Excerpt: "In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, with a full program of treatment for addicts. I also cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and summarized by saying: 'Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.'"
A lineup of drug suspects in Mexico City, 10/15/08. (photo: Alexandre Meneghini/AP)
Call Off the Global Drug War
17 June 11
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n 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.
These recommendations are compatible with United States drug policy from three decades ago. In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, with a full program of treatment for addicts. I also cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and summarized by saying: "Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself."
These ideas were widely accepted at the time. But in the 1980s President Ronald Reagan and Congress began to shift from balanced drug policies, including the treatment and rehabilitation of addicts, toward futile efforts to control drug imports from foreign countries.
This approach entailed an enormous expenditure of resources and the dependence on police and military forces to reduce the foreign cultivation of marijuana, coca and opium poppy and the production of cocaine and heroin. One result has been a terrible escalation in drug-related violence, corruption and gross violations of human rights in a growing number of Latin American countries.
The commission's facts and arguments are persuasive. It recommends that governments be encouraged to experiment "with models of legal regulation of drugs ... that are designed to undermine the power of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their citizens." For effective examples, they can look to policies that have shown promising results in Europe, Australia and other places.
But they probably won't turn to the United States for advice. 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.
Maybe the increased tax burden on wealthy citizens necessary to pay for the war on drugs will help to bring about a reform of America's drug policies. At least the recommendations of the Global Commission will give some cover to political leaders who wish to do what is right.
A few years ago I worked side by side for four months with a group of prison inmates, who were learning the building trade, to renovate some public buildings in my hometown of Plains, Georgia. They were intelligent and dedicated young men, each preparing for a productive life after the completion of his sentence. More than half of them were in prison for drug-related crimes, and would have been better off in college or trade school.
To help such men remain valuable members of society, and to make drug policies more humane and more effective, the American government should support and enact the reforms laid out by the Global Commission on Drug Policy.
Jimmy Carter, the 39th president, is the founder of the Carter Center and the winner of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize.
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It is time to start samizdat - not difficult in Internet age.
USA became TOTALITARIAN system.
It has become obvious to a casual observer that our clandestine agencies, military leaders, and most politicians require "spin" to whitewash various acts of malfeasance. Why? They aren't held accountable anyway, so why bother to cover-up anything? It is a result of wanting to "appear" as being pure and not a criminal. Actuality be damned. Appearance is everything ... substance is unimportant.
It is important that history records that our gubmint didn't screw the pooch on 9/11 and everybody did exactly what they were supposed to do and what we citizens are paying them to do. Those clever Saudis merely out-smarted us and that is what caused 9/11. But we are smarter now and that is why you cannot know the secrets we have put into place to preclude any such future events. We will keep you safe. We intercept all of your email to keep you "safe". We'll even open your snail mail to keep you "safe". And we listen to your telephone calls to keep you "safe". And we took away some of your constitutional rights to keep you safe. Now you did stock up on duct tape, right? Pigs.
And, yes, if Bradley Manning has had a part in letting us see "Collateral murder by helicopter" in Iraq, he has done a very unpatriotic thing and should not only be prosecuted but should be persecuted before he is prosecuted. In the very spirit of the Mad Queen of Hearts, we hear Obama squealing: "Sentence first, verdict later!" What a fraud the man is! Anyone who defends him should be ashamed of themselves. Anyone who promotes his renomination will deserve the ruin it would promote.
Link TV is showing "Apology" as I write.
When people say that the first question (if they are conservative) is what policies did Obama change or eliminate as compared to the Bush Administration. They can not come up with anything.
If they are liberal I ask the who would they choose to be the leader of the United States? And to that there is silence.
Many are disappointed with Obama because they didn't know that he was slightly right of center to begin with. I had hoped that he would have pulled a little more to the left but am not terribly surprised he has not.
But compared to the list of idiots on the Republican side, he is a far more sane proposition. Personally, I LIKE clean air and clean water. I prefer that CDC remains to do its work. However, I would like to see a reduction in our military - we are not the policemen of the world (and if we are, we've really done a bad job of it).
is it not obvious that the most uncomplicated way to explain this catastrophic failure of government in the exercise of its responsibilitie s is that there was a stand-down order in place? Reading FAA and other intergovernment al communications of 9/11, I find indications of this order everywhere.
Some find it comforting to say "only a conspiracy theorist would say such a thing." Let me suggest that what such people are left with is more extreme than the theory they dismiss out of hand. They must belief some great arcane force--the Wicked Witch of the
West perhaps--cast a spell over the entire government of the United States and made all routine functions of government impossible to perform as 9/11 came.
After all, the Commies-Sociali sts-French-Radi cal Islamists-Brown People-AntiChri sts-East Coast Elitist Democrats-quich e eating Boston Red Sox-et al. are of the "East" and only we purehearts are of the "West."