Glimrende klumme i Toronto Star, der kort og kontant gør regnskabet op for en fejlslagen krig mod narko. Det er ideologi, ikke fornuft og videnskab, der styrer krigen:
The drug war has wasted billions of dollars, fuelled rising HIV rates and destabilized countries such as Colombia, Mexico and Afghanistan, the statement [The Vienna Declaration, lp] points out.
Countless lives have been lost and drug lords are laughing all the way to the bank.
Meanwhile, your taxes are going up to pay for all that useless drug law enforcement. “This is something that conservatives should identify with — lack of government accountability (and) the wasting of tax dollars,” says Dr. Evan Wood, founder of the Vancouver- based International Centre for Science in Drug Policy.
“You’d think that (the federal government) would change policy if there was something that showed that public health can be improved and tax dollars can be saved.”
Each case of HIV costs Canadian taxpayers about $250,000, notes Wood, who chaired the committee that wrote the Vienna declaration.
“At the end of the day,” he says, “any effort to reduce the supply of drugs has the perverse effect of making it that much more profitable for someone else.”
Wood’s centre recently did a review of studies on the effect of drug enforcement on drug-related violence.
The vast majority of the studies concluded that increased enforcement leads to greater drug-related violence.
“We’re in a fight between science and ideology,” says Wood.
Perhaps it’s our politicians — not our drug addicts — who should be in jail.
