Legalise Drugs To Win The War on Terror

America and the West should legalise drugs to bring about social stability and world peace, former Times editor Simon Jenkins suggested this week, in a detailed attack on the consequences of prohibition.

"The War on Drugs has been lost but defeat is not admitted. Its battle plans still lie on dusty shelves, its ships are mothballed, its generals cashiered," said the leading establishment opinion-former(writing in the London Times). "Yet the two wars are closely linked. They finance each other. Just as the IRA was recently arrested talking to FARC guerrillas in coca-growing Colombia, so 95 per cent of Europe's heroin came last year from Afghanistan. The Taliban regime would not exist were it not for opium."

His comments preceded reports that the Taliban this week told Afghan farmers they're free to grow opium again if Afghanistan is attacked, which has already prompted a massive reduction in the wholesale price of opium in Pakistan (from £525 to £105 per kilo). With the new annual growing season set to begin in weeks, the opium and heroin markets are likely to be deluged with oversupply.

"Rather than have the courage to admit that the criminalisation of a staple world product is now counter-productive to social stability and world peace, the American Government sticks to a failed policy and asserts that victory is just round the corner," Jenkins continued. "I know of nobody involved in the War on Drugs who believes it has been won, despite a quarter-century in the waging. Since the trade is by definition confined to criminals, it has become the prime sponsor of conflict and terror."

New data on drug habits published by the Home Office backed up his concerns, with figures suggesting that Britain's illegal drug business is now worth £6.6billion a year (US$10billion). An estimated 270,000 regular heroin users spend £2.3billion while 3.2 million cannabis users splash out £1.57billion (US$2.3 billion) on weed.

"The repeal of inter-war alcohol prohibition had been a testament to American democracy's ability to admit and rectify mistakes," said Jenkins. 'Democracy appears to have regressed."

Jonty Adderley

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