The United States alone spends some $40 billion each year on trying to eliminate the supply of drugs. Consumption of cocaine has declined gradually in the United States from its peak in the early 1980s, but the path is uneven (it remains higher than in the mid-1990s), and it is rising in many places, including Europe. (Like most purported drug facts, this one is just an educated guess: evidential rigour is another casualty of illegality.) The production of cocaine and opium is probably about the same as it was a decade ago that of cannabis is higher. Its boast is that the drug market has “stabilised”, meaning that more than 200m people, or almost 5% of the world's adult population, still take illegal drugs-roughly the same proportion as a decade ago. Nowadays the UN Office on Drugs and Crime no longer talks about a drug-free world. As we outline below, many vulnerable drug-takers would suffer. Legalisation, though clearly better for producer countries, would bring (different) risks to consumer countries. That is why The Economist continues to believe that the least bad policy is to legalise drugs. By any sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless. In fact the war on drugs has been a disaster, creating failed states in the developing world even as addiction has flourished in the rich world. Like first-world-war generals, many will claim that all that is needed is more of the same. Next week ministers from around the world gather in Vienna to set international drug policy for the next decade. Yet it is a hugely irresponsible promise, because it cannot be fulfilled. It is intended to reassure the parents of teenagers across the world. It assuages the sense of moral panic that has been the handmaiden of prohibition for a century. That is the kind of promise politicians love to make.

Dopewars free