Interesting Perspective: Experiment with New Comprehensive Solutions to Failed War on Drugs
Richard Branson, member of the Global Commission for Drug Policy (and founder and chairman of Virgin Group), wrote a piece for The Telegraph in the UK recounting the failure of the war on drugs over the last 50 years and urging countries to experiment with new policies that take a holistic approach rather than a arrest-and-punish approach.
IMHO — With prisons and jails bursting at the seams and budgets shrinking across the country, innovative new policies that can address the collateral consequences of the war on drugs are certainly welcome.
Here are the highlights:
Over the past 50 years, more than $1 trillion has been spent fighting this [the war on drugs]battle, and all we have to show for it is increased drug use, overflowing jails, billions of pounds and dollars of taxpayers’ money wasted, and thriving crime syndicates. It is time for a new approach. . . .
They [leaders worldwide] are failing to act because the reforms that are needed centre on decriminalising drug use and treating it as a health problem. They are scared to take a stand that might seem “soft”. . . .
We [the Global Commission on Drug Policy] studied international drug policy over the past 50 years, and found that it has totally failed to stop the growth and diversification of the drug trade. Between 1998 and 2008, opiate use increased by more than 34 per cent, even as prison populations swelled and profits for drug traffickers soared. . . .
First, prohibition and enforcement efforts have failed to dent the production and distribution of drugs in any part of the world. Second, the threat of arrest and punishment has had no significant deterrent effect on drug use. . . .
Drugs are dangerous and ruin lives. They need to be regulated. But we should work to reduce the crime, health and social problems associated with drug markets in whatever way is most effective. Broad criminalisation should end; new policy options should be explored and evaluated; drug users in need should get treatment; young people should be dissuaded from drug use via education; and violent criminals should be the target of law enforcement. We should stop ineffective initiatives like arresting and punishing citizens who have addiction problems. . . .
The next step is simple: countries should be encouraged to experiment with new policies. . . . New policies should be evaluated according to the scientific evidence. But we can say now that these policies should focus on the rights of citizens and on protecting public health. Drug policy should be a comprehensive issue for families, schools, civil society and health care providers, not just law enforcement.To evaluate such policies, we should stop measuring their success according to such indicators as numbers of arrests, prosecutions and drug seizures, which turn out to have little impact on levels of drug use or crime. We should instead measure the outcomes in the same way that a business would measure the results of a new ad campaign. That means studying things like the number of victims of drug-related violence and intimidation, levels of corruption connected to the drug market, the amount of crime connected to drug use, and the prevalence of dependence, drug-related mortality and HIV infection.
You can read the rest here. Thoughts?