welcome back to this is r t live from moscow now here's a recap of our main stories today water and food shortages bring libya to the brink of a humanitarian crisis as the opposition again says it will not negotiate with a fugitive colonel gadhafi. no more violence is reported in a syrian hit government attempts to implement reforms that swallow a solution to the country's longstanding crisis becomes an awful lot of the sport between russia and its western partners. as the e.u. holds a special meeting of the last top level financial officials to resolve the growing

differences on how to uphold the death contagion and sweeping the clock. and next robust debate is guaranteed in crosstalk as peter lavelle of his guests discuss the war on drugs in a mexico and its heavy cost that's up next. we'll . bring you the latest in some instances. from. the few jerks over. take a. look. below and welcome to cross talk computor all about the war on drugs has been declared a failure the u.s. government has spent more than two and

a half trillion dollars fighting this campaign over the past forty years but the problem has only gotten worse and more deadly is it now time to seriously consider decriminalization and with you lation of some of the legal drugs. crosstalk what went so wrong fighting drugs i'm joined by geoffrey my run in newton is a senior lecturer and director of undergraduate studies in the department of economics at harvard university he's also a senior fellow at the capitol institute and he's also the author of the book drug war crimes the consequences of prohibition and in san diego you cross the race for hutchinson he is a senior partner at the ayso hutchinson law group all right gentlemen this is cross talk about means crosstalk rules in effect but you for it let's have a look at a short report about this forty year old war. a worldwide enterprise worth some four hundred billion dollars

a year illegal drug trafficking has become one of the most ferocious lucrative business is in the world alongside only the oil industry and the arm straight its single largest market the u.s. is also the world's biggest consumer of cocaine heroin and marijuana shipped from colombia and mexico and although the u.s. government has been hard pressed to control and tailbone a cottage straight drug related violence has spread like wildfire across latin america and especially in mexico our insatiable demand for illegal drugs use the drug trade our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of. lease officers soldiers and civilians mexican officials have long been trying to draw attention to the torrent of illegal weapons flowing in from the us which conveniently sustained drug cartels and crime with have seen more than forty thousand mexicans killed in the last five years and a recent report by the global commission on drug policy denounced the recalcitrant

violence calling the global war on drugs and failure stop the war on drugs and let's be more constructive in crime and reduce the consumption if you look after the production and marketing so profitable that all time to be someone we could be able to risk his life to continue to be traffic and indeed profit margins related to the drug industry are huge and is the main factor that sustains it and many argue that if some drugs were legalized it would help put a cap on their price and the stop to the incessant violence all the while purging b. economy of a black market making drugs more available as this report suggests will make it harder to keep our communities healthy and safe the fact that each dollar that an american spends on drugs goes to fuel a juggernaut of corruption and violence is no revelation and neither is the fact that the u.s. war on drugs has not managed to keep that violence a bay nor yield any substantial results but whether or not legalization can provide

an alternative that wouldn't open the floodgates to an even larger problem remains to be seen and so does the prospect of any other viable strategy. for across party. ok gentlemen i get it jeffrey first i'm sure i'm sure both of you aware of the global commission on drug policy and it's a pretty dismal report card after spending two point five trillion dollars in fighting it's called the war on drugs jeffrey just what went wrong you give me your priority list what was the what's what needs to be fixed first. well i think the first thing that went wrong was thinking of the whole policy issue as a war in one particular war on drugs it doesn't make that the metaphor that doesn't make any sense drugs don't have guns drugs don't have tanks they can't fight back so war on drugs is just a non sequitur it's actually

a war on keep will who want to consume drugs and once you think about it in those terms then it's obvious that a bunch of other bad things are going to happen we're going to spend a ton of money we're probably not going to dissuade that many people from wanting to consume drugs we're going to generate a huge black market and a black markets we have violence and corruption exactly as was documented in the lead in to this discussion and as we all know about in mexico and latin america and afghanistan and all sorts of other places that pursue their u.s. war on drugs so what do you think about that the whole premise of the last forty years has been wrong what do you think. well i disagree with it ok fundamentally and the introduction to the program ok you've got to be clear if you're going to say what we've been doing is wrong i don't mind changing the metaphor but to reduce the seriousness of our global commitment to reducing illegal drugs i think it's wrong first of all we've reduced in the past over all drug use fifty percent

cocaine use my seventy five percent during the last forty years whenever you look at legalization effects the solution to reduce the powers of the cartel then what are you going to legalize you can debate marijuana but that's not going to solve a problem because they're going to be peddling in methamphetamine heroin cocaine if you legalize each of those they're going to continue to increase consumption of those the problems in our society and i don't think anybody really wants to legalize methamphetamine or or cocaine or heroin that's not the solution this is a commitment to reducing illegal drugs we've had success and certainly we need to make improvements but let's don't throw this out and say let's legalize everything do you think about that jeffrey what would you legalize or do we lies everything across the board. i would legalize everything across the board so let me agree with mr hutchinson that just legalizing marijuana is a relatively small issue in terms of all the ancillary negatives of black markets

and corruption and and violence huge fraction of all of those negatives that we associate with the illegal drug trade they are due to other drugs not mainly to marijuana so we really do have to have an honest conversation about all these other drugs where i really disagree is the view that drug prohibition is reduced is keeping the consumption of drugs substantially lower than it otherwise would be there's just no evidence for that whatsoever ok we don't have perfect evidence on that issue because very few countries have ever taken the legalization experiment but the extent we do have evidence it suggests very strongly that consumption of drugs would not change very much even if we were to legalize second even if it goes up and even if it goes up a lot we have to balance whatever negatives might come from that against all the huge negatives we get by attempting to prevent that increase in use and so it's not just a question of whether prohibition has some potential benefit in the sense of reducing drug use if you consider that

a benefit if the prohibition has huge costs and the claim of legalize is that all the costs of prohibition are far worse than any possible benefit it might have for emergency use ok so if we look at just the probation is more costly then legalization that's what jeffrey's thesis is you you obviously probably disagree with that. well i do but first raw applaud jeffery first being very honest on this and defining the bait he want to decrease violence or the powers that cartel you have to legalize everything and i don't think that's the debate that's going to win in america or across the globe when you look at our historical experience experience though in alaska alaska decriminalized marijuana in the seventy's they reclear criminalized it in the ninety's by vote of the people because drug usage went up marijuana use you see it went up and it was a concern for parents with their teens and so that is a historical experience that you know decriminalization did not work and it's

a it's so i think that when you look at the cost of prohibition it's another dangerous product you want to could cocaine heroin increase methamphetamine use ecstasy use all out in the marketplace i don't think that's the solution for america jeffrey what about you know prevention because it seems like so much money is put into you know fighting this with using the military and we see with the mexicans are doing here i mean if we just put a lot more effort on prevention wouldn't that be more more cost effective i mean it really is a consumption issue at the end of the day isn't it. certainly consumption is a huge part of it again we have to balance that against the cost of whatever policy we adopt to try to reduce consumption there's absolutely nothing wrong with thinking about prevention and some kinds of preventions sort of may be somewhat effective but i think it's misleading it's sort of a false hope to believe that by putting lots more money into prevention we can

drastically reduce the demand for drugs and therefore not have to worry about the problem all the evidence would suggest that while prevention is clearly beneficial for many people and treatment is obviously should be available for people who want to reduce their drug use lots and lots of extra dollars spent on prevention are probably going to make a very minor difference to the overall demand for drugs rightly or wrongly the demand for drugs the demand for other intoxicating things like alcohol seems to be a pervasive and persistent feature of human beings it's just something we can't change very much and so neither prohibition nor prevention is going to change the underlying reality that some people are going to use those substances it's important to note many people use them without adverse effects to themselves or others a small fraction of course do use them in ways which are unfortunate for themselves or harm other people and that's what we should be focusing on not just the use by itself because not use is basically innocuous you know i'll see if i can go to you

is there a middle ground here it could be an prohibition but still some kind of decriminalization legalization regulation can you is there a middle ground that we can find here because this report that just came out that i mentioned beginning of the program says that this so-called what we call the war on drugs is that utter failure what do we need to rethink because we can if we continue down the same path it's just very expensive it clogs up the digital system people are put in prison for using drugs maybe they should not be put in prison i mean there has to be a fundamental rethinking because it seems you just get more and more expensive more and more violent. i don't disagree with terms of a middle ground we need to criticize of san diego first go ahead. yes we need to rethink some things that's why i support the right on crime and they should be which wants to reduce our incarceration rate for those that got an addiction problem utilizing drug prevention courts where it's alternative to incarceration

and many of the states like texas which has high incarceration rates are reducing them put in more money into reentry program for rehabilitation programs and trying to reduce the incarceration rate these are absolutely correct things to do we are reducing our spending on prevention i think we need to continue to emphasize that that message that we give nationally and internationally makes a difference in consumption as well jeffrey do you want to make a quick comment on that before we go to the break yeah i just want to say i think the crucial part of finding the middle ground here is that the supply side of the market the production and sale pay as well as possession has to be legal if you just decriminalize possession but you still try vigorously to keep the market underground to go after the traffickers to go after production you're still going to have all the corruption and violence that we currently have so again it's a false hope to think that we can have an easy middle ground just by

decriminalizing demand side you have already decided to jump in here gentlemen jump in here we're going to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on drugs stay with our. it's just simply it's. just so.

has. the slums. mum. i got out of the military in ninety six and six i got out because of the seams i saw the things i was doing and there's a reason step we were given for doing nothing it was a personal protests. during the vietnam war a nation war movement emerged that alter the course of history this movement didn't take place on college campuses but in ferrets and on ships penetrated elite military colleges like west point and it spread throughout the battlefields of vietnam. today few people know about the g.i. movement against the war in vietnam. after the army and we always said free the army or fun travel and adventure but it really meant the farm.

says. you can't say. well the american rostock computor lavelle remind you we're talking about the war on drugs. kicking serious. ok jeffrey i'd like to go back to you in newton i think one of the interesting things i found research in this program is that politicians play a very big role in this policy and you know when they are up for election everybody wants to be tough on crime tough on drugs tough on this tough on everything tough on terrorism you just name it tough on something and there's not really much of a real discussion at least in the united states about how to deal with this growing problem of specially coming from the south is this one of the bottlenecks that we have been having a more blunt discussion about how to deal with drug abuse and with the the drug

importation into the united states well i think that the politicians are for the most part and both sides of the aisle democrats republicans conservative liberal are not talking about this issue very much but i think they're reflecting the views of the voters in the united states and similarly elsewhere i agree with mr actions and that there is not currently the desire of the will from a significant majority or even the you know that large minority to legalize harder drugs like cocaine heroin methamphetamine and so it's not going to happen for a long long time it's not going to happen until or unless there's some stanchfield change in attitude substantial change in understanding by the voters about what the actual evils are my view is that the evils are coming from the policy many of the evils are coming from the policy not from use per say but that's not the widely held view ok until i'm able to persuade more people other people change their minds

hey we're not going to see a change in politicians behavior they're just reflecting what voters what ok so if i were in san diego what do you think about how politicians deal with this i mean they they they they want to show that you know they will be completely against this without looking into new ideas more nuanced ideas with jeffrey has been bringing up and look at some of the experiments and policies that say in europe that they've tried that some people would say are a success. well the politicians and i have been a forward congress they do reflect they put the public will and so the public is not in a mood to change the current illegal status they don't want to move toward the criminalization politicians are open to greater different ideas for example the push toward drug treatment courts alternatives to incarceration that is not the criminalization bad it's alternatives to incarceration and recognizing that there's

addiction problems whenever you look at the problems of violence in mexico it's a concern to everyone we want to be able to support the reduction of a at they the importance of the rule of law colombia has been a success through strong leadership they've reduced the power of the cartels the. terrorist organizations that fueled the drug trafficking there and so there are signs of success we need to build upon those and i think there's an increased willingness to look at new ideas you know geoffrey hoon south of not to change the fundamental point ok jeffrey a lot of the south of the border a lot of people would say the united states is far more concerned with security than with the consumption issue i mean should shouldn't be balanced out a lot more because a lot of those guns i mean i don't know all the numbers because it's not a legal but the guns come from the north and they go to the south and that's where all this killing is happening. that's how nature of the guns are right now coming substantially from the u.s. but it's silly to think that trying to prevent the guns from crossing the border to

mexico or further south would make a huge difference to lots of countries that produce guns if we do more to interdict guns going south they'll just be more violence related to the illegal gun trade the fundamental fact is there's a huge demand for guns right now in mexico because of the violence because of the risk and so we're not going to change that with any policy toward the united states it's only by deescalating the war that we would have had a significant difference to go back to your point about is there any middle way and i think a very useful point it's not my absolutely preferred policy but a very useful thing to note is that mexico had drug violence before there's sort of middle of two thousand and seven when we start started to see tissue jesco lation and mexican drug violence they still had prohibition they still had some but it was relatively mild was quite mild compared to what we've seen in the last three or four years what happened because that was that felipe calderon escalated the war against the traffickers in mexico escalated the war against the cartels the more

policy interferes the more to clare's war against the traffickers and really tries to fight that war the more auxilary violence we're going to see so if mexico would just go back to what it was doing before two thousand and seven not fully legalizing but just scaling back the war that would be highly beneficial that would be a huge step in the right direction he said if i get and ask you i mean so violence begets violence or you lower the threshold you lower the amount of killing and jeffrey brings up a good point there when you think about that well i mean i understand the point and sure you can reduce your targeting of the cartels by the called her own administration in mexico but that's not going to help long term they have to recognize they have recognized they have some institutional problems in mexico where the cartels are more powerful than law enforcement you've got to. strengthen the institution of the rule of law in mexico and bad is the goal and what they're trying to accomplish that doesn't happen overnight and. so the solution

is not to decriminalize to legalize to hopefully put the cartels out of business for one thing the cartels are engaged an alien smuggling and so how much are you going to legalize to try to put them out of business even though in prohibition in the night hundred thirty s. you perhaps when you legalized alcohol reduce some violence you didn't put the lid cosa nostra the mafia out of business they even continue until today they just look for for a new business opportunities and that's what the cartels in mexico are doing and will continue to do so the answer is not legalization but the answer is strengthening the rule of law in mexico ok jeffrey what about just taxing it all i mean america is a place of free markets ok so why don't you just make it into the back row and into alcohol ok i mean they take their health risk obviously related to both of them i

don't why didn't he do that with some not all but most most of the drugs. just turn it into a business it's a back oh in particular is a very tobacco is a very very useful example the us and the world started to recognize in the early one nine hundred fifty s. that tobacco was a much more dangerous product than had previously been recognized we did not prohibit it or outlaw it we engaged in all sorts of public and private public health initiatives education initiatives and slowly but surely over thirty forty years tobacco consumption the united states dropped enormously the fraction of people smoked the amount that's being consumed has gone down a huge amount without any prohibition without the black market violence or any of that so a system in which we have some sort of syntax and which we have regulations on minimum purchase ages in which there are possibly sort of government funds going to help with treatment and so that has in my assessment my analyses a much much better ratio of benefits to cost does it keep us absolutely zero of

course not doesn't prevent all use no but it recognizes that use has some negatives but prohibition has some negatives we have to balance those two things now you should emphasize we're not going to keep use at a teeny level with a big tax if you have that big tax black is going to evade the tax and just going to drive the market underground so we can make some attempt to reduce use with moderate sin taxes but we have to accept that legalization is likely to lead to some increase in use not for magic increase in uses but that needs to be is one side of the ledger the other side is all the negatives done by prohibition and if i go to you i'm a former smoker about four months now i haven't had a cigarette so i only quit for health reasons not because of the syntax but what about that turning into a business like alcohol and cigarettes and things like that i mean just as jeffrey said i mean these to take some of it away from the black market where you have

control words with regular. that's the model can be debated but jeffrey pointed out the fundamental question do you want to increase consumption. and whatever you whether it's tobacco or alcohol the legalization increases consumption historically now you've got to balance that with what happens on the other side of the ledger as jeffrey points out when it comes to tobacco they we've invested enormous amounts of money and tobacco education we need to make sure that we do that in terms of the other illegal drugs cocaine methamphetamine we need to invest in education but there was there is no black market on tobacco even because people want to evade the taxes they circumvent pads and so we would be really negligent if we thought that we're going to reduce the black market or

impact the cartels because they can engage in trafficking in black market methamphetamine ecstasy just like in pharmaceuticals today they're all regulated but but there's still a black market for it oxy cotton which is you know an opiate that's sold the black market it is it is part of the criminal enterprise and it's totally regulated today so i think we have to have a honest debate is jeffrey's engaged in all to believe you balance and i think the world is and believes in its heart that if we decriminalize it increases consumption so let's try to other things reducing the incarceration rates let's look at better education rehabilitation programs i chair family to give you the last word on this program do you think americans will change their attitude about drug laws as the violence gets worse and worse as comes from the south to the north . i don't see there being i don't anticipate

a big change in attitudes by americans in the near future with the possible exception of marijuana and the medical ization of marijuana now in about sixteen states they may well spread and the way medical zation works of marijuana is it's very close in many ways to being de facto legalization but that aside i don't think that there's going to be a fundamental change unless perhaps the kind of violence we're seeing in mexico were to spread at that level in the u.s. if that happens then there might be a fundamental rethinking but unfortunately i think we're sort of stuck in a crowd once all right on that point gentlemen thank you very much many thanks to my guest today in san diego and in new guinea thanks for viewers for watching us here darkie see you next time and remember crosstalk.