The UK's Telegraph is reporting a call by medical experts for a gloabl decriminalisation of drugs, with experts claiming current drug laws are detrimental to health and human rights, with disease and violence likely to be reduced with decriminalisation.
An international commission, 'set up by the Lancet medical journal and Johns Hopkins University in the United States, finds that tough drugs laws have caused misery, failed to curb drug use, fuelled violent crime and spread the epidemics of HIV and hepatitis C through unsafe injecting'.
“The goal of prohibiting all use, possession, production, and trafficking of illicit drugs is the basis of many of our national drug laws, but these policies are based on ideas about drug use and drug dependence that are not scientifically grounded,” says Dr Chris Beyrer of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of PublicHealth, a member of the commission.
“The global ‘war on drugs’ has harmed public health, human rights and development. It’s time for us to rethink our approach to global drug policies, and put scientific evidence and public health at the heart of drug policy discussions.”
Researchers claim that anti-drug law have, over time, '[convinced the public] that drug users deserve that kind of punishment.'
Read the article in full here:
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/mar/24/medical-experts-call-for-global-drug-decriminalisation
Do these researchers have a point, or do laws play an important role in protecting the public and punishing those who put themselves and others at risk?
Can we ignore the unnecessary deaths and dispair that often accompany drug use or is it the laws that are creating these problems?
What do you think would happen in a world where drugs and drug use were legal?
It is proposed that there should be a global decriminalisation of all illicit drugs