Monday, January 21, 2008

The year is 2022 and drugs are legal ... in some places. One of the reasons some people have difficulties with the notion of drug legalization is that they simply do not have the ability to imagine what such a thing would be like. All they can do is parrot the prohibitionist's nonsense scenario of shrink-wrapped heroin injection packs on sale for $1 to toddlers in the 7-11. We probably need to be better at helping people envision a world without the drug war as it exists today. Well, Transform's Steve Rolles has prepared a fascinating look into the future of the UK for this month's Druglink Magazine: The year is 2022 and drugs are legal... (pdf) What Steve has done in the limited space given to him is focus on three future approaches: Marijuana -- the fully legal coffee shop model with legal personal growing and restrictions of use in public. Cocaine -- a regulated recreational prescription model Heroin -- the supervised maintenance model It's nicely imagined. How did it come about? The crunch moment came at the 2018 UN General Assembly Special Session when a coalition of over 20 countries, including much of Western Europe, Australasia, South America, Mexico and Canada, made it clear that they could no longer be a party to the increasingly redundant, ineffectual and often counter-productive strictures of the UN drug conventions. They demanded the sovereign and democratic right to determine their own drug polices in accordance with their own needs Unfortunately, Steve's future is a little more bleak for some of us... Different countries have adopted different regulatory models and policy is evolving rapidly. But not everywhere: old school punitive prohibition continues in the US, Sweden and Saudi Arabia Definitely worth a read. What do you think of his scenario? 7:39:56 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

The Drug Czar comes up with option 4 You may remember that last Monday I speculated on how John Walters would react to news that seizures sharply dropped in 2007. I had given a few options, and was about to declare #2 the winner (ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist), when he managed to come up with a whole new option: Blame Chavez In Unusually Harsh Criticism of the Venezuelan President, John P. Walters Blames Lack of Enforcement for an Increase in Drug Shipments. [...] "Where are the big seizures, where are the big arrests of individuals who are at least logistical coordinators? When it's being launched from controlled airports and seaports, where are the arrests of corrupt officials? At some point here, this is tantamount to collusion," Walters said in an interview. In other Drug Czar news... The head of the RCMP's national drug branch is debunking claims by the United States' drug czar, who claims organized crime rings in Canada are dumping dangerous, methamphetamine-laced "extreme ecstasy" into his country's illegal drug market. Supt. Paul Nadeau said he doesn't know why John Walters, of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, would make such statements in a widely distributed news release without checking facts with Canadian officials. "I shook my head when I read the release that they put out," said Nadeau, adding he's never heard of extreme ecstasy. "That term is unknown to us, certainly in Canada, and I can tell you that I've spoken to law enforcement people in the U.S. and they've never heard of it either so it would appear that it's a term that somebody came up with in a boardroom in Washington, D.C." [...] John Carnavale, an economist who worked for four previous U.S. drug czars between 1989 and 2000, said Walters is "cherry-picking data" to blame Canada. 11:36:27 AM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []