An attempt by UN officials to change a core policy and encourage countries to decriminalize the possession and use of all narcotics has been nipped in the bud. Top officials in the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, clearly both angry and embarrassed at the leaking of the proposal, have denied it ever had any substance and said that it was simply a position paper. Others briefed media that all organizations produced such documents which they described as a legitimate exercise in "blue sky thinking". Well there was nothing legitimate about this idiotic proposal and far from being blue, the sky that descends on drug addicts and the families and communities they blight is dark and miserable. The siren argument of course is that drug barons around the world earn their multibillion dollar fortunes because the illegality of their wicked trade forces up the prices of the death dealing narcotics they peddle. If all drugs were legalized and made readily available, there would be no drug barons and no vast criminal networks. The opium farmers in places such as Afghanistan would no longer be bribed and threatened by primary traffickers into growing poppies. They could return to cultivating orchards and grain fields, so many of which have been sacrificed for opium poppy cultivation. The reality of course is very different. As those few countries that have tried limited decriminalization have found to their cost, cutting out the criminals and thus lowering the street price merely boosts the market for socially destructive narcotics. The other alluring argument is that despite the billions spent by law enforcement agencies around the world, the drugs trade still thrives. Therefore, if decent society cannot beat it, it should join it. Governments could even benefit from taxes on drugs, much as they do with cigarettes. But this is a counsel of despair. The war on drugs has not been won because it has not been fought hard enough. South America's cocaine production gets through to US and world markets in no small measure because of the bribing or intimidation of key officials and politicians. What is failing here is the will of law enforcement agencies. Something is intrinsically wrong with the way the war on drugs is being fought. Maybe it has something to do with members of fashionable Western elites who think it is chic and acceptable to snort cocaine. They are egged on by a fawning media which glorifies the consumption of what it calls "recreational drugs" as if rendering oneself insensible with narcotics was as healthy as taking a long jog or having a hard workout down at the gym. It is time that social attitudes changed. One trigger might be the redefining of the evil drugs trade as "terrorism". Because that is what it is. Narcoterrorism is killing far more people and wrecking far more families than even the obscene acts of the terrorists of Daesh (the self-proclaimed IS). Indeed there are even strong suspicions that in its immoral and blasphemous campaign against civilized society, Daesh is itself trading in narcotics. The world is resolute in its defiance and determination to destroy the menace of terrorism. That same uncompromising and resilient stance should be applied to the scourge of illegal drugs. The only "blue sky thinking" must be of a time when the last threatening cloud of death-peddling drug barons has been swept from the sky.
