Towards a smarter drugs policy

DRUGS DEBATE • US drugs debate is dominated by a Manichean divide between prohibitionists and liberalisers, obscuring real scientific solutions.

By KEITH HUMPHREYS and JONATHAN CAULKINS / The Guardian

Packages containing marijuana in Tijuana, Mexico, after a seizure by police. Photo © REUTERS®

UNITED STATES, USA .— The loudest voices in US drug policy debates call either for enforcing prohibition with ever-increasing ferocity or for giving up altogether by letting corporations legally sell the currently illicit drugs much as they do tobacco and alcohol. But as our colleagues and we detail this week in the Lancet (summary; subscription-only, there is an alternative: adopting drug policies with scientific evidence of effectiveness.

Accumulating research overturns some deeply cherished ideas in drug policy. For example, alternative development (eg, encouraging Colombians to grow flowers or Afghans to grow raisins instead of coca plant and opium poppy, respectively) has never had any documented impact on the price, availability or use of drugs on American streets. If we want to subsidise those foreign industries for their own sake, we should do so – but labeling such efforts as "drug control" programs is deceitful. More...

Source: THE GUARDIAN^®