Login / RegisterNo talk of kitesurfing as Richard Branson joins former world leaders in condemning war on drugs
In Washington, D.C., six former presidents joined Virgin Group billionaire Richard Branson and other high-ranking former officials to promote the decriminalization of drugs.
As members of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, the released a report called The War on Drugs and HIV/AIDS: How the Criminalization of Drug Use Fuels the Global Pandemic to drive home the point that the prohibition of drugs undermines public health.
The report points out that research has demonstrated that repressive law-enforcement regimes drive drug users away from health services, which elevates their risk of contracting HIV increases.
Footnotes at the back of the document cite, among other references, papers published in peer-reviewed journals by Vancouver doctors, including Julio Montaner and Evan Wood.
This comes on less than a month before the International AIDS Conference, which takes place in Washington from July 22 to 27.
The former presidents are Aleksander Kwasniewski (Poland), César Gaviria (Colombia), Ernesto Zedillo (Mexico), Fernando Henrique Cardoso (Brazil), Ricardo Lagos (Chile), and Ruth Dreifuss (Switzerland). Other commission members include George Papandreou (former prime minister of Greece), George Shultz (former U.S. secretary of state), and Louise Arbour (former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights).
My 2c :)
Ending prohibition would greatly reduce, even almost eliminate, the market in illegal narcotics, cause a reduction in the number of users and addicts, greatly curtail drug related illness and deaths, reduce societal harm from problematic abusers, and bring about an enormous reduction in the presence and influence of organized crime. The people who use drugs are our own children, our brothers, our sisters, our parents and our neighbors. By allowing all adults safe and controlled legal access to psychoactive substances, we will not only greatly reduce the dangers for both them and ourselves but also greatly minimize the possibility of 'peer-initiation' and sales to minors.
Never have so many been harmed and impoverished by so few, so quickly. Prohibition is not just an extremely expensive accident. Like any harmful and completely ineffective policy, it was connived and implemented by immoral, malicious, fools. It cannot be ended soon enough.
After many decades of drug-war-dystopia, don't we all deserve a healthy, safe and prosperous future?
Just say no to prohibition-insanity, prohibition-corruption, prohibition-violence and prohibition-terrorism!