Forest BB

In 72 hours, we could finally see the beginning of the end of the ‘war on drugs’. This expensive war has completely failed to curb the plague of drug addiction, while costing countless lives, devastating communities, and funneling trillions of dollars into violent organized crime networks.

Experts all agree that the most sensible policy is to regulate, but politicians are afraid to touch the issue. In days, a global commission including former heads of state and foreign policy chiefs of the UN, EU, US, Brazil, Mexico and more will break the taboo and publicly call for new approaches including decriminalization and regulation of drugs.

This could be a once-in-a-generation tipping-point moment -- if enough of us call for an end to this madness. Politicians say they understand that the war on drugs has failed, but claim the public isn't ready for an alternative. Let's show them we not only accept a sane and humane policy -- we demand it. Sign the petition and share with everyone -- when we reach 1/2 million, it will be personally delivered to world leaders by the global commission.

On Thursday 2 June the Global Commission on Drug Policy, a panel of world leaders and politicians, will host a press conference at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York to launch a report that describes the drug war as a failure, and calls for a paradigm shift in global drug policy, including the decriminalisation and legal regulation of drugs.

Transform Drug Policy Foundation welcomes the report, because fifty years of global prohibition have resulted in massive levels of crime, destabilised entire nation states, created huge health harms, criminalised 250 million users, and wasted trillions of dollars.

Danny Kushlick, Head of External Affairs said: “This report is a watershed moment that puts legal regulation of drugs onto the mainstream political agenda worldwide.

“Globally we spend $100 billion a year on the war on drugs, so if we carry on as we are, over the next decade we will waste a trillion dollars increasing insecurity, damaging development and promoting crime and ill-health in some of the most disadvantaged places on earth.

“We call on UK party political leaders to call a ceasefire in their political point scoring, and instead unite to explore peaceful and effective alternatives to the war on drugs.

“The UK Government is also in the perfect position to bring the US to the table to negotiate an end to the war on drugs and a Marshall Plan to consolidate the peace. In 2002 David Cameron called for the UN to debate legal regulation, and in 2004 President Obama described the war on drugs as an “utter failure”. Cameron and Obama now have the greatest opportunity ever to use the ‘essential relationship’ to find a peaceful solution to the longest conflict of modern times. Ending the war on drugs and bringing peace to some of the most violent places in the world would be a truly great legacy.”

The arguments for legalisation are overwhelming. They do not rest on approval of drugs, or ignorance of their harms, or any wish to see their consumption increase. They are based on the argument that regulation would be less harmful to drug users, less damaging to society and less expensive to taxpayers than outright prohibition. Nobody disputes the dangers of drugs, only the best ways of controlling them.

All drugs become more dangerous when banned. First, because consumers have no protection from adulteration and often have no idea of the strength and quality of what they are buying. And second, because vendors favour more concentrated forms which are less bulky and easier to transport and hide.

The arguments over drugs are done and dusted. Any independent body that looks at the evidence comes to similar conclusions. So why do political leaders refuse to countenance more than minor tinkering with the law, such as yo-yoing cannabis between classes B and C? One answer is that as Steve Rolles, senior policy analyst at Transform Drugs Policy, puts it, drugs have been presented as an existential threat and the war against them almost as a religious crusade. In the popular mind, drug users have always been demonised as what sociologists call "the other": Chinese gangsters, Caribbean immigrants, 60s hippies or other threats to the social order. Anyone who proposes ending the war risks being characterised by opponents, particularly in the downmarket media, as weak and cowardly, lacking the Churchillian spirit of "no surrender". History does not look kindly on those who lose wars.