Pubdate: Tue, 31 Mar 2009
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2009 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact:  http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: Jonathan Kay
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

IT'S TIME TO END THE WAR ON DRUGS

The war on terrorism is supposed to be the defining conflict of our
age. But in regards to the sheer quantity of human misery produced,
the war on drugs may be the more destructive campaign. Consider this
sampling of stories plucked from headlines over the last month: - In
Mexico, the chaotic bloodletting amongst the country's various drug
cartels is producing fatalities at the rate of 500 per month -- with
many victims tortured to death by methods straight out of jihadi snuff
films. In border cities such as Juarez, the cartels operate openly,
recruiting adolescent boys to act as killers and drug mules. All told,
an estimated 450,000 Mexicans make their money in the illegal drug
economy --and that figure doesn't include the legions of corrupt
police officers and soldiers who've been paid off by the cartels. - In
Peru, the Shining Path--a Maoist terrorist group that was supposed to
have been destroyed a decade ago, following a war that killed about
70,000 people -- has resurrected itself as a cocaine syndicate. The
organization threatens to expand into a Peruvian version of FARC, the
pseudo-Marxist paramilitary group that used revolutionary rhetoric as
a cover for the creation of a cocaine-funded Bantustan within
Colombia's borders. - In the western African nation of Guinea-Bissau,
the president and military chief were gunned down within hours of one
another -- in what was essentially a settling of accounts between a
narco-state's rival factions. (Please note that Guinea-Bissau should
not be confused with the even more comically corrupt nation of Guinea,
where incoming cocaine shipments have been handled by the presidential
guard, and outgoing drug shipments dispatched by diplomatic pouch.) -
And then there's Afghanistan, which produces more than 90% of the
world's heroin. The country's top drug dealers include members of
Hamid Karzai's own Canadianbacked government. Aerial spraying of poppy
fields has been a joke: A U. S.-backed drug eradication program
destroyed 6,000 hectares last year -- 4% of the total planted. In the
current issue of The Economist, the magazine presents as good news the
fact that local Taliban commanders are now standing up to their bosses
in Pakistan. The reason? They are so flush with drug money, they can
afford to do so.

This is just a small sampling from among dozens of stories I might
have listed--including tales from Western Canada's own native reserves
and Toronto's black slums. In each case, the plot is the same: Western
drug addiction -- and our criminal/military response to it, whose
primary effect is to drive up the profit margins by orders of
magnitude -- is financing the creation and sustenance of drug gangs,
terrorist groups, insurgencies and full-fledged narco-states around
the world.

If it wasn't obvious a decade ago, it's certainly obvious now: The war
on drugs is doing more damage than drugs themselves. Even the U. S.
government -- whose otherworldly triumphalism regarding the drug war
has long been the stuff of unintentional comedy -- now admits as much.
On her recent trip to Mexico, U. S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
declared: "Clearly what we've been doing has not worked," and "Our
insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade."

I realize that this is a stale theme. (One of these days, someone is
going to hand me or Colby Cosh or Dan Gardner a plaque for writing the
millionth op-ed urging an end to the drug war.) But recent events may
give Western governments reason to act. American states are going
bankrupt, and one of the main reasons is a jail system bursting with
drug offenders. Meanwhile, our soldiers are fighting, and dying, in a
struggle against a Taliban force whose primary income stream derives
from OECD drug addicts.

Not for a moment do I dispute that hard drugs ruin lives, or that
eradicating their usage should be an objective of government. But the
problem should be treated the same way that we treat other
self-inflicted, self-destructive behavioural pathologies: through the
health system and social-assistance programs.

Sometimes, it takes a crisis to give common sense its moment. Thanks
to a global recession, a poppy-financed Afghan enemy and a NAFTA
partner descending into anarchy, that moment may finally be upon us.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin