Four decades ago, on 17 July 1971, President Richard Nixon declared what has come to be called the "war on drugs". Nixon told Congress that drug addiction had "assumed the dimensions of a national emergency", and asked Capitol Hill for an initial $84m (£52m) for "emergency measures". Drug abuse, said the president, was "public enemy number one".
According to the United Nations, in an exhaustive report by a global commission on drugs published this summer, worldwide opiate consumption increased by 34.5% between in the two decades to 2009, and that of cocaine by 25%. The UN estimates the drug business to be the third biggest in the world after oil and arms, worth £198bn a year. Colombia's ambassador to London, Mauricio Rodríguez says "If you look at the trail of cocaine, you'll find that 5% of the profits remain in the producing countries; 95% is in the distribution networks and laundered. The big money is in the big banks in the big countries; the big money is in the US, Europe and Asia." The former head of the UN's office on drugs and crime, Antonio Maria Costa, posits that the laundered profits of the narco-trafficking underworld by the "legitimate" financial sector is what kept the banks afloat for years before they finally crashed in 2008.
Now President Barack Obama's drug tsar, Gil Kerlikowske, carefully describes America's own war on drugs as "unhelpful". Last month, former president Jimmy Carter wrote in the New York Times that "excessive punishment" has "destroyed the lives of millions of young people and their families"; drug policy, he said, should be "more humane and more effective". While in opposition David Cameron said: "Drugs policy has been failing for decades." Professor David Nutt of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs, says that "the obscenity of hunting down low-level cannabis users to protect them is beyond absurd" In Europe, the Netherlands refuses to criminalise cannabis users, while Portugal became the first European country, in 2001, to abolish criminal penalties for personal possession of all drugs, sending addicts for counselling instead. Italy has decriminalised possession of less than half a gram of most illegal substances. Last August, Argentina's supreme court ruled it unconstitutional to punish people for using marijuana for personal use. Mexico, which has since 2005 been the theatre for a singularly vicious drugs war, has elected to legalise limited amounts of all drugs for personal use, for example: 0.5g of cocaine, 40mg of methamphetamine and 50mg of heroin. Felipe Calderón, the president, has called for "a fundamental debate on the legalisation of drugs". Three former presidents, Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico, César Gaviria of Colombia and Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil in a joint statement declared that "Prohibitionist policies based on eradication, interdiction and criminalisation of consumption simply haven't worked … The revision of US-inspired drug policies is urgent in the light of the rising levels of violence and corruption associated with narcotics."
Extracted from The Guardian
"If prohibition does not work, then either the consequences of this have to be accepted, or an alternative approach must be found. The most obvious alternative approach is the legalisation and subsequent regulation of some or all drugs." - Richard Brundstrom, former Assistant Chief Constable, from a report published by Cleveland Police.
If there is indeed a "war on drugs" it is not being won. Drugs are demonstrably cheaper and more easily available than ever before. Whether it’s a pint in a pub, a joint at home, or ecstasy in a nightclub, many of us use drugs to unwind or enhance our experiences. However, there’s often a fine line between using drugs for enjoyment and using drugs to escape the pressures of society. Laws intended to restrict drug use only compound its problems. From Al Capone to Afghanistan, the history of drug prohibition by capitalism continues to represent one of the most bizarrely stupid aspects of a social system never notable for its good judgment. The lesson of America's prohibition period should have taught the world that if you banned coffee today, you would create a coffee mafia tomorrow, in the process creating an unnecessary and, from the ruling class point of view, expensive 'war on coffee' simply to deprive people of something harmless that they like. We would also see a crime problem at every scale from coffee barons and their private armies to burglaries and back-alley shootings over a jar of Nescafe in New York.
Most of the arguments against illicit drugs are bogus, unscientific and politically oriented. In particular, the idea that legalisation would create a massive social problem of a drug-crazed free-for-all is not borne out by the experience. Even if you accept capitalism's own profit-oriented logic, its attitude to illegal recreational drugs still fails to make any kind of sense. While the drugs 'problem' is not a make or break issue for socialists, it does illustrate how capitalism tends to operate in defiance of any logic, even its own.
Substance abuse will remain an integral part of capitalism's daily functioningas people in both economic classes feel the stress of coping with life under the profit system. We argue that socialism would fill up the gaps in people's lives making it less likely that they would turn to drugs to fill an empty life or escape from an intolerable one. One thing is for sure that there is no solution within capitalism. What we can say is in a socialist society , if people need a drug and there is no good, scientific reason for not manufacturing it, it will no doubt be produced.
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