One War We Should Stop Fighting

Even administration apologists pretty much admit the fact that our war on drugs is a failure, since we have more addicts than ever. Mexico’s president Vincente Fox recently proposed decriminalizing drugs in his country, but quickly backpedaled when our government objected, fearing that even more drugs would flow over the border. Canadians have considered legalizing marijuana. Some state have legalized pot when it is used as medicine. But the liberal drug laws that were passed in Switzerland ten years ago have led to an 80% decline in the number of addicts there. Maybe the war on drugs is a war we should stop fighting.

Jeremy Laurance writes in the Independent that the charities that treat addicts in the UK are begging their government to decriminalize?and even legalize?heroin. In Switzerland, decriminalizing heroin worked the same way that banning cigarette smoking did in major US cities: it made people who persisted in using these substances seem like “losers” rather than glamorous rebels, meaning that social pressure worked where even draconian laws did not.

While some drug counselors warn that marijuana use leads to using harder drugs later, many people think that pot should be legalized, since it can be found almost everywhere.

Art credit: freeimages.co.uk

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