Well, other than that it was a good idea
The war on drugs is idiotic.
The decades-long global war on drugs has failed and it's time to shift the focus from mass incarceration to public health and human rights, according to a new report endorsed by five Nobel Prize-winning economists.
The report, titled "Ending the Drug Wars" and put together by the London School of Economics' IDEAS center, looks at the high costs and unintended consequences of drug prohibitions on public health and safety, national security and law enforcement.
"The pursuit of a militarized and enforcement-led global 'war on drugs' strategy has produced enormous negative outcomes and collateral damage," says the 82-page report. "These include mass incarceration in the US, highly repressive policies in Asia, vast corruption and political destabilization in Afghanistan and West Africa, immense violence in Latin America, an HIV epidemic in Russia, an acute global shortage of pain medication and the propagation of systematic human rights abuses around the world."
The report urges the world's governments to reframe their drug policies around treatment and harm reduction rather than prosecution and prison.
I'm sure America will end the drug war...around the same time we run out of execution drugs.
(Blogger's note: Monica Lewinsky -- and the editors who love her -- threw me a curveball today. Hoping for normal posting tomorrow.)