December 6, 2012 -- Updated 2256 GMT (0656 HKT)
Branson: War on drugs a failure
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Richard Branson: Prohibition caused damage in the same way the war on drugs has done
- Branson says if one of his companies is failing, he doesn't continue with failed strategies
- U.S. has the most prisoners in the world, he says, 500,000 of them for drug violations
- Branson: We need alternatives to jail that focus on education, health, taxation, regulation
Editor's note: Richard
Branson is the founder of Virgin Group, with global branded revenues of
$21 billion, and a member of the Global Drug Commission. Sir Richard was
knighted in 1999 for his services to entrepreneurship. Watch today for
Branson's interview with CNN/US' Erin Burnett Out Front at 7pm ET and tomorrow (12/7) with CNN International's Connect the World program at 4pm ET
(CNN) -- In 1925, H. L. Mencken wrote an impassioned
plea: "Prohibition has not only failed in its promises but actually
created additional serious and disturbing social problems throughout
society. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic but more. There
is not less crime, but more. ... The cost of government is not smaller,
but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished."
This week marks the 79th
anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition in December 1933, but Mencken's
plea could easily apply to today's global policy on drugs.
We could learn a thing or
two by looking at what Prohibition brought to the United States: an
increase in consumption of hard liquor, organized crime taking over
legal production and distribution and widespread anger with the federal
government.
Richard Branson
Here we are, four decades
after Richard Nixon declared the war on drugs in 1971 and $1 trillion
spent since then. What do we have to show for it?
The U.S. has the largest prison population
in the world, with about 2.3 million behind bars. More than half a
million of those people are incarcerated for a drug law violation. What a
waste of young lives.
Become a fan of CNNOpinion
Stay up to date on the latest opinion, analysis and conversations through social media. Join us at Facebook/CNNOpinion and follow us @CNNOpinion on Twitter. We welcome your ideas and comments.
In business, if one of
our companies is failing, we take steps to identify and solve the
problem. What we don't do is continue failing strategies that cost huge
sums of money and exacerbate the problem. Rather than continuing on the
disastrous path of the war on drugs, we need to look at what works and
what doesn't in terms of real evidence and data.
The facts are
overwhelming. If the global drug trade were a country, it would have one
of the top 20 economies in the world. In 2005, the United Nations estimated the global illegal drug trade is
worth more than $320 billion. It also estimates there are 230 million
illegal drug users in the world, yet 90% of them are not classified as
problematic.
In the United States, if illegal drugs were taxed at rates comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco, they would yield $46.7 billion in tax revenue. A Cato study says legalizing drugs would save the U.S. about $41 billion a year in enforcing the drug laws.
Workers not protected by pot law
Medical marijuana for a 7-year-old?
Marijuana's high profile election
Have U.S. drug laws reduced drug use? No. The U.S. is the No. 1 nation in the world in illegal drug use. As with Prohibition, banning alcohol didn't stop people drinking -- it just stopped people obeying the law.
About 40,000 people were
in U.S. jails and prisons for drug crimes in 1980, compared with more
than 500,000 today. Excessively long prison sentences and locking up
people for small drug offenses contribute greatly to this ballooning of
the prison population. It also represents racial discrimination and
targeting disguised as drug policy. People of color are no more likely
to use or sell illegal drugs than white people -- yet from 1980 to 2007,
blacks were arrested for drug law violations at rates 2.8 to 5.5 times
higher than white arrest rates.
Prohibition failed when
the American people spoke up and demanded its repeal. Today, the
American people are showing their dissatisfaction with the war on drugs
by voting for change, often in the face of federal law.
Colorado and Washington recently became the first U.S. states to legalize recreational use of marijuana. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia allow the medical use of marijuana, and 74% of Americans support alternatives to locking people up for marijuana possession.
How would our society,
our communities and daily lives improve if we took the money we use
running a police and prison state and put it into education and health?
Treating drugs as a health issue could save billions, improve public
health and help us better control violence and crime in our communities.
Hundreds of thousands of people have died from overdoses and
drug-related diseases, including HIV and hepatitis C, because they
didn't have access to cost-effective, life-saving solutions.
A Pew study says it costs the U.S. an average of $30,000 a year to incarcerate an inmate, but the nation spends only an average $11,665 per public school student.
The future of our nations and our children should be our priority. We
should be helping people addicted to drugs break their habits rather
than putting users in prison.
When it comes to drugs,
we should focus on the goals we agree on: protecting our kids,
protecting public safety and preventing and treating drug abuse and
addiction. To help unlock barriers to drug reform, last June, I joined
the Global Commission on Drug Policy,
which is bringing global leadership to drug reform to make fact-based
research public and draw attention to successful alternative approaches.
As part of this work, a new documentary, "Breaking the Taboo,"
narrated by Oscar award-winning actor Morgan Freeman and produced by my
son Sam Branson's indie Sundog Pictures, followed the commission's
attempts to break the political taboo over the war on drugs. The film
exposes the biggest failure of global policy in the past 40 years and
features revealing contributions from global leaders, including former
Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.
It is time we broke the
taboo and opened up the debate about the war on drugs. We need
alternatives that focus on education, health, taxation and regulation.
If you ignore a serious
problem, refuse to debate it and hope it will go away all by itself, you
are very naive. The war on drugs has failed. It's time to confront the
issue head on.
Follow @CNNOpinion on Twitter
Join us at Facebook/CNNOpinion
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Richard Branson.
COPY www.cnn.com
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário