Ending the Global Drug War: Voices from the Front Lines

As
noted by Reason Senior Editor Jacob Sullum last week,
the Global Commission on Drug Policy (which includes several Latin
American ex-Presidents and former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan)
issued a report called “Taking
Control: Pathways to Drug Policies that Work.” Included were
recommendations for forms of drug legalization, regulation and
decriminalization of personal use. Sullum’s takeaway from the
report: 

Citing “the horrific unintended consequences of punitive and
prohibitionist laws and policies,” Annan et al. argue that “harsh
measures grounded in repressive ideologies must be replaced by more
humane and effective policies shaped by scientific evidence, public
health principles and human rights standards.” In contrast with the
Obama administration’s idea
of drug policy reform, the commission says force is not an
appropriate response to drug use: Governments not only should stop
arresting and jailing people who consume psychoactive substances
that politicians do not like; they should “stop imposing
‘compulsory treatment’ on people whose only offense is drug use or
possession.”

The commissioners also recommend alternatives to incarceration
for low-level, nonviolent drug offenders such as farmers, mules,
and street dealers, urging law enforcement agencies to “target the
most violent and disruptive criminal groups” instead. But they add
that “the most effective way to reduce the extensive harms of the
global drug prohibition regime
and advance the goals of public health and safety is to get drugs
under control through responsible legal regulation.”

In 2011, Reason TV spoke with a number of the statesmen who had
a hand in the report, as well as journalists such as Glenn
Greenwald and Mary Anastasia O’Grady:

“Ending the Global Drug War: Voices from the Front
Lines” About 6 minutes. Produced and Edited by Anthony L. Fisher.
Camera by Joshua Swain, with help from Seth McKelvey.

 Graphics by
Meredith Bragg.

Original release date was December 13, 2011 and the
original writeup is below.

“Ever since the War on Drugs, everything has hit the fan,” says
Romesh Bhattacharji, former Narcotics Commissioner of India. Rather
than continue the unnecessary and costly drug war, Bhattacharji
advises the United States to simply “Relax, take it easy, [and]
tolerate.”

Last month, at the Cato Institute’s “Ending the Global War on
Drugs” conference, Bhattacharji’s sentiments were echoed by ex-drug
czars, cops, politicians, intellectuals, liberal and conservative
journalists, and even the former President of Brazil. Reason.tv
attended the event and spoke with a number of the featured
speakers, including:

Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com

Mary Anastasia O’Grady, Wall Street Journal

Tucker Carlson, The Daily Caller

Luis Alberto Lacalle Pou, Speaker of the House of Deputies,
Uruguay

Leigh Maddox, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition; University of
Maryland School of Law

Enrique Gomez Hurtado, former Senator, Colombia

Larry Campbell, Senator, Canada

Romesh Bhattacharji, former Narcotics Commissioner, India

Eric Sterling, Criminal Justice Policy Foundation

Harry G. Levine, Queens College (N.Y.)

Juan Carlos Hidalgo, Cato Institute

About 6.15 minutes.

 Produced and Edited by Anthony L. Fisher.
Camera by Joshua Swain, with help from Seth McKelvey.

 Graphics by
Meredith Bragg.

For more Reason coverage on the Drug War, go here.

For Cato Institute Drug War coverage and research, go here.

View this article.