The prestigious and influential journal Foreign Policy has the words “Legalize It” emblazoned across the cover of its September/October 2007 issue. The occasion is a superb article pointing out the dismal failure of the war on people who use certain kinds of drugs. The piece is by Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA). It has been recommended by John McLaughlin on his program and even FOX News felt the argument worthy of respectful discussion. Nadelmann concludes his essay by asserting that, “The global war on drugs persists in part because so many people fail to distinguish between the harms of drug abuse and the harms of prohibition. Legalization forces that distinction to the forefront. The opium problem in Afghanistan is primarily a prohibition problem, not a drug problem. The same is true of the narcoviolence and corruption that has afflicted Latin America and the Caribbean for almost three decades—and that now threatens Africa. Governments can arrest and kill drug lord after drug lord, but the ultimate solution is a structural one, not a prosecutorial one. Few people doubt any longer that the war on drugs is lost, but courage and vision are needed to transcend the ignorance, fear, and vested interests that sustain it.”

Cross posted on The Trebach Report