Updates from Matt RSS Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
Matt
-
Matt
Caravan for Peace and Justice
A Trans-border Caravan for Peace and Justice with the Poet and Peace Leader Javier Sicilia
More than 60,000 people have been killed in drug violence in Mexico in the last few years. 10,000 people have been disappeared and over 160,000 displaced. Global Exchange and Mexico’s Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (MPJD) led by Javier Sicilia have made “End the Drug War- No More Violence” campaign a priority in 2012. Starting in August, a high profile caravan will cross the US starting in San Diego/Los Angeles, heading east along the US-Mexico border and then up to Chicago, New York and DC.
Sicilia’s son, Juan Francisco was murdered along with six friends on a fateful night in March of 2011. He has since become an inspirational voice for peace, justice and reform– drawing huge crowds throughout Mexico. He comes north this summer with a call for change in the bi-national policies that have inflamed a six-year Drug War, super-empowered organized crime, corrupted Mexico’s vulnerable democracy, claimed lives and devastated human rights on both sides of the border.
2012 offers a uniquely fertile moment to internationalize the struggle for peace in Mexico. Latin American elite opinion is shifting rapidly on the question of ending drug prohibition. This call for reform has not yet echoed in the United States. The Caravan represents an unprecedented effort by Mexican civil society to impact U.S. thinking and policy.
-
Matt
-
Matt
Portugal Decriminalized All Drugs Eleven Years Ago
And The Results Are Staggering
On July 1st, 2001, Portugal decriminalized every imaginable drug, from marijuana, to cocaine, to heroin. Some thought Lisbon would become a drug tourist haven, others predicted usage rates among youths to surge.
Eleven years later, it turns out they were both wrong.
Over a decade has passed since Portugal changed its philosophy from labeling drug users as criminals to labeling them as people affected by a disease. This time lapse has allowed statistics to develop and in time, has made Portugal an example to follow.
-
Matt
Stop The Drug War To Fight AIDS
The war on drugs is a failure and immediate, major reforms of the global drug prohibition regime are needed to halt the spread of HIV infection and other drug war harms.
Today we launched a new Global Commission on Drug Policy report with a livestreamed conference from London, calling for drug decriminalisation and and expansion of proven, cost-effective solutions to reduce HIV/AIDS.
-
Matt
David Nutt Reveals The Truth About Drugs
Professor David Nutt discusses his book Drugs – Without the Hot Air, and argues that society’s prohibition of psychedelic substances is preventing groundbreaking science.
-
Matt
-
Matt
-
Matt
Drug Policy and Democracy in Central America
A View from Guatemala
Secretary Fernando Carrera discussed recent proposals made by Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina regarding drug legalization.
-
Matt
’Occupy UNODC Vienna 2012
With the slogan ’Occupy UNODC Vienna 2012’ the critics of current drug policies based on three UN Conventions will unite during the forthcoming annual meeting of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs.
Fifty years after the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs was launched, the global war on drugs has failed, and has had many unintended and devastating consequences worldwide. Use of the major controlled drugs has risen, and supply is cheaper, purer and more available than ever before. The UN conservatively estimates that there are now 250 million drug users worldwide.
Illicit drugs are now the third most valuable industry in the world, after food and oil, estimated to be worth $450 billion a year, all in the control of criminals. Fighting the war on drugs costs the world’s taxpayers incalculable billions each year. An estimated 10 million people are in prison worldwide for drug-related offences, mostly “little fish” – personal users and small-time dealers. Corruption amongst law-enforcers and politicians, especially in producer and transit countries, has spread as never before, endangering democracy and civil society. Stability, security and development are threatened by the fallout from the war on drugs, as are human rights. Tens of thousands of people die in the drug war each year.