![]() States agreed that the drug issue is above all a health issue and thus users should be treated with respect and given opportunities for social reintegration. The UNGASS final document did record some accomplishments. The presidents envisaged a gathering that would mark the historical moment when the international approach to dangerous drugs would acquire a more humanitarian cast, allowing countries hitherto bound by legal commitments undertaken in 1961 greater flexibility in dealing with their national drug issues. In several parts of Latin America, drug cartels and criminal groups benefit from and contribute to widespread corruption and coercion of public officials. on to Mexico, ranks among the world’s most violent countries. In Mexico, scores of thousands have died in drugs-related violence since 2006 6.5 million have been displaced in Colombia’s decades-old internal conflict fuelled in part by the drug business and Guatemala, which transships over 80 per cent of the cocaine ultimately consumed in the U.S. Latin America has suffered the most from dysfunctional drug policies dictated by the international community. They spoke from their domestic experience. They asserted that the unintended consequences of the war on drugs included too many victims and too much violence and corruption. UNGASS sparked considerable optimism in 2012, when the presidents of Colombia, Mexico and Guatemala proposed that it be held this year. Unfortunately, that hope was misplaced: the UNGASS largely missed its chance to usher in much-needed new global drug policies. Many others, including International Crisis Group, also saw a rare opportunity for change. Instead, he suggested, punitive policies in the name of better security have not only failed to eliminate illicit drug flows or significantly reduce demand, but have also contributed to what appears to be ever more violence and human suffering.īoth the minister and president of the country plagued by one of the world’s biggest cocaine-production problems expressed hope the special high-level session of the UN General Assembly (UNGASS) in New York on 19-21 April would identify reforms. Soon afterwards, President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia spoke of the international community’s inability to acknowledge the drug issue as primarily a human rights and health, not security problem. Today’s tough international regime to deal with narcotic and other dangerous drugs, Colombia’s Justice Minister Yesid Reyes said in the lead up to the latest UN policy review, is like the famous definition of insanity usually attributed to Albert Einstein: doing the same thing over and over again, yet expecting different results.
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