The UN’s war on drugs is a failure

Is it time for a different approach?
The Observer (UK)
Sunday, April 3, 2016

ungass_decadesA policy of prohibition has put the drugs trade in the hands of criminals and led to suffering for millions. 2008 was the year that the world didn’t eliminate the illicit drugs problem. This quixotic goal had been set a decade earlier at a United Nations general assembly special session when, under the vainglorious slogan “We can do it”, the supranational body pledged that, by 2008, the world would be “drug free”. As the UN prepares to host another special session on drugs in New York, the failure of the 1998 assembly to realise the goal is recorded in the vast amounts of money, resources, time and blood that have been expended in pursuing the apparently impossible.