Pubdate: Tue, 29 Jul 2014 Source: Cape Times (South Africa) Page: 8 Copyright: 2014 Cape Times Contact: http://www.capetimes.co.za/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2938 Note: Editorial from the Guardian, London A LOSING BATTLE THE WAR on drugs has been a losing fight for 40 years. The response to unending failure has always been to demand more law enforcement and more prison cells. It is unclear why the mood should be changing just now. It isn't that consumers have suddenly got too numerous to ignore: rates of cannabis use, which had, throughout the late 20th century, seemed to be on an interminable upward trajectory, are now stable or even declining. But then the long century of criminalisation never had any more to do with evidence than America's disastrous interwar experiment with prohibiting the undoubtedly-dangerous demon drink. Then, as now, the practicalities of harm-reduction and the principle of not persecuting citizens who harm no one but themselves, point to legalisation. So it is be welcomed that the last year or so has seen Uruguay instigate a heavily regulated cannabis trade, while Colorado and Washington state have licensed all personal use, with the first stores officially permitted to peddle the latter opening their doors this month. Elsewhere in the US, the slow tide of tolerance for medical marijuana, which began in California in 1996, continues to spread. The mismatch between Washington DC's unreformed rules and the law as it is actually observed casts a thick fug of confusion over the position. Barack Obama, who like David Cameron used drugs in his youth, surely knows that he would not have got where he is today if he had ever been caught and had ended up in jail. He is on the record as saying the war on drugs has been "an utter failure", and has more recently made positive noises about allowing the Colorado and Washington experiments to run their course. Thickening the haze is the international position. America led the world to sign up to successive UN protocols and conventions, which reforming countries like Uruguay now find themselves running up against. It seems absurd when states within the US itself are conducting similar legal experiments. Neither federal laws nor UN conventions of the old prohibitionist order can stand in logic any longer. - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D