Soros to host drug legalization talks in Colombia

BOGOTA (Reuter) Billionaire investor George Soros will
host a meeting in Colombia this year at which academics and
delegates from major cities worldwide will call for the
legalization of drugs, a published report said Monday.
Semana, Colombia's leading weekly news magazine, said the
meeting was to take place Oct. 89 in the northwest city of
Medellin and participants would call for an end to the
longrunning U.Sbacked war against drugs.
Spokesmen for the New Yorkbased Soros could not be reached
for immediate comment.
Semana said costs associated with the meeting including the
hotel and airfare bills of participants would be footed by the
Hungarianborn financier, who reportedly spends between $60
million and $100 million a year on groups like the Drug Policy
Foundation and Lindesmith Center set up to press for
decriminalization of drugs and drug use in the United States.
Soros has said in the past that the U.S. drug war is proving
to be ``worse than the disease.'' He is among a growing number
of prominent critics of Washington's official stance against
drugs, including conservatives such as publisher William F.
Buckley, University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman and
former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz.
Critics argue that criminal laws against drug use cost the
United States more than $30 billion a year to enforce, have put
hundreds of thousands of Americans behind bars and are fostering
a growing spiral of violence on U.S. streets.
``To dream of the United States as a drugfree country is
utopian. Some sort of substance or drug abuse has always been
endemic in most societies,'' Semana quoted Soros as saying.
``To insist on the total eradication of drug use can only
lead to failure and hopelessness,'' he added. ``The war against
drugs cannot be won.''