Sometime I feel as if I’m living in a worm hole. Once again, a vast, international body has found that the drug war is devastating lives around the world and is doing nothing to curb drug problems. One again this is reported (thankfully) as news, it may be news but it is not new news. This rational conclusion has already been categorically stated by leading editorials in The Lancet and the British Medical Journal. Two reformed former (brutal) UK drugs tzars (Mo Mowlam and Bob Ainsworth) heavily pushed for legalisation after escaping office. So did the former president of the Royal College of Physicians (Sir Ian Gilmore) and Nicholas Green QC the Chairman of the Bar Council, former heads of the MI5, the CPS and the BBC and former head of the UK advisory council on drugs ﻿(David Nutt)﻿ fired for speaking the truth about drugs harms. The list goes on, and on, and on. Yesterday’s formal additions include (all former) leader of the UN (Kofi Annan), leaders of Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Greece, the US Federal Reserve, a US seceratary of state and even Sir Richard Branson. I could go on but the report itself (below) is only 21 pages, so rather than buying (LOL) a newspaper you might as well just read the original damn thing (PDF).

The front page of this morning’s independent (Thanks to @chriswhite_twit and @suttonnick)

Today’s independent calls once again for legalisation of cannabis. Last year I published an article stating that I vowed never to by the independent ever again after their front page editorial “apologising” for taking a sensible view on drugs for the prior decade. It seems the independent is now once again coming close to its original rational view point. Hopefully now the Independent can muster the courage to apologise formally for their front page “apology” of 2007 and correct the “facts” that we now know were falsified that directly led to the reclassifying of cannabis as a class B drug.

The offending 2007 Independent article

Now we have almost all the relevant former global drugs tzars, relevant world leaders and current leading academics on the same page I will once again quote the words said once upon a time by our now Prime Minister…

“I ask the Government not to return to retribution and war on drugs. That has been tried, and we all know that it does not work”

David Cameron, House of Commons, 5th December 2002

Global Commission Report English





Jahangir, A. Fuentes, C. Gaviria, C. Zedillo, E. Cardoso, F. Papandreou, G. Shultz, G. Solana, J. Whitehead, J. Annan, K. Arbour, L. Cattaui, M. Llosa, M. Caspers-Merk,M. Kazatchkine,M. Volcker, P. Branson, R. Dreifuss, R. Stoltenberg, T. (2011). WAR ON DRUGS. REPORT OF THE GLOBAL COMMISSION ON DRUG POLICY, 1-22 (PDF)

The title for this piece is taken from the title of an excellent book I’m currently reading by the late John Kennedy Toole.

Follow Simon on Twitter RSS , or join the mailing list