Pubdate: Mon, 07 Sep 2009
Source: Taipei Times, The (Taiwan)
Page: 6
Copyright: 2009 Guardian News and Media Limited
Contact:  http://www.taipeitimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1553
Referenced: The OPED by Fernando Henrique Cardoso 
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v09.n840.a08.html
Cited: Transform Drug Policy Foundation http://www.tdpf.org.uk/

FORMER BRAZILIAN PRESIDENT SAYS WAR ON DRUGS HAS FAILED

The war on drugs has failed and should make way for a global shift 
toward decriminalizing cannabis use and promoting harm reduction, 
former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso wrote in the 
Observer yesterday.

Cardoso said the hardline approach has brought "disastrous" 
consequences for Latin America, which has been the frontline in the 
war on drug cultivation for decades, while failing to change the 
continent's position as the largest exporter of cocaine and marijuana.

His intervention, which will reignite growing debate in Europe about 
how to tackle drugs, was welcomed on Saturday by campaigners for drug 
law reform who increasingly see the impact on developing countries 
where drugs are produced as critical to the argument.

"After decades of overflights, interdictions, spraying and raids on 
jungle drug factories, Latin America remains the world's largest 
exporter of cocaine and marijuana," Cardoso wrote. "It is producing 
more and more opium and heroin. It is developing the capacity to mass 
produce synthetic drugs. Continuing the drugs war with more of the 
same is ludicrous."

PRECEDENTS

Cardoso, a sociologist, said Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia and 
Ecuador had all now taken steps toward drug law liberalization and 
that change was "imminent" in Brazil.

The way forward worldwide would involve a "strategy of reaching out, 
patiently and persistently, to the users and not the continued waging 
of a misguided and counterproductive war that makes the users, rather 
than the drug lords, the primary victims," he said.

Danny Kushlick of Transform, which campaigns for drug liberalization, 
said Cardoso's intervention illustrated the human cost of efforts to 
combat the drugs trade on often poor and underdeveloped producer countries.

"Until this problem is taken up as a development issue it's not going 
to move anywhere. The default position is that this is a problem of 
addiction, but people have completely missed the point of the war on 
drugs, that the vastly detrimental effects are largely in production 
and transit," he said.

"If you look at a nation state like Guinea Bissau, which was a 
fragile state before and now is a fragile narco-state, that is a 
prime example of the vulnerability of developing countries to the 
fact that these drugs are incredibly expensive," Kushlick said.

COMMISSION

Cardoso's article follows the conclusions published earlier this year 
of a commission on drugs composed of three former Latin American 
leaders, who had been lobbying Washington for a change in its conduct 
of the war on drugs.

US President -Barack Obama's election to the White House last year is 
viewed as an opportunity for fresh thinking, with Cardoso among 
guests invited to a discussion on drugs policy with him before Obama 
became president.

THE OBSERVER, LONDON
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom