WAVE OF DRUG DECRIMINALIZATION SWEEPING THROUGH LATIN AMERICA

Guardian, UK - Across Latin America and Mexico, there is a wave of drug law reform which constitutes a stark rebuff to the United States as it prepares to mark the 40th anniversary of a conflict officially declared by President Richard Nixon and fronted by his wife, Pat, in 1969. That "war" has incarcerated an average of a million US citizens a year, as every stratum of American society demonstrates its insatiable need to get high. And it has also engulfed not only America, but the Americas.

At El Paso at the end of the month, experts from the US and Mexico will gather to take stock and thrash out alternatives. El Paso stands cheek by jowl with its twin city, Ciudad Juárez, across the Rio Grande. There, last Wednesday, the day after the Argentinian court ruling, cartel gunmen broke into the El Aliviane drug rehabilitation centre, lined 17 young people against a wall and cut them down with a fusillade of machine-gun fire. Troops last night captured the suspected killer, Jose Rodolfo Escajeda, considered one of the most brutal hitmen in Chihuahua and one of the leaders of the Juárez cartel. The executions, coming shortly after the killing of 40 people over three days in Juárez two weeks ago, take the death toll to about 1,400 this year, making it the most dangerous city in the world. . . Latin America is seeking a different route to that of outright interdiction as advocated - and for decades directed - by Washington. The new thinking is emblematic of a new era in South American politics and statehood, in which the lexicon demands partnership with the US, not the subjugation that hallmarked the presidencies of Nixon, Reagan, the Bushes and Clinton.

Fernando Henrique Cardoso article on drugs

Guardian UK - The war on drugs has failed and should make way for a global shift towards decriminalizing cannabis use and promoting harm reduction, says the former president of Brazil, writing today in the Observer. Fernando Henrique Cardoso argues that the hard line approach has brought "disastrous" consequences for Latin America, which has been the frontline in the war on drug cultivation for decades, while failing to change the continent's position as the largest exporter of cocaine and marijuana. His intervention, which will reignite growing debate in Europe about how to tackle drugs, was welcomed by campaigners for drug law reform who increasingly see the impact on developing countries where drugs are produced as critical to the argument. "After decades of overflights, interdictions, spraying and raids on jungle drug factories, Latin America remains the world's largest exporter of cocaine and marijuana," Cardoso writes. "It is producing more and more opium and heroin. It is developing the capacity to mass produce synthetic drugs. Continuing the drugs war with more of the same is ludicrous."