A friend shared this link on Facebook, and I read through the article. I was very interested to note that Richard Branson bases much of his argument on the reduction in drug use in Portugal since the policy change decriminalizing possession of small amounts of drugs for personal use and referring users to medical treatment. Is this the societal consensus in other countries? Are most advocates of ending "the war on drugs" trying to achieve reduced use? Is the worldwide experience (Branson also refers to the Netherlands and to the European Union generally) that fewer criminal penalties for drug use results in consistently lower overall use in the general population? How many drug legalization campaigns around the world make this the major point of the campaign, to reduce use of the drugs that are now illegal?
The problem is that we're going the other way in The Netherlands right now.
The red light district is being slowly dismantled [1], new draconian laws are being introduced to shut the coffee shops down (with a Think Of The Children argument) [2] and foreigners are being banned from using coffee shops [3].
I blame the ageing population: the "boomers" [4] have had their fun, but they're getting older now and young people getting high only "disturbs" the peace. They're the biggest voting block, so they get their way (yet again).
So yeah, I don't see the Western world changing any time soon.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123535114271444981.html
Cardoso (former president of Brazil), Gaviria (former president of Colombia) and Zedillo (former president of Mexico) also share the opinion that the War on Drugs, a term first used by Nixon, has failed.
I believe that it is pretty common and the leading argument.
True motive may be way different, but the convenient fact is that the stated goals of proponents of war on drugs are more efficiently achieved by decriminalization.
To my knowledge pretty much all of the fears that are voiced in opposition to decriminalization have been shown to be unfounded in practice.
