The View from Down Under

I think history shows that in the scheme of things certain ideas have an uncanny habit of taking hold at the same time across national and cultural boundaries. Following on from the story I picked up about the failure of the so-called War on Drugs it's fascinating to see that exactly the same debate is going on in Australia. This article from the Western Australian quotes very similar sentiments being expressed by a former Supreme Court Judge no less in highlighting the utter failure of that countries drug policies. Of course Australia's policies are pretty much the same as our own here in the UK.

I know that politicians in all democracies are very scared of appearing to be 'soft on drugs' for fear of how that plays in the right wing press, but I take comfort from the fact there seems to be a decent head of steam building up internationally for a proper debate about the whole subject and that it just might be research-based rather than ideologically-led.

I must admit I had never heard of a charity called the Beckley Foundation before, but they were mentioned as working closely with the new Parliamentary Committee on drug policy reform and seem to be one of the prime movers behind the grandly-titled International Drug Policy Consortium. It turns out that the IDPC is part financed by the European Commission's Drug Prevention and Information Programme, so clearly there are growing signs across all borders that a change of direction is needed in relation to drug policy. There is a thorough resume of the last 40 years Drug War on their website here and some interesting information about Beckley here on wikipedia.

Sadly though it's obviously clearly business as usual as far as the UN Drugs Czar based in Vienna is concerned. The Western Australian reports

"The head of the United Nations' Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) called on Monday for more money and effort to stem a flow of illicit narcotics that earns druglords $320 billion (196 billion pounds) a year."

Oh dear.