive talk of damage by smoking.

1 comment:

My Beautiful Decay said...

This is long overdue in my opinion, I am not a drug user myself of any kind, but yes I do occasionally drink, but knowing of things that happen in small circles I think it is safe to say that in most cases, the occasional smoke of weed (or un-occasional if thats your thing)doesn't hurt most people, I may go as far as to say it can help.....so the Police and other law enforcement should not be trying to bury themselves in paper work with kids on the street, but with the people who actually matter. I doubt I personally will ever do any drug, but that is my choice, but the lighter ones seem to be as harmful/harmless depending on how you look at it, as alcohol is.......I'll leave it here before I rant on for ages and bore everyone...:)