10 March 2009

...E AINDA...


The Man With The Golden Arm - real. Otto Preminger, 1955

HOW TO STOP THE DRUG WARS:
Prohibition has failed; legalisation is the least bad solution

(Mar 5th 2009 - from "The Economist" print edition)

"A hundred years ago a group of foreign diplomats gathered in Shanghai for the first-ever international effort to ban trade in a narcotic drug. On February 26th 1909 they agreed to set up the International Opium Commission—just a few decades after Britain had fought a war with China to assert its right to peddle the stuff. Many other bans of mood-altering drugs have followed. In 1998 the UN General Assembly committed member countries to achieving a “drug-free world” and to “eliminating or significantly reducing” the production of opium, cocaine and cannabis by 2008. That is the kind of promise politicians love to make. It assuages the sense of moral panic that has been the handmaiden of prohibition for a century. It is intended to reassure the parents of teenagers across the world. Yet it is a hugely irresponsible promise, because it cannot be fulfilled. Next week ministers from around the world gather in Vienna to set international drug policy for the next decade. Like first-world-war generals, many will claim that all that is needed is more of the same. In fact the war on drugs has been a disaster, creating failed states in the developing world even as addiction has flourished in the rich world. By any sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless. That is why 'The Economist' continues to believe that the least bad policy is to legalise drugs". (texto integral aqui)

(2009)

2 comments:

F said...

"The proper role of the government is to prevent other people from harming an individual. Government never has any right to interfere with an individual for that individual’s own good. The case for prohibiting drugs is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from over eating.
"We all know that over-eating causes more deaths than drugs do.”

-Milton Friedman

Havia uma entrevista muito interessante com MF no Youtube sobre esta matéria. Infelizmente foi retirada.

João Lisboa said...

Yup.