The Astonishing Facts That Show How This Costly 130-year War On Narcotics Has Achieved So Little BILLIONS have been spent by governments in Western Europe and North America fighting the drug dealers. But the war is being lost. Heroin, cocaine, metamphetamine and other illegal drugs are cheaper, purer and easier to get hold of than ever. And in the United States alone half a million people are behind bars on drug charges - more than the entire prison population of Western Europe. [continues 884 words]
Thirty years after the first cannabis rally, veterans and new campaigners gathered to fight a law that has left two generations alienated and criminalised. They came. They saw. They sang from Bob Marley's "Legalise It". Some smoked. Some even inhaled. It was the big day for the Cannabis Campaign and the people came in thousands from around the country, from Europe and some from even further afield. There was a sense of deja-vu as the marchers gathered in Hyde Park, the scene of the first cannabis rally in July 1967. Some people remembered seeing Lennon and McCartney there, others, now respectable businessmen, recalled being arrested for raining flowers on police. Many of yesterday's marchers, however, had only seen archive footage on television. Caroline Coon, who set up Release in response to the arrests that day, remembered that the weather was better then. [continues 1597 words]
