It’s not often I find myself in agreement with George Soros, but this is one such occasion.

I especially appreciate the way, in this promotional video from the Drug Policy Alliance, that Gordon Sumner (aka Sting), frames his argument in terms of “the right to sovereignty over one’s own mind and body”.

These days, the world faces another tragic twist in the saga of the fueled ‘War on Drugs’. Russia – the drugs cartels’ latest choice of dumping ground for cheap heroin from war-devastated Afghanistan is now geared up to repeat the same failed prohibition and punishment policies that have warped western societies for more than a generation.

There is a better way.

See also Conservative Hollywood Website and Bill O’ Reilly in Freakout Mode Over Sting and George Soros’ Crusade Against the Drug War on Alternet, for a taste of the predictable backlash from highly-paid pushers of slick lies and lethal nonsense.

As a Twitter neophyte I’m still learning about the strange new universe of Tweets, Followers, Following – and the weird ‘Trending Topics’ list on the right hand side of my page.

Some things remain utterly mysterious.

Stephen Fry: super-human Twittering powers

I looked up Stephen Fry, a celebrated Twitterer famous (in part) for his many followers. As of today there are 666,355 of them. That is a lot!

But what really amazed me was how many Twitterers Stephen Fry is following. According to today’s statistics, he follows 54,877 other Twits!

How can Fry possibly find the time? Does he have a small army of assistant Twitterers to predigest Tweets that show up on his page – and report on the Tweets he really needs to know about?

Or is there a technological fix that enables Master Twitterers to read hundreds of thousands of Tweets per day?

Locating a Stash: Today's Trending Topic for the Twittering masses

This morning I noticed Find Marijuana has been a Trending Topic for several hours. After it reached No 1 my curiosity finally got the better of me.

I clicked the link to arrive at a page of seemingly random Twitterers, all tweeting away merrily about what a giggle it is that Find Marijuana has become a Trending Topic.

How in Twitter’s name did that happen? Is it a genuine expression of random global whim? Has a network of mischievous Twitterers conspired to bump the topic into the top ten?  Could it be a gigantic surveillance operation by the combined drugs squads of participating nations?

It brings to mind an incident back in 1984, when I was a new arrival in the delightful city of Sydney, capital of New South Wales.

I noticed a sticker – the same sticker – in phone boxes all around the city. It had a simple message: Free Marijuana – call Neville! There was a phone number.

Today's Menu for Twits

I ignored it for days, but eventually decided to call from a public phone, just in case it was a police sting.

“Premier’s Office, how can I help you?” said a nice lady’s voice at the other end. When I asked about Free Marijuana, she politely explained the sticker was a prank. Her response to my follow-up questions was clearly well-practiced.  “Yes, the NSW Premier has received a lot of similar calls“.

Savvy locals knew the NSW Premier at the time was Neville Wran and saw through the joke straight away. But I was a stranger in a strange land.

In July 1974, I hitch-hiked through the Algarve along the beautiful southern coastline of Portugal. One evening I arrived at a small fishing village as night fell.

People Power in Lisbon, 1974

Like the rest of the country, that patch of Portugal was in the throes of momentus change. Autocracy dating from the 1930s had been overthrown earlier the same year. Politics were in flux. For the first time in decades, the left was in the ascendancy. The spirit of change – and new possibilities – was in the air.

I was equipped with a bag to ‘sleep rough’ if necessary, but decided to ask a local if he knew somewhere cheap to stay. There weren’t any hostels or cheap hotels, but in broken English and a little French he outlined a solution, which eventually led to one of the most pleasant surprises of my trip. I was doubtful, but he insisted. So I followed him to the local Police Station.

After introductions, a courteous policeman welcomed me to his domain and assigned me a private cell for the night. It was sparse, but clean – rather like a monk’s quarters. He served breakfast in the morning: the perfect finale to a random act of kindness that left me fond of Portugal ever since.

So it comes as no surprise to me that the Portuguese are in the forefront of 21st Century law reform on at least one crucial social issue. Who else? The Portuguese are not lawless, but they seem to keep red tape in perspective.

Cure not crime

In July 2001, Portugal took a bold step in drug law reform, decriminalizing all recreational drugs. This was not full legalization. Large-scale production and trading of illegal drugs is still prohibited. But personal possession – of cannabis, heroin, cocaine and other favorites of the US/Western ‘War on Drugs’ – was put beyond the criminal law. In Portugal, no-one goes to jail anymore for possession of recreational drugs. The War, in effect, is over.

“Decriminalisation” comprises removal of a conduct or activity from the sphere of criminal law. Prohibition remains the rule, but sanctions for use (and its preparatory acts) no longer fall within the framework of the criminal law.

Journalist and author Glen Greenwald has just completed a study of the Portuguese experiment seven year on. Published by the libertarian Cato Institute, it was discussed recently by Greenwald in his Salon.com column and most recently, by the Financial Times. It deserves a wide readership.

Glenn Greenwald

Greenwald’s paper explains how Portugal’s post-decriminilization laws work in practice. He provides comparative data from several countries over recent years indicating the policy’s relative success. None of the fearful predictions of critics prior to decriminalization have come to pass. Several trends indicate positive benefits. Not surprisingly, the policy is increasingly popular within Portugal and apparently no major political parties seek to overturn it.

This is an important study. The ‘War on Drugs’ is a hideous failed policy that must be abandoned. Portugal shows us a way out of the self-induced bad trip. We should all take note.

In the mid 1970s, the best a young hitch-hiker in Europe could expect from local cops was to be left alone. Portugal did better, at least for me. Now it’s doing a lot better on recreational drugs…

War is not inevitable, but once a war machine gets rolling its momentum is hard to arrest. Declaring peace takes creativity, lateral thought and courage – as well as good will.

Drug Decriminalization in Portugal – Lessons for Creating Fair and Successful Drug Policies

Conclusion

None of the fears promulgated by opponents of Portuguese decriminalization has come to fruition, whereas many of the benefits predicted by drug policymakers from instituting a decriminalization regime have been realized. While drug addiction, usage, and associated pathologies continue to skyrocket in many EU states, those problems—in virtually every relevant category—have been either contained or measurably improved within Portugal since2001. In certain key demographic segments, drug usage has decreased in absolute terms in the decriminalization framework even as usage across the EU continues to increase, including in those states that continue to take the hardest line in criminalizing drug possession and usage.

By freeing its citizens from the fear of prosecution and imprisonment for drug usage, Portugal has dramatically improved its ability to encourage drug addicts to avail themselves of treatment. The resources that were previously devoted to prosecuting and imprisoning drug addicts are now available to provide treatment programs to addicts. Those developments, along with Portugal’s shift to a harm-reduction approach, have dramatically improved drug-related social ills, including drug-caused mortalities and drug-related disease transmission. Ideally, treatment programs would be strictly voluntary, but Portugal’s program is certainly preferable to criminalization.

The Portuguese have seen the benefits of decriminalization, and therefore there is no serious political push in Portugal to return to a criminalization framework. Drug policy-makers in the Portuguese government are virtually unanimous in their belief that decriminalization has enabled a far more effective approach to managing Portugal’s addiction problems and other drug-related afflictions. Since the available data demonstrate that they are right, the Portuguese model ought to be carefully considered by policymakers around the world.

This article was originally published elsewhere on October 11th 2008.

I’m republishing it now, in the light of recent reports that the Obama Administration may significantly INCREASE the level of US troops in Afghanistan. In the words of John Dryen:

“For those whom God to ruin has designed,
He fits for fate, and first destroys their mind”
________________________________

Remember the saga about Iraq’s missing WMDs?

They were ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that the American, British, Australian Governments and others, told us were in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. They presented ‘an immediate threat’. Fear of WMDs was the key rationale for attacking and invading Iraq in 2003.

But when we got there…ooops, they didn’t exist! A mystery!

Now the same nutters want to attack Iran, again because of the threat of WMDs. That is even though, last year, an irate US ‘intelligence community’, in an unprecedented act of independence from the American Administration, went public stating that Iran has no current nuclear weapons program – whatever Bush, Cheney, the Israelis (and Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers and TV channels) may say.

Further East is Afghanistan. It has many mysteries too. For instance, just where is Osama Bin Laden? Where is his video production department located?

Soldier in an Afghan poppy field

Australians, along with our ‘allies’, invaded this mountainous nation back in late 2001. Our Governments explained that we were out to get Bin Laden and his evil gang. But seven years on, Ossama is supposedly still at large. Despite numerous reports of his demise, he still releases occasional videos, often nicely in sync with US/Israeli war plans. Perhaps he’ll show up just before the forthcoming US election, just like he did in 2004? (Ed. Note: He didn’t!)

Innocents in Australia – which if one is to take their words at face value, means almost everyone in both major political parties, the mainstream media and the pundits they regularly employ – imagine that in some way our troops’ ‘involvement’ in Afghanistan is not only about Bin Laden.

It is also, they believe, partly about reducing opium production in the country. If so, the policy hasn’t worked out. Had that been our real goal, we should have left well alone.

Here’s a reality check. By 2001, after a sticks and carrots approach by the UN (and the US State Department), the Taliban Government had really got a grip on Afghanistan’s opium production. Doubtless the methods they used were sometimes brutal. But the Taliban had general support from the world’s governments to get rid of the poppy fields. They were proving highly effective in cracking down on local drug lords.

Here’s a graph that shows what happened.

Afghan Opium Poduction 1994-2008

By 2000, opium production in Afghanistan began to drop. In 2001 it plummeted. At that rate, the Taliban might have wiped it out entirely the following year. But they never got the chance…

Afghanistan’s Government was toppled in late 2001 – by Australian troops, among others. Within 12 months, the country’s opium production was nearly ‘back to normal’. In recent years it has grown to unprecedented heights.

Which brings me to the latest mystery about Afghanistan and the west’s remarkable policies in the post 9-11 Terror Wars. Apparently, there’s a missing mountain of Afghani opium.

The BBC explains…

“For the past three years [Afghanistan’s opium] production has been running at almost twice the level of global demand. The numbers just don’t add up.”

Even more puzzling, the same article explains that the street price of heroin in the west remains high. The Beeb’s article then considers a couple of what it calls ‘credible theories’ about this mystery. If the BBC itself had any credibility left, these theories might be persuasive. As it is, we should probably keep an open mind…

The BBC article now includes an update. The British Serious Organised Crime Agency got in touch. They are busy at work in Afghanistan. SOCA said “Whilst the cultivation and production of opium in Afghanistan is in decline, intelligence suggests there is considerable stockpiling of narcotics by Afghan criminal networks in order to control prices in the growing markets in Russia, China and within the local region.”

Presidents Bush and Karzai

In decline? Really? Does SOCA bother to talk to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime? Does it know about the graph that you just saw? (Ed. Note: It’s true the UNDC data shows a small decrease in 2008 – the very last year. But overall, Aghanistan’s opium production has risen dramatically since 2001)

The Beeb further reports:

“Nato’s top operations commander is calling for more aggressive tactics against the opium trade in Afghanistan…troops should focus on “high-end” targets like drug dealers and laboratories. Some Nato ministers, however, are concerned that any crackdown would prompt a violent backlash against allied troops.”

The Ministers may well be right. “Our man in Kabul” President Hamid Karzai could have serious concerns about such a policy

Who wants to risk their own brother being banged up?

Prime Minister Rudd and President Karzai

Meanwhile, what is the Australian Government doing about controlling the world’s illicit heroin supply?

When we supported UN negotiations with the Taliban Government, up to 2001, our official policy was faring quite well. Now, thanks to willfully-ignorant support for the polices of the USA and its controllers, it’s a shambles.

Australia could well be in for a flood of cheap heroin sometime soon. Does Kevin Rudd care?

Or would he prefer to blame Iran, Putin, Hezbollah, Syria, Hamas, the Taliban – anyone as long as they’re not the real culprits?

Mr Murdoch, media magnate

I guess so.

When it comes to support for crazy neocon polices, it’s much easier for an Australian Prime Minister to be a conformist.

Critics aren’t welcome.

Mr Murdoch makes sure of that.