ABSTRACT
In the past few years, senior politicians, police officers and other leaders have all done what might have once seemed unthinkable for such influential figures and called into question the dominant international approach to drug control – the idea of prohibition. For example, in 2011, the former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former leaders of Colombia, Mexico and Brazil as well as writers, financiers, entrepreneurs and politicians, all contributed to a report arguing that ‘repressive strategies will not solve the drug problem’ and called for an end to the criminalization of drug use and exploration of alternative legal approaches that could weaken criminal organizations and promote health and treatment responses. In April 2012, the President of Guatemala, a country that has suffered from the consequences of drug trafficking as well as the fight against it for two decades,wrote an insightful analysis of some of the modern contradictions in policies and attitudes adopted toward drugs, intoxicants and some other natural products (see Box 14.1).
