\n\n<\/a>\n… has made some courageous and profoundly\nimportant recommendations in a report on how to bring more effective\ncontrol over the illicit drug trade. The commission includes the former\npresidents or prime ministers of five countries, a former secretary\ngeneral of the United Nations, human rights leaders, and business and\ngovernment leaders, including Richard Branson, George P. Shultz and Paul\nA. Volcker.\n
\nThe report describes the total failure of the present global antidrug\neffort, and in particular America\u2019s \u201cwar on drugs,\u201d which was\ndeclared 40 years ago today. It notes that the global consumption of\nopiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis 8.5\npercent from 1998 to 2008. Its primary recommendations are to substitute\ntreatment for imprisonment for people who use drugs but do no harm\nto others, and to concentrate more coordinated international effort\non combating violent criminal organizations rather than nonviolent,\nlow-level offenders.\n
\nThese recommendations are compatible with United States drug policy from\nthree decades ago. In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country\nshould decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana,\nwith a full program of treatment for addicts. I also cautioned against\nfilling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and\nsummarized by saying: \u201cPenalties against possession of a drug should\nnot be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.\u201d\n<\/blockquote>\nImagine that!\nA drug policy meant to address the problem.\n
\nHow did we go wrong?\n\n\n
\nThese ideas were widely accepted at the time. But in the 1980s President\nRonald Reagan and Congress began to shift from balanced drug policies,\nincluding the treatment and rehabilitation of addicts, toward futile\nefforts to control drug imports from foreign countries.\n\nThis approach entailed an enormous expenditure of resources and\nthe dependence on police and military forces to reduce the foreign\ncultivation of marijuana, coca and opium poppy and the production\nof cocaine and heroin. One result has been a terrible escalation in\ndrug-related violence, corruption and gross violations of human rights\nin a growing number of Latin American countries.\n<\/blockquote>\n\n
<\/a>\nA policy that has resulted in\n\n40,000 dead in Mexico and now mass demonstrations.<\/a>\n
\nPresident Carter recommends\n\nthe Commission’s recommendations of legalization, regulation, and health and security<\/a> and continues:\n
\n…For effective\nexamples, they can look to policies that have shown promising results\nin Europe, Australia and other places.\n\nBut they probably won\u2019t turn to the United States for advice.\n\n
<\/a>\nDrug\npolicies here are more punitive and counterproductive than in other\ndemocracies, and have brought about an explosion in prison populations. At\nthe end of 1980, just before I left office, 500,000 people were\nincarcerated in America; at the end of 2009 the number was nearly 2.3\nmillion. There are 743 people in prison for every 100,000 Americans,\na higher portion than in any other country and seven times as great as\nin Europe. Some 7.2 million people are either in prison or on probation\nor parole \u2014 more than 3 percent of all American adults!\n<\/blockquote>\nAnd in Georgia it’s 1 in 13, 7.6% of adults, the worst in the nation.\nAnd\n\nGeorgia continues to lock more people up<\/a>\n
\nPresident Carter notes that the cost of locking people up\nmay finally force thinking differently. He concludes:\n
\nA few years ago I worked side by side for four months with a group of\nprison inmates, who were learning the building trade, to renovate some\npublic buildings in my hometown of Plains, Ga. They were intelligent\nand dedicated young men, each preparing for a productive life after\nthe completion of his sentence. More than half of them were in prison\nfor drug-related crimes, and would have been better off in college or\ntrade school.\n\nTo help such men remain valuable members of society, and to make drug\npolicies more humane and more effective, the American government should\nsupport and enact the reforms laid out by the Global Commission on\nDrug Policy.\n<\/blockquote>\nThat sounds better to me than privatizing justice, which is Georgia’s current path.\nWe don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County.\nSpend that tax money on rehabilitation and education instead.\n
\n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jimmy Carter in the New York Times 16 June 2011, Call Off the Global Drug War said the Global Commission on Drug Policy: … has made some courageous and profoundly important recommendations in a report on how to bring more effective control over the illicit drug trade. The commission includes the former presidents or prime […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,1113,14,15,2,41,19,72,21,22,178],"tags":[8817,77,8705,4369,8730,727,981,2490,75,1297,2489,2712,4370,8749,82],"class_list":["post-1887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-cca","category-economy","category-education","category-government","category-health-care","category-history","category-incarceration","category-planning","category-politics","category-vlcia","tag-cca","tag-drugs","tag-education","tag-global-commission-on-drug-policy","tag-incarceration","tag-jail","tag-jimmy-carter","tag-parole","tag-prison","tag-private-prison","tag-probation","tag-rehabilitation","tag-ronald-reagan","tag-vlcia","tag-war-on-drugs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-ur","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}