The drug war is a global catastrophe that Americans can no longer ignore

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article belong solely to the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Fresh Toast.

National Public Radio has a new 15 minute report online which it introduces with: “In June 1971, then President Richard Nixon said the US had a new number one public enemy: addiction. It was the beginning of America’s long war on drugs. Fifty years later, in months of interviews, NPR found growing consensus across the political spectrum – including some in law enforcement – that the drug war just didn’t work.”

Bravo, but as I mentioned earlier, the drug war is actually more than 100 years old. In fact, it began over a century ago with the International Opium Convention.

LOOK: We have to recognize that the war in Afghanistan is not our “longest war”

Photo by BrianAJackson / Getty Images

It was signed on January 23, 1912 during the First International Opium Conference. “It was the first international drug control agreement. The United States was unsuccessful in attempting to include cannabis in the 1912 Convention. “

In 1937, however, the infamous Harry Anslinger got Congress to do the Marijuana Tax Act.It was signed by Franklin Roosevelt, and almost every president since has contributed to escalating violence. Not just Nixon.

SEE: Harry Anslinger: The Godfather of the Cannabis Ban

Anslinger’s crowning achievement, however, was the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961, which signed the US and the world into the drug war through a treaty, particularly the marijuana ban, which is still used to ban cannabis on the around the world to justify.

SEE: Uniform Convention on Narcotic Drugs

Last December, on one of the last days of the Trump administration, the US voted “for the removal of cannabis from” Annex IV of the Single Convention while it is left in Appendix I and says that it is “consistent with science showing that cannabis itself continues to pose significant public health risks, even though a safe and effective cannabis-derived therapeutic has been developed and continues to do so international drug control should be controlled ”. Control conventions “.

In other words, the US and other countries should be contractually prohibited from legalizing recreational cannabis. Obviously, the people of the United States disagree, but the damage a century of reefer madness has wrought is not so easy to erase.

SEE: Malaysian Princess Wants Cancer Survivor Dr. Exempt Ganja from a possible death penalty for cannabis

AND: UK data shows the marijuana ban is a racially counterproductive fraud

Of course, we won’t have any impact on countries like Iran or China, but the people of Latin America and the European democracies really look to America for leadership. The US cannot simply forget the role it played in instigating the violence of the drug war.

Photo by Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images

Little Portugal has decriminalized all drug possession.

SEE: Drug Decriminalization in Portugal: Setting the Record

Portugal still has not legalized the sale and use of cannabis, but no one is arrested for it, unlike America, where over 400,000 were arrested last year.

However, it has effectively withdrawn from the drug war and the death toll from hard drugs has fallen sharply. “In 2019, more than 70,000 Americans died from drug-related overdoses, including illicit drugs and prescription opioids.”

GO TO Overdose Death Rates

Richard Cowan is a former NORML National Director and author of About The Roles Of Stars In The CBD Industry.