Former Latin American Leaders Urge World to End War on Drugs 'Disaster' Alan Yuhas - The Guardian
go to original March 11, 2016

Former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo in 2000. While in office in the 90s, Zedilla began war against Mexican cartels that exploded in the second half of the decade. (Jerome Delay/AP)

Three former presidents of Latin American nations have urged the world to end the “unmitigated disaster” of the war on drugs, and denounced the United Nations for secrecy and shortsightedness ahead of the first special assembly on drugs in 18 years.

“Outdated drug policies around the world have resulted in soaring drug-related violence, overstretched criminal justice systems, runaway corruption and mangled democratic institutions,” wrote Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Cesar Gaviria and Ernesto Zedillo, respectively the former presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, in an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times.

The former presidents said that experts, statistics and a review of their “own failures on this front while in office” led them to “an unavoidable conclusion: the ‘war on drugs’ is an unmitigated disaster.”

While in office in the 1990s, the three leaders fought the drug trade by the usual, often violent, methods. Cardoso tried to eradicate marijuana production in Brazil, Zedillo began war against Mexican cartels that exploded in the second half of the decade, and Gaviria fought Pablo Escobar’s cocaine empire.

...The ex-presidents call echoes, at least in part, remarks made by several US presidential candidates this year when asked about a growing epidemic of heroin and painkiller abuse. Democratic candidates have said they support a shift toward treatment first, and some Republican candidates have said they favor improved treatment and reforming sentencing laws around drugs.

Read the rest at The Guardian

Related: Mexico Marijuana Debate: Is the War on Drugs Over? (Mexico Voices)

Related: Commission Wants UN to Adopt Alternative Drug Policies (Business Standard)

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