FOREIGN Minister Bob Carr has joined a group of prominent Australians, including former federal police chief Mick Palmer, in a campaign to overturn the ‘‘war on drugs’’ policies promoted by former prime minister John Howard.



The campaign will be launched today with a report declaring: ‘‘The war on drugs has failed ... The prohibition of illicit drugs is killing and criminalising our children and we are letting it happen.’’



The campaign, to be launched by former NSW director of public prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery, QC, has attracted high-profile backers including former WA premier Geoff Gallop, former Defence Department chief Paul Barratt, former federal Liberal health ministers Michael Wooldridge and Peter Baume, and drug addiction expert Alex Wodak.



Senator Carr, who agreed to join the campaign before being drafted into federal cabinet earlier this year, questioned in his contribution to the report whether the pursuit of marijuana users was the best use of police time.



‘‘An issue that worried me while I was in NSW politics was the police hitting railway stations with sniffer dogs,’’ Senator Carr wrote. ‘‘It was marijuana that was the focus.’’



He said this was a victimless crime and he would have preferred police ‘‘to do things like make public transport safe and clean up Cabramatta’’.



A spokesman for Senator Carr last night reaffirmed his support for drug law reform, but said that as a federal minister now he would be supporting government policy in this area.



The report was written by population health expert Bob Douglas and social research consultant David McDonald for think tank Australia21.



Its call for a fundamental rethink of drug policies and ‘‘an end to the tough-on-drugs approach’’ follows a declaration last year by the Global Commission on Drug Policy that the war on drugs had failed, ‘‘with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world’’.



Dr Wooldridge, who as health minister supported a heroin trial in the ACT, which was blocked by Mr Howard, says in the new report: ‘‘The key message is that we have 40years of experience of a law-and-order approach to drugs and it has failed.’’



Mr Cowdery, a long-time advocate of drug law reform, said the prohibition of drug use created social and health problems, as well as a ‘‘proliferation of crime ... and an increase in the corruption of law enforcement’’.



He said he strongly favoured legalising and regulating all drugs. ‘‘A first step towards such a regime could be decriminalisation, similar to the approach adopted 10 years ago in Portugal, or an adaptation of that approach,’’ Mr Cowdery said. ‘‘The key as I see it, is to try to reduce substantially the profit potentially able to be made by criminal activity in the drug trade and the only way to do that, as I see it, ultimately is to legalise, regulate, control and tax all drugs.’’



Mr Cowdery said MPs were reluctant to reopen the debate for fear of political consequences. ‘‘That’s why I think we need to have the discussion in the community and why we need as a consequence of the discussion to demonstrate to the politicians that there is a significant proportion of people that want something better.’’



About 15 per cent of Australians used illicit drugs in 2009, according to the latest statistics published by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. But the Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy reported last year that fewer people were using illegal drugs compared with the 22 per cent in 1998.