The war on drugs has failed and should make way for a global shift toward decriminalizing cannabis use and promoting harm reduction, former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso wrote in the Observer yesterday.
Cardoso said the hardline approach has brought “disastrous” consequences for Latin America, which has been the frontline in the war on drug cultivation for decades, while failing to change the continent’s position as the largest exporter of cocaine and marijuana.
His intervention, which will reignite growing debate in Europe about how to tackle drugs, was welcomed on Saturday by campaigners for drug law reform who increasingly see the impact on developing countries where drugs are produced as critical to the argument.
“After decades of overflights, interdictions, spraying and raids on jungle drug factories, Latin America remains the world’s largest exporter of cocaine and marijuana,” Cardoso wrote. “It is producing more and more opium and heroin. It is developing the capacity to mass produce synthetic drugs. Continuing the drugs war with more of the same is ludicrous.”
PRECEDENTS
Cardoso, a sociologist, said Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Bolivia and Ecuador had all now taken steps toward drug law liberalization and that change was “imminent” in Brazil.
The way forward worldwide would involve a “strategy of reaching out, patiently and persistently, to the users and not the continued waging of a misguided and counterproductive war that makes the users, rather than the drug lords, the primary victims,” he said.
Danny Kushlick of Transform, which campaigns for drug liberalization, said Cardoso’s intervention illustrated the human cost of efforts to combat the drugs trade on often poor and underdeveloped producer countries.
“Until this problem is taken up as a development issue it’s not going to move anywhere. The default position is that this is a problem of addiction, but people have completely missed the point of the war on drugs, that the vastly detrimental effects are largely in production and transit,” he said.
“If you look at a nation state like Guinea Bissau, which was a fragile state before and now is a fragile narco-state, that is a prime example of the vulnerability of developing countries to the fact that these drugs are incredibly expensive,” Kushlick said.
COMMISSION
Cardoso’s article follows the conclusions published earlier this year of a commission on drugs composed of three former Latin American leaders, who had been lobbying Washington for a change in its conduct of the war on drugs.
US President Barack Obama’s election to the White House last year is viewed as an opportunity for fresh thinking, with Cardoso among guests invited to a discussion on drugs policy with him before Obama became president.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including