UN Meeting Could Be First Step To Ending Global War On Drugs

 

"A drug-free world — We can do it!"

 

That was the overly ambitious motto endorsed by the United Nations General Assembly in 1998, the last time it convened for a high-level debate on global drug policy.

 

Eighteen years later it seems clear that, no, we can't do it.

 

 

Just ask the governments of Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala which, amid staggering violence fuelled by the international narcotics trade, have pleaded with the UN to radically rethink the war on drugs.

 

That rethink, or at least its early stages, could be near.