Independent UK: This is a 'war' we should fight no longer

[marmar]

Mary Ann Sieghart: A 'war' we should fight no longer
Obama and Cameron are wrong. The momentum is building for a more rational way of dealing with this problem

Monday, 30 May 2011


When Barack Obama and David Cameron wrote a joint opinion piece for The Times last week, their first sentence was: "Both of us came of age during the 1980s." Those of us of a similar age know what that meant: an adolescence spent in a haze of post-punk, reggae, acid house and dope. Obama has admitted smoking cannabis and taking cocaine; Cameron refuses to confirm or deny that he inhaled anything, but the nod and the wink are hard to miss.

Before he was President, Obama called the war on drugs an "utter failure" and said we should think about decriminalising cannabis. Before he was Prime Minister, Cameron said Britain's drug policy was an "abject failure" and called for a debate on legalisation of all drugs. Now that they're in power, though, both men have had an utter and abject failure of nerve. They agree with the former Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Jean-Claude Juncker, who once said, in this context: "We know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it."

They are not just craven but wrong. For, inexorably, the momentum is building for a more rational way of dealing with drugs. And it's not only because baby-boomers and their successor generations now make up three-quarters of voters. The big hitters are onside too. This week, the Global Commission on Drug Policy will publish a report in New York calling for a "paradigm shift" in the way we deal with drugs. It will advocate not just decriminalisation, but also experiments with legalisation and regulation. Its cast list of backers is stellar.

Step forward former Presidents of Mexico, Colombia, Brazil and Switzerland; the former UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan; the former US Secretary of State, George Schultz; the former EU High Representative, Javier Solana; and – intriguingly – the current Prime Minister of Greece, George Papandreou. Other luminaries include Paul Volcker, ex-Chairman of the Fed, and Richard Branson (anyone for some Virgin Gold?). .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/mary-ann-sieghart/mary-ann-sieghart-a-war-we-should-fight-no-longer-2290818.html

[Sonoman]

1. Juncker nailed it.

They just don't have the balls to do it.

KnR

Sonoman