The upcoming Summit of the Americas in Cartagena will most likely be a pivotal moment in the history of the western hemisphere. For the first time ever, several Latin American leaders will speak in favor of ending the pointless “Drug War”. My only hope is that they knock some sense into President Obama and get him to see the light on this, and soon. <\/p>\n
The Observer… <\/p>\n
Watershed summit will admit that prohibition has failed, and call for more nuanced and liberalised tactics<\/strong><\/p>\n \nA historic meeting of Latin America’s leaders, to be attended by Barack Obama, will hear serving heads of state admit that the war on drugs has been a failure and that alternatives to prohibition must now be found.<\/p>\n The Summit of the Americas, to be held in Cartagena, Colombia is being seen by foreign policy experts as a watershed moment in the redrafting of global drugs policy in favour of a more nuanced and liberalised approach.<\/p>\n Otto P\u00e9rez Molina, the president of Guatemala, who as former head of his country’s military intelligence service experienced the power of drug cartels at close hand, is pushing his fellow Latin American leaders to use the summit to endorse a new regional security plan that would see an end to prohibition. In the Observer, P\u00e9rez Molina writes: “The prohibition paradigm that inspires mainstream global drug policy today is based on a false premise: that global drug markets can be eradicated.”<\/p>\n P\u00e9rez Molina concedes that moving beyond prohibition is problematic. “To suggest liberalisation \u2013 allowing consumption, production and trafficking of drugs without any restriction whatsoever \u2013 would be, in my opinion, profoundly irresponsible. Even more, it is an absurd proposition. If we accept regulations for alcoholic drinks and tobacco consumption and production, why should we allow drugs to be consumed and produced without any restrictions?” READ MORE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The upcoming Summit of the Americas in Cartagena will most likely be a pivotal moment in the history of the western hemisphere. For the first time ever, several Latin American […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[155,158],"tags":[132,211,208,207,210,31,209,212],"class_list":["post-406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drug-war-opnion-commentary","category-in-the-news","tag-drug-war","tag-drug-war-failure","tag-end-to-drug-war","tag-end-to-prohibition","tag-latin-america","tag-recommended-reading","tag-the-guardian","tag-us-drug-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theandiamo.com\/logwp\/holesinthefoam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theandiamo.com\/logwp\/holesinthefoam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theandiamo.com\/logwp\/holesinthefoam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theandiamo.com\/logwp\/holesinthefoam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theandiamo.com\/logwp\/holesinthefoam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theandiamo.com\/logwp\/holesinthefoam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":407,"href":"https:\/\/theandiamo.com\/logwp\/holesinthefoam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions\/407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theandiamo.com\/logwp\/holesinthefoam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theandiamo.com\/logwp\/holesinthefoam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theandiamo.com\/logwp\/holesinthefoam\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}