It’s hard to imagine it at first, but last weekend’s carnage in Rio de Janeiro may actually have one positive result. It may give the world a deadline for coming to our senses about drug prohibition.
Initial reports from Rio made the obvious link with the Olympic Games, asking whether it cast doubt on the city’s readiness to host the 2016 Olympics. But that isn’t really the right question.
It’s not South American policies that have created a massive illegal industry that can now rival governments for armed resources. The policy of drug prohibition has been driven all along by Western governments, principally the United States.
Make no mistake, this is not a problem about gangs or drugs, this is a problem about prohibition: about bad public policy. Tobacco and alcohol are just as dangerous as most of the illegal drugs on the market, but no cities have been turned into free-fire zones by competing tobacco and alcohol companies.
We’ve known this for a long time, but because the worst consequences are displaced onto safely remote places, Western politicians have been able to avoid facing the problem, and continue to prop up failed policies with scaremongering about drug addiction. Even among those who know that something has to be done, it’s been difficult to muster the appropriate sense of urgency.
Now, however, we have a fixed date to work to. Rio will host the Olympics in a little less than seven years, and it is simply unacceptable for the millions of affluent visitors to be risking the sort of mayhem that last weekend brought.
Of course, it shouldn’t be acceptable anywhere, at any time. It’s shocking that the issue even has to be put in these terms. But we know from experience that our politicians will never act as if the lives and happiness of the world’s poor were a priority in themselves: it has to brought closer to home. This just might do the trick.
That gives us seven years to make serious progress in dismantling the worldwide structure of drug prohibition. It’s a big task, but not impossible: once the momentum is there, policy can sometimes change with remarkable speed — the introduction of prohibition about a century ago is itself an example.
It’s up to those who understand the problem to keep the pressure on. The prohibitionists’ vision of a drug-free world has turned into a nightmare. But prohibition-free by 2016 — well, there’s a target worth aiming for.
The fact that alcohol and drinking are as dangerous to public health as most drug use, not to mention the turmoil our drug policy is causing in many distant countries, is only the beginning of the reasons we should legalise drug use.
It comes down to a simple question: is there anybody who is inclined to use drugs but doesn’t because they’re illegal? The answer is clearly no, which means that prohibition is an immediate failure.
Prohibition turns otherwise law-abiding citizens into criminals and stigmatises addicts who deserve our support more than our condemnation.
On the other hand, if drugs were legal the Government could regulate their manufacture to make sure they’re as safe as possible, put warnings on the label similar to those on cigarettes and drive the criminal element out of the business altogether.
Best of all, they could tax this new billion-dollar industry, raising more than enough money to treat those suffering from drug problems – who will continue to exist whether drugs are legalised or not – in a humane and caring way that stops them from turning to crime to support their habit.
The only losers will be the drug dealers and smugglers, a fact that should bother nobody.
We need to establish a level playing field. Both legal and illegal drugs have anti-social consequences, so it is indefensible that some are freely available and using others is a criminal offence. We need to follow a common line in relation to all these drugs. We need to discourage the abuse of all harmful drugs, and help people who are dependant on them to get over it.
The world is also being presented with another golden opportunity at this point in time, that being Western occupation of Afghanistan, source of the majority of heroin that is consumed by the other half of the illegal drug-using population.
As we have been made aware, with the Karzai government being seen to be compromised and corrupt due to drug money, and local warlords having an undue amount of influence in the corridors of power, shouldn’t we, as a sensible group of adults, grab the opportunity to put an end to the farce ?
The only way we can do it is to admit that drug dependance is a medical issue, and not a criminal one. It seems such a simple solution to what seems an intractable problem. However, no politician in a position of power appears to have the backbone to stand up to the industry that has grown up around drug interdiction and law enforcement, plus the drug prohibition industry, centred, as was alcohol prohibition, around the major religious organisations.
“but no cities have been turned into free-fire zones by competing tobacco and alcohol companies”
But of course cities such as Chicago were during the alcohol prohibition years in the US. Al Capone anyone.