THE CASE FOR LEGALISING DRUGS

The Ministry of Health has recently been placing excellent ads in the
print media which quote, among other things, the fact that the World
Health Organisation reports that world wide, someone dies from tobacco
use every 6.5 seconds. Also that smoking for 20 years will cause death
for smokers as much as 25 years earlier than someone who never smoked.
Yet tobacco use is legal.

In developed countries tobacco use is dropping significantly through a
combination of severe health warnings, taxation and the prohibition of
advertising on television and other types of media. Tobacco companies
are now concentrating on finding a growing number of new victims in
Africa, Asia and eastern Europe.

WITCO in Trinidad, seemingly "smelling the coffee" some years ago,
decided to diversify out of tobacco and invested some of their
significant profits in a massive orchid farm. At the time I thought
this was taking the concept of vertical integration a bit too
far-first you kill them with cigarettes and then you sell them the
flowers for the funeral!

In spite of its awful ill-effects, tobacco is still legal, but the
fight against tobacco is gaining ground. You cannot smoke on a BWIA
plane, or in most restaurants. However, possession and use of other
drugs such as marijuana and cocaine are illegal.

Let me make it clear-I hate drugs. I have never tried drugs. I hate
what they do to individuals and their families and friends. And most
of all, I hate the fact that they make criminals rich. But let us face
facts-we have lost the war on drugs. We are like resistance fighters
picking off the occasional occupying enemy infantry, one at a time,
while the Mr Bigs grow richer. So what do we do?

I say change the war. Open a new front, so to speak, by altering the
economic fundamentals and taking the massive profits out of drugs. The
truth is a kilo of cocaine in the jungles of Colombia and Bolivia
costs US$500 a kilo to produce but by the time it reaches the streets
of Miami its street value is US$60,000 a kilo. That is why we have
lost the war on drugs. Making it illegal has created enormous profits
for criminals at all levels.

ght the expanding use of drugs, estimated to be worth US$400 billion a
year by the United Nations, we need to go back to square one and admit
that Prohibition, making it illegal and making criminals out of
otherwise decent citizens who use drugs, has not and will not work.

Civil society is being seriously eroded because drugs are not legal.
Making drugs illegal has not removed the demand for them but has
driven it underground and made criminals into multi-millionaires.

If we change the law, chronic users can be encouraged to come out in
the open and be helped to fight their addiction. We will have removed
all the criminals from the supply of drugs. After all, WITCO already
sells people deadly tobacco-why not ask them to market and distribute
these drugs but with all the controls required to treat users, and
block the criminals out of the huge profits they are currently making,
while engaging in a massive education campaign. Let's try to make the
use of drugs as "yucky" as smoking cigarettes. Only three weeks ago
the Mexican Parliament passed a new law legalising the possession of
small quantities of almost all illegal drugs. It was designed to avoid
clogging prisons with drug addicts and freeing police to go after the
big-time criminals involved in distribution. As President Vicente Fox
was about to sign the bill into law, he received certain warnings from
the US Government and a day later shelved the legislation.

It seems the US has not learnt any lessons from the prohibition of
alcohol in the 1920s which spawned dozens of criminals like Al Capone.
They have forgotten that Coca Cola got its name from the fact that
cocaine was part of the formula until it was changed.

And by the way, it was Pope Leo XIII who endorsed the use of cocaine
and commended the manufacturer as he carried this "tonic" in a
personal hip flask to fortify himself in those moments when he felt
prayer was insufficient.

The Government needs to appoint a task force to study the Mexican
legislation, among others, and to come up with new strategies to fight
the difficult war on drugs -one that removes the profit margin from
the criminal elements in our society.