Ex-US President Jimmy Carter: Call Off the Global Drug War

Former US President Jimmy Carter joins the bandwagon calling for an end to the Global War on Drugs.

Writing in the New York Times, (bold emphasis mine)

IN an extraordinary new initiative announced earlier this month, the Global Commission on Drug Policy has made some courageous and profoundly important recommendations in a report on how to bring more effective control over the illicit drug trade. The commission includes the former presidents or prime ministers of five countries, a former secretary general of the United Nations, human rights leaders, and business and government leaders, including Richard Branson, George P. Shultz and Paul A. Volcker.

The report describes the total failure of the present global antidrug effort, and in particular America’s “war on drugs,” which was declared 40 years ago today. It notes that the global consumption of opiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis 8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008. Its primary recommendations are to substitute treatment for imprisonment for people who use drugs but do no harm to others, and to concentrate more coordinated international effort on combating violent criminal organizations rather than nonviolent, low-level offenders...

Drug policies here are more punitive and counterproductive than in other democracies, and have brought about an explosion in prison populations. At the end of 1980, just before I left office, 500,000 people were incarcerated in America; at the end of 2009 the number was nearly 2.3 million. There are 743 people in prison for every 100,000 Americans, a higher portion than in any other country and seven times as great as in Europe. Some 7.2 million people are either in prison or on probation or parole — more than 3 percent of all American adults!

Some of this increase has been caused by mandatory minimum sentencing and “three strikes you’re out” laws. But about three-quarters of new admissions to state prisons are for nonviolent crimes. And the single greatest cause of prison population growth has been the war on drugs, with the number of people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses increasing more than twelvefold since 1980.

Not only has this excessive punishment destroyed the lives of millions of young people and their families (disproportionately minorities), but it is wreaking havoc on state and local budgets. Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pointed out that, in 1980, 10 percent of his state’s budget went to higher education and 3 percent to prisons; in 2010, almost 11 percent went to prisons and only 7.5 percent to higher education.

There’s been a snowballing awareness that prohibition laws, particularly the war on drugs, eventually ends up with MORE accrued adverse effects than the intended benefits.

Unfortunately, events will turn for the worst before such feckless laws will get repealed.

And the sad part is that taxpayers everywhere will endure most of the burdens, aside from the extended risks of societal degeneration from the prospects of escalation of violence, rampant corruption, obstacles to medical advancement, loss of civil liberty, police brutality and many other injustices from war on drugs related regulatory abuses.

Noble intentions will not substitute for economic reality, that’s why whether prohibition is applied to drugs, illegal gambling such as jueteng (Philippines), prostitution or etc..., they are all bound for failure.