Our Right to Poison: Lessons from the Failed War on Drugs

[sysop]

The global war on drugs has cost billions and taken countless lives -- but achieved little. The scant results finally have politicians and experts joining calls for legalization. Following the journey of cocaine from a farm in Colombia to a user in Berlin sheds light on why.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...-a-884750.html

[jnfranc]

It's quite extraordinary. Prohibition in the United States was a dismal failure at best, and yet people expect it to work now. It took 14 years then to demonstrate that it did nothing except to create a hugely powerful criminal organization, just as the war on drugs has done. The past 40 years have demonstrated exactly the same features - and we're still beating our heads against a wall.

[venze]

In Columbia, producing cocaine is illegal yet widespread. Many lives have perished from the continual battles between the law-enforcers and drug-dealers.
A worse scenario is still occurring in Afghanistan where poppies are openly cultivated at practically every corner to make opium. The drug trade that goes global has been the major revenue of the nation, people and insurgence for years.
Talking about drug control? (mtd1943, ttm1943)