AN Agence France-Presse report last week said an experts’ group, the Global Commission on Drug Policy (GCDP), a pro-liberalization body, called for the replacement of what it calls “the failed war on drugs” by policies oriented to regulation and prevention.

AFP’s report said studies by the GCDP since it was convened in 2010 claim that instead of “stemming the global drug trade the costly war on drugs has seen it thrive in recent decades, with tragic consequences for public health and security.”

The Commission also said, “The global war on drugs is driving the HIV/AIDS pandemic among people who use drugs” and are reluctant to seek medical help for fear of incarceration.

“Vast expenditures on criminalization and repressive measures directed at producers, traffickers and consumers of illegal drugs have clearly failed to effectively curtail supply or consumption,” it added.

The GCDP said the worldwide supply of illicit opiates like heroin has ballooned by more than 380 percent in recent decades “from 1,000 metric tons in 1980 to more than 4,800 metric tons in 2010,” despite massive hikes in funds aimed at fighting drug trafficking.

One of the Commission’s leaders, former Colombian president Cesar Gaviria, said part of the solution lies in “moving the (anti-narcotics) budget of countries from jails and the police to prevention.”

“The way we are working in Colombia—for example in Medellin and in Bogota—it’s through prevention campaigns (…) with families, with teachers who are also really in favor of prevention,” he told reporters in Warsaw where the Commission launched a debate on the issue. His remarks highlight the progress made in cities dominated by notorious cartels.

Ex-presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, countries struggling to cope with the violence spawned by drug production and trade cartels, are members of the Commission as well as notables like Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa and Virgin Group billionaire Richard Branson.

Gaviria also insisted on the need to lobby the US Congress “to say we need you to debate and to change your laws, otherwise the violence in Latin America, Mexico and Central America will be out of hand and we will lose.”

GCDP chair and former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso called on governments to “experiment with different models of legal regulation of drugs, such as marijuana, similar to what we already have with tobacco and alcohol.”

Stressing that regulation was not the same as legalization, he urged “all kinds of restrictions and limitations on the production, trade, advertising and consumption of a given substance in order to deglamorize, discourage and control its use.”

“Drug abusers may harm themselves and their families, but locking them up is not going to help them,” he added.

According to Gaviria these kinds of changes could come sooner than expected: “Almost all presidents think the (existing) policy should be changed. There is no support for prohibition anymore, not even in the US.”

“No US official talks about defending prohibition as a policy. I haven’t heard of anyone. They’ve just stopped talking about it,” he was quoted by Agence France-Presse as saying.

We think the Commission’s ideas are worth considering, especially since in our country the war against drugs appears to have failed also.

The essential thing is to remember that regulation is not the same as legalization.