{"id":186631,"date":"2013-12-02T20:54:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-03T01:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/12\/02\/and-the-white-house-is-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-drug-war-internationally\/"},"modified":"2013-12-02T20:54:00","modified_gmt":"2013-12-03T01:54:00","slug":"and-the-white-house-is-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-drug-war-internationally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/12\/02\/and-the-white-house-is-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-drug-war-internationally\/","title":{"rendered":"And the White House is on the Wrong Side of the Drug War Internationally"},"content":{"rendered":"

We have a leaked document from UN negotiations on how to deal with illegal drugs, and the United States has decided to advocate for the Military-Prison-Industrial complex instead of sanity<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Major international divisions over the global \u201cwar on drugs\u201d have been revealed in a leaked draft of a UN document setting out the organisation\u2019s long-term strategy for combating illicit narcotics.<\/span>

<\/span>The draft, written in September and seen by the Observer<\/i>, shows there are serious and entrenched divisions over the longstanding US-led policy promoting prohibition as an exclusive solution to the problem.<\/span>

<\/span>Instead, a number of countries are pushing for the \u201cwar on drugs\u201d to be seen in a different light, which places greater emphasis on treating drug consumption as a public health problem, rather than a criminal justice matter.<\/span>

<\/span>It is rare for such a document to leak. Normally only the final agreed version is published once all differences between UN member states have been removed.<\/span><\/p>\n

The divisions highlighted in the draft are potentially important. The document will form the basis of a joint \u201chigh-level\u201d statement on drugs to be published in the spring, setting out the UN\u2019s thinking. This will then pave the way for a general assembly review, an event that occurs every 10 years, and, in 2016, will confirm the UN\u2019s position for the next decade. \u201cThe idea that there is a global consensus on drugs policy is fake,\u201d said Damon Barrett, deputy director of the charity Harm Reduction International<\/a>. \u201cThe differences have been there for a long time, but you rarely get to see them. It all gets whittled down to the lowest common denominator, when all you see is agreement. But it\u2019s interesting to see now what they are arguing about.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The current review, taking place in Vienna at the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, comes after South American countries threw down the gauntlet to the US at this year\u2019s Organization of American States summit meeting, when they argued that alternatives to prohibition must be considered.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 The problem here is that the “war on drugs” has been demagogued in the United States for decades, and when juxtaposed with the aggressive lobbying of private prisons and the US Military (which gets a cut of the border protection action) have made it next to impossible.<\/p>\n

Or at least it is impossible for politicians unwilling to take a political risk to do the right thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We have a leaked document from UN negotiations on how to deal with illegal drugs, and the United States has decided to advocate for the Military-Prison-Industrial complex instead of sanity: Major international divisions over the global \u201cwar on drugs\u201d have been revealed in a leaked draft of a UN document setting out the organisation\u2019s long-term …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1052,1013,964,1051],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crimes","category-drugs","category-foreign-relations","category-hypocrisy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186631"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}