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Chafee questions effectiveness of global drug laws
04.15.07|ZWire

It might be time for America, and perhaps the rest of the world, to assess its drug laws to see if they are working, former Sen. Lincoln Chafee told a regional drug policy conference at Brown University Friday.
With elected leaders of some South American nations talking about legitimizing the sale of their countries' coca crops and the cultivation of opium-producing poppies "exploding" in places like Afghanistan, generating money that is funneled to terrorism and prompting poppy growers to assemble their own private militias, Chafee said at the end of his presentation it may be time for a United Nations summit on the issue.
"I think it is that big," he remarked.
"We have to look at this creatively and it has to be done in unison with a lot of other countries," he told a half-full auditorium on the Brown campus, where he has been a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies since shortly after losing his U.S. Senate seat to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse last November. "We can't have different countries having different laws on the demand and supply side" of the narcotics trade. "It's got to be done in a global way. It has to be done through an organization such as the United Nations."
As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee subcommittee that dealt with international narcotics issues, Chafee made three tours of Columbia and other parts of South America and also visited the Middle East and Afghanistan, he told the Northeast Regional Conference of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) Friday.
Is his call for a reassessment of current drug policies an indication that he thinks they are not working?
Narcotics "is a big part of destabilizing the situation in Afghanistan and then in the Andean region and in Ecuador, with President (Rafael) Correa trying to get the United States to abandon a base used for drug interdiction, and I am sure there is evidence here. It could be debatable, I wasn't definitive that it is a failure but from my perspective, it's not working."
With huge drug profits to fund political campaign, Chafee told the group, some coca growers are electing sympathetic leaders through the democratic process. The former senator said he was "stunned" when, during a meeting with then-President of Uruguay Jorge Batlle, Batlle suggested that he favored drug legalization.
Nonetheless, Chafee said, "we can't go around saying we are in favor of promoting democracy around the world" and then tell a democratically-elected leader that the United States is not going to deal with them or give them foreign aid if they disagree with us on drug policy. "It's hypocritical."
Chafee used the same word to describe the federal government here trumping the policies of states where voters or legislatures legalize medical marijuana or assisted suicide.
"I always thought it was hypocritical for conservatives who railed for states rights except on certain issues (medical marijuana) being one," he said. Taking a question from the audience about Rhode Island's medical marijuana law and the governor's opposition to it, Chafee said, "for people who are very, very sick, anything we can do for them to ease their pain, we have to look positively on it. I disagree with the governor on that."
On the domestic front, Chafee said in response to a reporter's question, "You've got to be open minded about it. You just have to step back and look at it clinically. Is it working, ultimately, is this working? And what are our options. We tried pouring money into it and putting the most onerous penalties possible. And now it is time for conservatives, liberals, everybody to step back from it and say, "Maybe we were wrong, we gave it our best effort, is it working."
On the other hand, he said, "we just can't write off a population to drug abuse. We're not going to allow that to happen." Allowing decriminalization, regulating and taxing what are now illegal drugs, "makes it easier to use. That's not a good option, either."

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Buzzby

The UN has had a drug control policy in place for many years, but it has no means to enforce it.

Narcotics have that power only because they are illegal. If they could be marketed like any other commodity, they'd have as much "power" as a head of lettuce.

How is that any different from the US, where wealthy people and businesses get to determine government policy by electing "friendly" politicians? Getting elected is largely a matter of how much you have to spend on campaigns, leaving elected officials in debt to special interest groups.

I don't understand this at all. We're not telling anyone what they can or cannot do. All we're doing is saying that we don't approve of certain kinds of behavior and won't do them any favors if they continue in that behavior. It's similar to "voting with your dollars" in choosing to buy what you like and not buy what you don't like.

Trying to tie drug abuse to prohibition sounds logical on the surface, but if you look a bit closer you see that the connection is the opposite of that cited by the prohibitionists. The economics of prohibition will always make drugs readily available. Drug abuse becomes a "secret sin" - you can't look for help without risking your job and position in society. Legal drugs would bring drug abuse out into the light and fresh air. In the case of marijuana, easing laws has not resulted in an increase in use.

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Abomonog

Actually we do tell other governments what their policy should be, and we attempt to punish them when they do not comply.

One great example is the Dutch. We know their drug laws. Now let me ask you this.

Have you ever seen a Dutch tourism commercial on American TV?
Have you ever seen a Dutch imported car? Do you even know that a Dutch auto maker even existed? Ever seen a Dutch clothing store? You can get loads of American made Dutch STYLED clothing, mostly as costumes.
Mostly you see Dutch hemp products. And they're not even imported directly. They have to pass from France.

Look at flight schedualling. What happened to non-stop flights to Amsterdam?
Why always a transfer in Paris now?

Because when the Dutch legalized marijuana (and got loud about it) America imposed a trading imbargo that still stands to this day. (not that this has hurt the Dutch any) America is the only country in the industrialized world not having any direct trade with the Dutch.

And ask this? Why does America always have boarder crossing issues with Canada?

Because their drug laws aren't as harsh as ours and they protect American medical marijuana patients from our government.


And why is Mexico, a country that for decades was internally peaceful to the point where is even once contained a prison that had no gates or walls, now shooting itself to death?

Because we complained about drug production in Mexico and then threatened them with the exact same embargo we enforce on the Dutch. But Mexico, unlike Holland, needs to sell it's few products in America to survive. Mexico exports autos and parts to the US for VW, Ford, and a few other various automakers. Rather than lose those exports Mexico waged a war against its cartels that so far has been bloody enough to prove a refreshing distraction from the events in Iraq.

In many Asian countries hundreds of executions take place every year just for the right to sell you that Kia Optima, or that Hundai.


We don't TELL other countries what to do. We just TELL them what we WON'T do if they don't do what we say.

We WON'T allow you to directly export goods to America.
We WON'T allow your airlines to operate in American airspace.
We WON'T allow your tourism board to advertise here.
We WON'T give you a docking license to our ports.

This is the fate of nations who defy our drug policy. Just like the African nations that lose American medical aid for teaching their children safe sex instead of abstinence, the more industrialized nations also lose if they do not bow to American policy.

And you don't understand?


It's not like we are offering them gifts for compliance. We threaten economic collapse if they don't comply.

When you deny starving people food over a principal, then that principal no longer exists and you are reduced to a monster. America does this on a daily basis.

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jmp98251

I just read this on here, it is just retarted the real story:

1) Dutch tourism commericals they dont exist nowhere in the world
2) Dutch auto maker, the normal one went bankrupt in the 50s before legalisation, it only produces trucks now (DAF) there is an expensive brand, spyker it ships directly to the US (at $500.000 a car)
3) the Hemp products go by plane from Amsterdam to the US
4) I flew direct from the US to Amsterdam and the other way around, 4 flights daily from Amsterdam to New York alone
5) there is no fucking embargo, u think the EU would accept it, even better, half of the american imported fuel goes through Rotterdam, it has to be transfered from te mamoth carriers to smaller ships, because the mammoth ships cant dock in the US.
6) Dutch banks own most of the US banks
7) the Dutch work together with the US on controlling the gulf of mexico (they work from the islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao (all islands under the kingdom of the Netherlands)
8) Royal Dutch Shell operates in the US
9) Royal Dutch Phillips sells directly from online stores in the US
10) the Netherlands airforce trains in the US

11) do I have to keep going or is this enough? in other words dont believe everything they say online.

Buzzby

[The Dutch never legalized marijuana. They tolerate it, just as they do in San Francisco and Seattle.]
Where did you find this information? I searched via Google and found no mention of it.

There's a direct Northwest Airlines flight from Detroit to Amsterdam. You were wrong about no direct flights. It took me two minutes to find it. Where do you get your erroneous info?

If any of that is true, what's wrong with it? If you don't like a business's policies, you do business with someone else. Do you think anyone should be forced to do business with people whose policies seem wrong to them? It's not punishment. It's voting with your dollars. As much as I disagree with our government's drug policy, I see nothing wrong with the general principle of not doing business with people whose policies you don't like.

Hmmm... There's a KLM (Royal Dutch Airlines) flight out of Cleveland, with a stop in Detroit, to Amsterdam. It must be quite a trick to do that without passing through American airspace.

It sounds like they need to have support from more than one source... No one is entitled to foreign aid. It's given voluntarily.

The US is under no obligation to feed the world. For that matter, many people go hungry in this country. We should look to taking care of our own before we start worrying about other countries. If we have to allocate limited resources, it would be silly to give them to people we don't agree with when there are plenty of needy people we do agree with.