Reformers sense switch of focus in US campaign against illegal drugs from the Financial Times

What have Legalization proponents like yourself gotten accomplished lately?

Drug reformers greeted the Mr Obama’s nomination of Gil Kerlikowske, at present the Seattle police chief, to serve as head of national drug control policy as indicating a likely switch in emphasis from enforcement to treatment. “The success of our efforts to reduce the flow of drugs is largely dependent on our ability to reduce demand for them,” the drug tsar nominee said. As the debate intensifies, some experts are offering radical solutions, including decriminalisation, at least in the case of marijuana. The anti-prohibitionists include civil libertarians, former drug war enforcers and some legislators.

Our economic argument begins to take hold in the mind of the general public.

The US spends $1,400 a -second in the war on drugs, according to a recent -Harvard study, while the savings and revenue that could be generated by legalising narcotics would equal a 10th of Barack Obama’s -fiscal stimulus plan. With neighbouring Mexico descending towards the -status of a narco-state and with US jails crammed with small-time drug offenders, experts in the field have launched a debate on whether a 40-year crackdown, and the more than $1,000bn (£716bn €773bn) that has been spent on it, has had any impact on -narcotics abuse or on the violent trade that feeds it.
Jeffrey A. Miron, a senior economics lecturer at -Harvard and free-market -libertarian, estimated in a paper published in December that the drugs war in the US alone cost authorities $44.1bn a year. Legalising all banned drugs, in contrast, would raise $32.7bn annually in taxation.

And even the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, has to admit that incarceration and state sanction murders will not end the drug trade.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, acknowledged in Vienna that the “world drug problem has been contained but not solved”. However, an unintended consequence of international drug control efforts had been the creation of a “criminal black market of staggering proportions”. While opposing calls for the legalisation of narcotics, Mr Costa said: “When mafias can buy elections, candidates, political parties – in a word, power – the consequences can only be highly destabilising. While ghettos burn, west Africa is under attack, drug cartels threaten central America and drug money penetrates bankrupt financial institutions.”

That’s right, The head of the UN office on Drugs and Crime said that the War on Drugs is destabilizing nations because of their vast cash flow and the power it brings.

Not so long ago even mentioning Legalizing marijuana brought scorn and derision (Russ himself was told by liberal talk giant Ed Schultz that legalization was a “wacky” subject). But now it’s being taken seriously by NBC, FOX, and a horde of print media.

It’s all because of your willingness to put your time, money and name on the line. You have made this movement respectable, now we must make the reform movement powerful. Join your local chapter, write your local representatives, make a donation. Those who oppose us are working hard to put you behind bars and ruin your chance at a successful life, now what are you going to do about it?

The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union wants to know. And the international drug czar, UN Committee on Narcotic Drugs head Antonio Maria Costa, just can’t answer the question.

Now who’s the one “obviously on drugs”?