The War on Pot Is an Abject Failure ... Now's the Time for a New Approach

Practically overnight, faster than you can say "Depression 2.0", a
ballooning number of politicians, mainstream media journalists, and
members of the public are acknowledging the fact that cannabis
prohibition isn't drug control - it's drug chaos.

In the U.S. -- where 42 percent of the adult population has used
cannabis -- three-quarters of a million citizens are arrested every
year for simple possession, draining limited resources from pressing
issues like education, health care, and real "criminal justice".
South of the border, where cannabis comprises more than half of
Mexico's drug trafficking market, prohibitionist policies are fueling
a grim and growing war that recently prompted the U.S. Joint Forces
Command to warn that Mexico is in danger of becoming a failed state.

No wonder three-quarters of U.S. citizens think that the drug war is
a failure, several states have introduced legislation this year to
implement or expand decriminalization, and public support for
outright marijuana legalization is polling higher than ever.
Meanwhile, the crumbling economy has highlighted the monumental costs
of cannabis enforcement, prosecution, and incarceration, not to
mention the billions in potential taxes conceded to organized crime.
(In a 2006 report, expert Jon Gettman used conservative estimates to
value the annual U.S. cannabis crop at $36 billion -- absurdly, more
than corn and wheat combined.)

Abroad, the international community is also acknowledging the
futility of U.S.-style prohibition as a model for global drug policy,
and several countries have turned toward health-based approaches more
in line with the U.N.'s health and human rights mandates. Cannabis is
subject to international control by the 1961 Single Convention on
Narcotic Drugs, as amended in 1971, and it is also affected by the
1988 Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and
Psychotropic Substances. Although signatories of the international
drug control treaties are formally required to criminalize the
production, distribution, sale, use and possession of cannabis, a
number of countries -- such as the Netherlands, Brazil, Germany,
Italy, Belgium, Spain, Switzerland, Denmark, Portugal, Austria and
India -- have adopted less punitive policies.

Yet, while the political viability of cannabis reform is reaching new
found heights, there is a noticeable lack of consensus about the
specific systems of regulation that could replace the current model.

Moving Beyond Stalemate

Enter the Global Cannabis Commission, an international team of
leading public health policy experts (including Peter Reuter, Senior
Economist at RAND) convened by the UK's Beckley Foundation. The
Commission's Report and Draft Framework Convention on Cannabis
Control map out solutions to break the current international
stalemate, forming a blueprint for nations seeking to develop a more
humane and effective approach to the control of cannabis. Among its
recommendations, the Commission suggests reforming the international
conventions to allow countries the leeway to implement differing
systems of regulation that best suit their individual needs, even to
the point of state production and licensed sale. The Commission
identifies and analyzes potential routes forward -- depenalization,
decriminalization, partial legality, and, finally, a regulated legal market.

The Commission highlights aspects of international cannabis laws in
need of revision and lays out ways in which countries can gain
greater autonomy to pursue evidence-based cannabis policies. One way
is for individual countries to denounce the international conventions
and re-accede with a reservation on cannabis. Another way would be
for a group of like-minded countries to negotiate and adopt a new
convention specifically pertaining to cannabis -- this option is
explored in the Beckley Foundation's new Draft Framework Convention
on Cannabis Control.

Former President of Brazil Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who has
endorsed the Report, said that, "The Report of the Global Cannabis
Commission convened by the Beckley Foundation is a valuable
contribution to our thinking on the thorny subject of illicit drugs
.. The failure of the 'War on Drugs' strategy is quite evident
around the world, but the alternatives are not easy to grasp ... New
policies must be based on empirical data, not on ideological
assumptions and dogmas." Earlier this year, influenced by the
Commission's Report, Cardoso, along with the former Presidents of
Mexico and Colombia and 17 delegates from nine Latin American
nations, called for a "paradigm shift" in international drug policy
that includes the decriminalization of cannabis. The Commission's
Report has also been endorsed by Jaswant Singh, leader of the
opposition in the Indian Parliament's Upper House, and Jan Wiarda,
former chairman of European Police Chiefs.

Cannabis is the mainstay of the global War on Drugs. The U.N. has
estimated that it is used regularly by 166 million people -- 4
percent of the global adult population, compared to 1 percent for all
other illegal drugs combined. Under current international norms,
anyone who possesses an illegal drug such as cannabis is treated as a
serious criminal -- subject to the possibility of arrest, property
seizure, imprisonment, denial of access to public benefits (such as
financial aid for college or welfare), loss of child custody, and
employment discrimination.

As documented in the Report, there is no evidence that more rigorous
enforcement has a significant deterrent effect, although there is
extensive evidence that such enforcement causes considerable harms to
those arrested and their communities. Nor is there evidence that a
less punitive approach to cannabis control leads to any increase in
the use of cannabis. Furthermore, although cannabis is more commonly
traded within social networks than other illegal drugs, there are
still illegal markets worth tens of billions of dollars to organized
crime that sustain significant levels of violence in many countries.

Almost fifty years after the adoption of an unequivocal international
prohibition on cannabis in the 1961 Single Convention, we face a very
different world. Yet, the U.N. Conventions restrict the ability of
signatory countries to adapt to these changed circumstances and adopt
more appropriate cannabis policies. They also restrict the
accumulation of new evidence to inform the development of new
evidence-based systems of control. While in principle these
Conventions can be amended, this is not a practical possibility at
the present time.

The alternative, which is explored in the Commission's Draft
Framework on Cannabis Control, is to adopt a new convention, which
could be modeled on the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. This
treaty, which was adopted in 2003 and came into force in 2005, was
the first to be negotiated under WHO auspices.

The Time Is Now

The work of the Global Cannabis Commission is a compelling resource
for the development of evidence-based cannabis policies and provides
a model for reformers and policymakers to challenge the basic
premises of marijuana prohibition.

Today's drug chaos is the inevitable result of prohibition. Cannabis
has been easily produced around the world for thousands of years,
making its eradication effectively impossible. Prohibition entails
the opposite of drug control by completely abdicating regulation to
the black market -- as the Commission puts it, "That which is
prohibited cannot be easily regulated."

The tobacco example underscores the fact that drug regulation is not
a step into the unknown -- we have centuries of experience in legally
regulating thousands of different drugs. In fact, tobacco use has
declined dramatically in the U.S. over the past generation without
using the criminal justice system to punish tobacco users.

If ever there were a time for political leaders, in the U.S. and
abroad, to engage in an honest and open review of cannabis
prohibition, it is now. In one of this year's most promising
developments, U.S. Senators Jim Webb (D-VA) and Arlen Specter (R-PA)
have introduced a bill to create a commission that would undertake an
18-month study of the criminal justice system and make legislative
recommendations -- and an overhaul of cannabis laws will be on the
table. Meanwhile, in Mexico, growing appetite for reform prompted the
Mexican Congress to convene a three-day debate on the
decriminalization and regulation of cannabis earlier this month.

In contrast, President Obama appears a little caught off-guard by the
public's appetite for marijuana reform. When recently forced to
address the subject of marijuana legalization, he laughed it off but
curiously offered no arguments to defend his position.

Let's make sure our policy makers know that they can no longer evade
the basic truth that the prohibition of cannabis causes more harm
than the plant itself -- and that any marijuana "control" policy that
intends to protect children, families, and communities must include
sensible regulation.