 | NORML Press Releases: Vienna Drug Warriors Resemble WWI Generals |
 NORML responds to the government media release that Associate Minister of
Health Peter Dunne will represent New Zealand this week at the Vienna meeting
of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs.
“The Drug Warriors going to Vienna are like World War One generals, who claimed
victory over gains of a few hundred yards without counting the horrendous cost
in blood and treasure”, says NORML President Phil Saxby.
The USA alone spends around $40 billion per year trying to eliminate the supply
of drugs, and locks up half a million of its citizens in pursuit of tough-on-
drugs laws. In Mexico, more than 800 policemen and soldiers have been killed
since December 2006. Far from reducing crime, ‘prohibition has fostered
gangsterism on a scale that the world has never seen before’, says The
Economist (5 March 2009).
United Nations bureaucrats like UNDOC boss Antonio Maria Costa (today’s General
Haig) claim ‘the world is winning’ the war on drugs and call for more of the
same. “These drug warriors need to abandon their fantasies that the present
policies can ever succeed. They should take the advice of The Economist to
stop making the ‘hugely irresponsible promise’ of a drug-free world”, says
Saxby.
Phil Saxby points out that “The Economist” has been campaigning for the
legalisation of drugs for twenty years, describing it as the “least bad
solution”. It’s long past time Peter Dunne exercised common sense and started
counting the true cost of current failed policies, he says. “Sadly, the
original objective of improving public health has been overtaken by security
issues and enforcement.”
“Peter Dunne should stop spouting the inanities of today’s drug warriors – that
New Zealand should join others in ‘looking towards the goal of eliminating or
significantly reducing the manufacture, marketing and supply of illegal
drugs’. Instead, concludes Saxby, New Zealand deserves realistic, workable
policies that achieve public health objectives at a reasonable cost.
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