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The war on drugs is immoral idiocy. We need the courage of Argentina
Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/03/drugs-prohibition-latin-america
While Latin American countries decriminalise narcotics, Britain persists in prohibition that causes vast human suffering. Simon Jenkins guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 September 2009 20.30 BST Article historyI guess it had to happen this way. The greatest social menace of the new century is not terrorism but drugs, and it is the poor who will have to lead the revolution. The global trade in illicit narcotics ranks with that in oil and arms. Its prohibition wrecks the lives of wealthy and wretched, east and west alike. It fills jails, corrupts politicians and plagues nations. It finances wars from Afghanistan to Colombia. It is utterly mad. There is no sign of reform emanating from the self-satisfied liberal democracies of west Europe or north America. Reform is not mentioned by Barack Obama, Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy or Angela Merkel. Their countries can sustain prohibition, just, by extravagant penal repression and by sweeping the consequences underground. Politicians will smirk and say, as they did in their youth, that they can "handle" drugs.
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