Drugs

Although there are encouraging noises coming from Latin America, much of the western world remains deaf to common sense. Still, let’s hear it for the Economist which this week repeats its call for legalisation: Next week ministers from around the world gather in Vienna to set international drug policy for the next decade. Like first-world-war generals, many will claim that all that is needed is more of the same. In fact the war on drugs has been a disaster, creating failed states in the developing world even as addiction has flourished in the rich world. By any sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless. That is

Competition is pretty tough, but Fox’s Glenn Beck may actually be too dumb for cable news. And if Beck is a libertarian, I’m an Eskimo. [Hat-tip: Radley Balko]

Here’s a question for you: Imagine you are seated at a table with two bowls in front of you. One contains peanuts, the other tablets of the illegal recreational drug MDMA (ecstasy). A stranger joins you, and you have to decide whether to give them a peanut or a pill. Which is safest? So asks the New Scientist in its latest editorial. I think you know the answer, don’t you? You should give them ecstasy, of course. A much larger percentage of people suffer a fatal acute reaction to peanuts than to MDMA. Now it’s true that some research suggests there may be some ill-effects* associated with ecstasy use; but

So the government is going to reject advice that Ecstasy be reclassified as a Class B drug. No surprise there. Got to adopt a tough stance on these matters, you know. Not that the penalties for possession of a Class B drug are anything other than absurdly draconian themselves: you can still be locked away for five years or, for the crime of selling a drug to your friends, receive as many as 14 years imprisonment. This does not seem a lenient approach to me. Meanwhile, a government expert makes the obviously true point that more people are killed horse-riding each year than as a result of taking Ecstasy and

Mike Crowley asks whether Barack Obama will offer any “substantial” change to America’s drug policy. There’s an easy, short answer to that: No. At least, during the campaign Obama offered little reason to hope that he’d adopt a saner drugs policy. Now, true, that was just the campaign, but his website suggested that there’d be little fresh thinking on, say, Plan Colombia and, of course, Joe Biden was the inspiration for the first “Drugs Tsar” in the first place. More to the point, ending the “War on Drugs” would use up valuable political capital that Obama most probably has better, more urgent uses for. Still, to be fair, he hasn’t

Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times: At least 38 people have been killed in Tijuana since Saturday, nine of them decapitated, in escalating drug-related violence that appears to have left in tatters a Mexican military offensive launched two weeks ago. To which NRO’s Mark Krikorian responds: “Better Get That Fence Built”. I suppose that’s a point of view, but a more rational response might be to rethink the drug policies that have a) been such a success in Colombia and b) are now being exported to Mexico. That might do more good than fretting about the possible impact all this might have on the American border.

Conrad Black: The US is now a carceral state that imprisons eight to 12 times more people (2.5m) per capita than the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany or Japan. US justice has become a command economy based on the avarice of private prison companies, a gigantic prison service industry and politically influential correctional officers’ unions that agitate for an unlimited increase in the number of prosecutions and the length of sentences. The entire “war on drugs”, by contrast, is a classic illustration of supply-side economics: a trillion taxpayers’ dollars squandered and 1m small fry imprisoned at a cost of $50 billion a year; as supply of and demand for illegal

Well, this is common-sense. So, obviously, don’t expect it to have an impact. A report on cannabis prepared for next year’s UN drug policy review will suggest that a “regulated market” would cause less harm than the current international prohibition. The report, which is likely to reopen the debate about cannabis laws, suggests that controls such as taxation, minimum age requirements and labelling could be explored. The Global Cannabis Commission report, which will be launched today at a conference in the House of Lords, has reached conclusions which its authors suggest “challenge the received wisdom concerning cannabis”. It was carried out for the Beckley foundation, a UN-accredited NGO, for the

More Culture11: I’ve a piece arguing that no-one should be terribly happy about Lance Armstrong’s decision to come out of retirement next season. Snippet: Unlike fans in other sports, such as baseball or track and field, many cycling fans simply don’t see doping as a criminal or ethical offense. In its way, then, cycling is the purest distillation of the logic behind elite sport: Super-human performance demands supra-human resources. It is the cost of doing business. We might more profitably ask why our attitudes to drug-use have changed. Everyone has known for decades that the peloton has been a pharmacy on wheels. Until recently, this bothered few people. These days,

Sometimes the news isn’t terrible: A doctor caught with 14 ecstasy tablets at a music festival has been allowed to keep his licence to practise. A General Medical Council panel told Dr Fraser Gibb they were satisfied he only used drugs to enhance his life and not to “prop it up”. However, it found him guilty of misconduct and imposed conditions on his licence over the next 18 months. But suppose Dr Gibb were popping the occasional pill to “prop-up” his life? Why would that be an affront to civilised society and all that’s sweet and wholesome on this planet? After all: Colleagues at Dumfries and Galloway NHS Trust said