CALLING DRUG WAR FAILURE, GLOBAL GROUP SAYS END IT

U.S. Dismisses Call for Legalization, Regulation

MEXICO CITY Calling the global war on drugs a costly failure, a group
of high-profile world leaders is urging the Obama administration and
other governments to end "the criminalization, marginalization and
stigmatization of people who use drugs but who do no harm to others."

A report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, which includes
former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and past presidents of
Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, recommends that governments try new ways
of legalizing and regulating drugs, especially marijuana, as a way to
deny profits to drug cartels.

The recommendation was dismissed by the Obama administration and the
government of Mexico, allied in a violent 4 1/2-year-old crackdown on
cartels that has led to the deaths of more than 38,000 people in Mexico.

"The U.S. needs to open a debate," former Colombian President Cesar
Gaviria, a member of the panel, said by telephone from New York, where
the report is scheduled to be released today. "When you have 40 years
of a policy that is not bringing results, you have to ask if it's time
to change it."

Mexican President Felipe Calderon, a conservative, has made the battle
against drug cartels a centerpiece of his administration. Though the
growing death toll has stirred widespread public dismay in Mexico,
Calderon shows no sign of turning back before his six-year term ends
next year. A poll on security matters released Wednesday found broad
public opposition in Mexico to legalizing drug sales.

The U.S. government has backed the Mexican crackdown with law
enforcement equipment, training and encouraging words from President
Barack Obama.

"Making drugs more available, as this report suggests, will make it
harder to keep our communities healthy and safe," said Rafael
Lemaitre, spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy.

Although the Obama administration has emphasized a "public health"
approach to drug policy, officials have taken a hard line against
legalization.

"Legalizing dangerous drugs would be a profound mistake, leading to
more use, and more harmful consequences," drug czar Gil Kerlikowske
said this year.

Administration officials dispute the idea that nothing can be done to
reduce U.S. drug demand. A spokesman for the White House drug agency
said consumption peaked in 1979, when surveys showed that 14 percent
of respondents had used illegal drugs in the previous month. Now that
figure has dropped to 7 percent.

The new report said the world's approach to limiting drugs, crafted 50
years ago when the United Nations adopted its "Single Convention on
Narcotic Drugs," has failed to cut the supply or use of drugs. The
report, citing figures from the world body, said global marijuana
consumption rose more than 8 percent and cocaine use 27 percent
between 1998 and 2008.

The group cited a U.N. estimate that 250 million people worldwide use
illegal drugs, concluding, "We simply cannot treat them all as criminals."

More treatment options for addicts are needed, the report said. And it
argued that arresting and incarcerating "tens of millions" of
drug-producing farmers, couriers and street dealers have not answered
economic needs that push many people into the trade.

The group's members include former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul
Volcker, the writers Carlos Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa, and
Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group.

[SIDEBAR]

Proposal may cut crack sentences

WASHINGTON Thousands of federal prisoners could be released beginning
later this year to correct wide disparities in sentences between crack
and cocaine offenders under a proposal that won the key support of
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

Inmates serving lengthy terms for crack cocaine offenses could have an
average of three years shaved off their sentences.

While more than 12,000 federal prisoners nearly 6 percent of the
inmates in the vastly overcrowded U.S. prison system could be
affected, Holder recommended that only 5,500 should be released
because the others' crimes involved weapons or they have long criminal
histories.

The proposal is intended to remedy a historic legacy of the war on
drugs that meted out vastly greater sentences for crack cocaine users,
who are mostly black, than powdered cocaine users, often white and
sometimes affluent.