• Drug Policy - Hot Off The 'Net

    Portugal Decriminalized All Drugs Eleven Years Ago

    And The Results Are Staggering

    On July 1st, 2001, Portugal decriminalized every imaginable drug, from marijuana, to cocaine, to heroin. Some thought Lisbon would become a drug tourist haven, others predicted usage rates among youths to surge.

    Eleven years later, it turns out they were both wrong.

    Over a decade has passed since Portugal changed its philosophy from labeling drug users as criminals to labeling them as people affected by a disease. This time lapse has allowed statistics to develop and in time, has made Portugal an example to follow.

  • Drug Policy - Hot Off The 'Net

    Stop The Drug War To Fight AIDS

    The war on drugs is a failure and immediate, major reforms of the global drug prohibition regime are needed to halt the spread of HIV infection and other drug war harms.

    Today we launched a new Global Commission on Drug Policy report with a livestreamed conference from London, calling for drug decriminalisation and and expansion of proven, cost-effective solutions to reduce HIV/AIDS.

  • Events

    ’Occupy UNODC Vienna 2012

    With the slogan ’Occupy UNODC Vienna 2012’ the critics of current drug policies based on three UN Conventions will unite during the forthcoming annual meeting of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs.

    Fifty years after the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs was launched, the global war on drugs has failed, and has had many unintended and devastating consequences worldwide. Use of the major controlled drugs has risen, and supply is cheaper, purer and more available than ever before. The UN conservatively estimates that there are now 250 million drug users worldwide.

    Illicit drugs are now the third most valuable industry in the world, after food and oil, estimated to be worth $450 billion a year, all in the control of criminals. Fighting the war on drugs costs the world’s taxpayers incalculable billions each year. An estimated 10 million people are in prison worldwide for drug-related offences, mostly “little fish” – personal users and small-time dealers. Corruption amongst law-enforcers and politicians, especially in producer and transit countries, has spread as never before, endangering democracy and civil society. Stability, security and development are threatened by the fallout from the war on drugs, as are human rights. Tens of thousands of people die in the drug war each year.

  • Announcements - Events

    The War on Drugs : Versus Debate : 13th March, 7pm GMT

    Julian Assange and Richard Branson; Russell Brand and Misha Glenny; Geoffrey Robertson and Eliot Spitzer. Experts, orators and celebrities who’ve made this their cause – come and see them lock horns in a new Intelligence2/Google+ debate format. Some of our speakers will be on stage in London, others beamed in from Mexico City or São Paulo or New Orleans, all thanks to the “Hangout” tool on Google+.

    The web will have its say, and so can you at the event in London. Be part of the buzz of the audience, be part of an event beamed across the web to millions. Come and witness the future of the global mind-clash at the first of our Versus debates, live at Kings Place.

  • Hot Off The 'Net

    Is Drug War Driven Mass Incarceration the New Jim Crow?

    By Bill Frezza

    Once in a great while a writer at the opposite end of the political spectrum gets you to look at a familiar set of facts in a new way. Disconcerting as it is, you can feel your foundation shift as your mind struggles to reconcile this new point of view with long held beliefs. Michelle Alexander has done just that in her book, The New Jim Crow.

    A liberal ideologue with impeccable leftist credentials, Alexander was Director of the Racial Justice Project at the American Civil Liberties Union before moving on to an appointment in Race and Ethnicity studies at Ohio State University. Her thesis pushes disparate-impact logic to an extreme, ascribing deeply racist motives to a society that has traveled a very long way since the system of legal and cultural discrimination known as Jim Crow stained the land.

    Yet there is no denying that if your goal were to consign African Americans to a permanent underclass—one which the rest of us would be culturally and legally permitted to discriminate against in employment, housing, voting rights, and government benefits—the war on drugs would be a great way to do it.