For the Spanish version of the Public Letter click here.
For the Czech version click here.
For the Dutch version click here.
THE BECKLEY FOUNDATION
THE GLOBAL WAR ON DRUGS HAS FAILED
IT IS TIME FOR A NEW APPROACH
WE THE UNDERSIGNED call on members of the public and of Parliament to recognise that:
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. Millions of 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.
The drug-free world so confidently predicted by supporters of the war on drugs is further than ever from attainment. The policies of prohibition create more harms than they prevent. We must seriously consider shifting resources away from criminalising tens of millions of otherwise law abiding citizens, and move towards an approach based on health, harm-reduction, cost-effectiveness and respect for human rights. Evidence consistently shows that these health-based approaches deliver better results than criminalisation.
Improving our drug policies is one of the key policy challenges of our time.
It is time for world leaders to fundamentally review their strategies in response to the drug phenomenon. That is what the Global Commission on Drug Policy, led by four former Presidents, by Kofi Annan and by other world leaders, has bravely done with its ground-breaking Report, first presented in New York in June, and now at the House of Lords on 17 November.
At the root of current policies lies the 1961 UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. It is time to re-examine this treaty. A document entitled ‘Rewriting the UN Drug Conventions’ has recently been commissioned in order to show how amendments to the conventions could be made which would allow individual countries the freedom to explore drug policies that best suit their domestic needs, rather than seeking to impose the current “one-size-fits-all” solution.
As we cannot eradicate the production, demand or use of drugs, we must find new ways to minimise harms. We should give support to our Governments to explore new policies based on scientific evidence.
Yours faithfully,
Signatories to Public Letter
| President Jimmy Carter
Former President of the United States, Nobel Prize winner President Fernando H. Cardoso Former President of Brazil President César Gaviria Former President of Colombia President Vicente Fox Former President of Mexico President Ruth Dreifuss Former President of Switzerland President Lech Wałęsa Former President of Poland, Nobel Prize winner President Aleksander Kwaśniewski Former President of Poland George P. Schultz Former US Secretary of State Jaswant Singh Former Minister of Defence, of Finance, and for External Affairs, India Professor Lord Piot Former UN Under Secretary-General Louise Arbour, CC, GOQ Former UN High-Commissioner for Human Rights Carel Edwards Former Head of the EU Commission’s Drug Policy Unit Javier Solana, KOGF, KCMG Former EU High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy Thorvald Stoltenberg Former Minister of Foreign Affairs (Norway) and UN High Commissioner for Refugees Gary Johnson Republican US Presidential Candidate Professor Sir Harold Kroto Chemist, Nobel Prize winner Dr. Kary Mullis Chemist, Nobel Prize winner Professor John Polanyi Chemist, Nobel Prize winner Professor Kenneth Arrow Economist, Nobel Prize winner Professor Thomas C. Schelling Economist, Nobel Prize winner Professor Sir Peter Mansfield Economist, Nobel Prize winner Professor Sir Anthony Leggett Physicist, Nobel Prize winner Professor Martin L. Perl Physicist, Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa Writer, Nobel Prize winner Wisława Szymborska Poet, Nobel Prize winner Professor Sir Ian Gilmore Former President of the Royal College of Physicians Professor Robert Lechler Dean of School of Medicine, KCL Professor A. C. Grayling Master of the New College of the Humanities Professor Sir Partha Dasgupta Professor of Economics at Cambridge Asma Jahangir Former UN Special Rapporteur on Arbitrary, Extrajudicial and Summary Execution Dr. Muhammed Abdul Bari, MBE Former Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain |
Professor Noam Chomsky
Professor of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT Carlos Fuentes Novelist and essayist
Sir Richard Branson Entrepreneur and Founder of the Virgin Group Sean Parker Founding President of Facebook, Director of Spotify John Whitehead Chair of the WTC Memorial Foundation Maria Cattaui Former Secretary-General of the International Chamber of Commerce Nicholas Green, QC Former Chairman of the Bar Council Professor David Nutt Former Chair of the Advisory Council for the Misuse of Drugs Professor Trevor Robbins Professor of Neuroscience at Cambridge Professor Niall Ferguson Professor of History at Harvard University Professor Peter Singer Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University Professor Jonathan Wolff Professor of Philosophy at UCL Professor Robin Room School of Population Health, University of Melbourne Sir Peregrine Worsthorne Former Editor of The Sunday Telegraph Dr. Jan Wiarda Former President of European Police Chiefs Tom Lloyd Former Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire Sting Musician and actor Yoko Ono Musician and artist Bernardo Bertolucci Film Director Gilberto Gil Musician, former Minister of Culture, Brazil John Perry Barlow Co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation Bob Ainsworth, MP Former UK Secretary of State for Defence Peter Lilley, MP Former Secretary of State for Social Security Tom Brake, MP Dr. Julian Huppert, MP Caroline Lucas, MP Paul Flynn, MP Dr. Patrick Aeberhard Former President of Doctors of the World Lord Mancroft Chair of the Drug and Alcohol Foundation Lord MacDonald, QC Former Head of the Crown Prosecution Service General Lord Ramsbotham Former HM Chief Inspector of Prisons Lord Rees, OM Astronomer Royal and former President of the Royal Society Amanda Feilding, Countess of Wemyss Director of the Beckley Foundation |
Media Coverage:
The Telegraph: It’s time to make drugs legal, Nobel winners tell Cameron
The Daily Mail: Cameron urged to make drugs legal by former U.S. president and Nobel Prize winners
International Business Times: Prominent Figures Urge David Cameron to Legalize Drugs