Latin Americans Ditch US 'War on Drugs'

[ensho]

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/08/31-8


Mexico and Argentina move towards decriminalising drugs


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It followed Mexico's decision to stop prosecuting people for possession of relatively small quantities of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and other drugs. Instead, they will be referred to clinics and treated as patients, not criminals.

Brazil and Ecuador are also considering partial decriminalisation as part of a regional swing away from a decades-old policy of crackdowns still favoured by Washington.

"The tide is clearly turning. The 'war on drugs' strategy has failed," Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a former Brazilian president, told the Guardian. Earlier this year, he and two former presidents of Colombia and Mexico published a landmark report calling for a new departure.

"The report of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy has certainly helped to open up the debate about more humane and efficient policies. But, most of all, the facts are speaking by themselves," said Cardoso.

Reform campaigners have long argued that criminalisation enriched drug cartels, fuelled savage turf wars, corrupted state institutions and filled prisons with addicts who presented no real threat to society.

-snip-

Some US states have decriminalised the possession of small amounts of marijuana and the Obama administration has emphasised public health solutions to drug abuse, giving Latin America more breathing room, said Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch, director of the Global Drug Policy Programme. "My hope is that Latin America will be the next region, after most of Europe, where evidence and science will be the basis for policy-making."

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if we decrim the private prisons will go out of business - hooray. but they will fight ugly to not decrim. how much money and lobby do they have, anyone know?

what a concept: ". . . where evidence and science will be the basis for policy-making."

we are not used to such sanity. (sarcasm)

[enid602]

1. Mexico

The Mexican Govenment is fighting the druglords for its very survival: they don´t need to be going after people for private consumption.

[SoCalDem]

2. Y'know, there just comes a time when common sense takes over

There is probably the same percentage of drug-takers in the world as there has ever been, and it makes so much more sense to just knock-off the "arrest-'em-all" mentality, and to put the money saved into treatment programs for them when they "wise-up"..

It's the illegality of it, that drives the "market", and creates the "naughtiness-factor" that gets many kids to participate in it.

That said, there are logical reasons for places of employment to test & fire people who use it on the job..or if their use makes the employess unable to do their job at all..