Pubdate: Sun, 20 Nov 2011
Source: Observer, The (UK)
Copyright: 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited
Contact:  http://www.observer.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/315
Author: Jason Roberston

WESTERN LEADERS MUST BACK COLOMBIA'S COURAGEOUS STAND ON DRUGS

President Santos's call for a new approach to drugs must be supported 
wholeheartedly

As you suggest, "money", not "health or morality", will be the prime 
mover in "opening up a lucrative new market" for American big 
business in "recreational" substances ("The drugs war is failing. We 
must think again", Leader). Mass production and mass distribution of 
drugs, sufficiently cheap, varied and globally accessible to overtake 
criminal cartels, would have the extra commercial advantage of 
perennial addiction, while any adverse medical or social effects can 
be shifted on to taxpayers, as happens over sugar, alcohol and tobacco.

Just think of the additional profits and political spin-offs if the 
Chinese return to opium and the Arabs to hashish in your "free and 
open market". It's enough to make minds boggle -- at any rate, those 
minds that survive the recommended experience.

Jason Roberston

Sheringham, Norfolk
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom