Graham Hancock on the War on Drugs:
"When we look at the history of the "war on drugs" over approximately the last forty years it must be asked whether the criminalisation of the use of any of the prohibited substances has in any way been effective in terms of the stated goals that this "war" was supposedly mounted to achieve? Specifically, has there been a marked reduction in the use of illegal drugs over the past forty years - as one would expect with billions of dollars of taxpayers' money having been spent over such a long period on their suppression - and has there been a reduction in the harms that these drugs supposedly cause to the individual and to society?
It is unnecessary here to set down screeds of statistics, facts and figures readily available from published sources to assert that in terms of its own stated objectives the "war on drugs" has been an abject failure and a shameful and scandalous waste of public money. Indeed it is well known, and not disputed, that the very societies that attempt most vigorously to suppress illegal drugs, and in which users are subject to the most stringent penalties, have seen a vast and continuous increase in the per capita consumption of these drugs. This is tacitly admitted by the vast armed bureaucracies set up to persecute drug users in our societies which every year demand more and more public money to fund their suppressive activities; if the suppression were working one would expect their budgets to go down, not up."
