Dealing with the dealers

It was Albert Einstein who mused that the definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. It seems pretty obvious, right? If your approach didn’t work the first or second time, there is a very high chance it won’t work the next time either.  

However, for something so cast-iron clear, many people fail to avoid it. Take the war on illegal drugs, for example. The strategy used here, which is virtually universal, is to tackle consumption and production to the point of elimination. 

After decades of employing such tactics, the results are paltry to say the least. Yet the fight goes on – and at quite a cost, not just financially speaking but also in terms of personnel. So is a new line of attack not long overdue? Or at the very least shouldn’t we start trialling one?

'Crime doesn't pay.' But drug dealing? Ask the Escobars.

The most obvious fresh approach is to begin a process of legalising heretofore banned drugs. By taking control of production and supply, individual nations will be in a much more powerful position to monitor and manage consumption. 

Not only that, but with such a move you would practically wipe out one of the main revenue sources for vicious criminal gangs across the globe. And what you take away from the underworld you can add to the state’s coffers (although considering how some countries are being governed at the moment, we’re not too sure how positive a move that is). 

Outside of the actual direct revenues that would be garnered from legalisation other savings would include the freeing up of prison spaces and the removal of a major burden on court time, to name just two. 

Now, while there is nothing new in such thinking, it does seem to be gathering – if only very slowly – more mainstream attention. Quite pertinently, a former drugs minister in the UK, the Labour party’s Bob Ainsworth, recently voiced such opinions. 

More significantly, though – surprisingly so perhaps – Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has also come out in support of the legalisation route in the effort to ‘win’ the war on drugs. Now we say surprisingly here because, despite most Westerners preconceptions about Colombia, the vast majority of locals are completely against illegal narcotics. The fact that the country has bloodily suffered more than most in the drugs war is one of the main reasons for this. 

Bearing that in mind, the thoughts on this matter of the pro-United States President Santos carry more weight than many others. He is seeing first-hand the futility of the old-school approach and has realised it’s time to change tack. He also knows that for such a policy to succeed, it has to be adopted across the world. It’s all or nothing.

Australia's Nimbin - leading the way?

In one sense it’s a case of ‘what have we got to lose’. There are those who argue that if we go down the legalisation route substance abuse will increase significantly. Such a stance seems to ignore personal choice. Just because something becomes available to all, does not mean all will take it. Indeed, for some, in such a case, the product loses a certain appeal. 

It also has to be said that right now, those who want illegal drugs, can get them relatively easy. The trouble is, as alluded to above, is that they must deal with dangerous characters in dangerous places in order to get them, keeping alive these murderous underworld empires. 

Indeed, one thing that the anti-drugs lobby and the dealers they so despise have in common is a desire to, more or less, maintain the status quo.

So after years of fighting an endless, winless war is the smart move not now to change the focus of attack - to take away one of the main raisons d’etre of the vast majority of criminal gangs. 

As Hollywood might put it, ‘it’s time to clean out the dealers’.