At the Summit of the Americas in Colombia, Harper said: “I think what everyone believes and agrees with, and to be frank myself, is that the current approach is not working, but it is not clear what we should do.”
It was a surprising and refreshing admission, coming as it did from Stephen Harper, one of the hemisphere’s most committed warriors in support of the war on drugs. Embedded in this admission of failure was a pleading for clarity about what to do next, and how to implement viable and effective solutions to the drug problem. This is why the recent release of the Global Commission on Drug Policy’s report, titled “The War on Drugs and HIV/AIDS: How the Criminalization of Drug Use Fuels the Global Pandemic” represents such a bombshell for Canada and other nations stuck in the fruitless, endless and self-perpetuating war on drugs.
The commission itself is made up of a who’s who of international leaders including former U.S. Federal Reserve chair Paul Volcker, Canadian Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour, Virgin Group founder Richard Branson, and the former presidents of Mexico, Colombia and Brazil. Their report represents a damning indictment of the global war on drugs by laying bare its true cost and staggering level of failure.