Is it time to end America's 'war on drugs'?
Over the past four decades, the US has spent billions of dollars promoting and supporting a military battle against drug cartels across Latin America.
"We're looking at a change in the way that these leaders approach this issue .... Probably the most important [reason] is that they're more independent economically. They do more trade amongst their neighbours than they did before, they've less dependence on United States' economies and they're more independent from a financial aid perspective ... so given that they've greater independence, they're saying we need to take this on independently as well."
- Steven Dudley, the co-director of Insight Crime
But global demand for illicit drugs has increased and the violence related to the drug trade has worsened. More than 50,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in the last five years in Mexico alone. And the influence of drug cartels has grown across Central America.
Now a demand for alternative policies to the 'war on drugs' has come from unlikely sources, including Guatemala's President Otto Perez Molina, a former general, and Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos, a former defence minister.
When the leaders brought up the issue for debate during the Summit of the Americas on Saturday, Barack Obama, the US president, said Americans understand the toll of narco-trafficking on Central and South America and the Carribean. But he insisted legalisation is not the answer.
He also announced that the US would provide more than $130m to Central American countries to "support the regional security strategy".
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/insidestoryamericas/2012/04/201241773745976367.html
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