La drogue, le crime numéro un
15 % des crimes qui mènent à la prison au Québec sont liés aux stupéfiants
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Aux centres d’injection supervisée, Ottawa répond avec la loi et l’ordre
Brian Myles
Le bras de fer annoncé entre le maire Coderre et la ministre Ambrose risque de mettre du piquant dans la campagne fédérale.
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Addicted Population – Drugs in Canada (Documentaire) (45.48)
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Has the war on drugs been lost?
Forty-four years after President Nixon declared “war on drugs”, four US states have now agreed to legalise the sale of marijuana and most Americans support legalisation.
Across the world, drug laws are being relaxed, from Uruguay to Portugal, Jamaica and the Czech Republic.
Does this mean the war on drugs has been lost?
The BBC World Service’s The Inquiry hears from four expert witnesses, including a former Colombian president and a drugs prosecutor turned defence lawyer.
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THE SCREAM: THE FIRST AND LAST DAYS OF THE WAR ON DRUGS
Jason Hari
(Bibliothèque de Ville Mont-Royal)
Critique de Maclean’s
The doomed, century-old war on drugs: Book review (Maclean’s)
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For the last hundred years, says the author, the war on drugs has been a monumental, expensive, destructive and tragic failure
Illegal drugs:The wars don’t work (The Economist)
As one war on drugs ends, another is starting. It will be a failure, too
(…)
Prohibition suits criminal gangs, which enjoy exclusive control of a global market worth roughly $300 billion annually. It is also convenient for corrupt politicians and officials, who can extract rents for turning a blind eye. Several of those whom Indonesia executed this week claimed that judges offered them clemency in exchange for huge bribes. In the main, though, what drives the new drug warriors is the same conviction that animated the old ones: the sincere, if mistaken, belief that cracking down on traffickers and users will make addiction go away. The lesson of the first war is that it will not.
When Peru drove away its coca growers, they moved to Colombia. When Colombia kicked them out, they went back to Peru. After the Caribbean cocaine-trafficking route was sealed, new, bloodier ones sprang open in Mexico, and then in Central America. A shortage of one drug caused by a big seizure seldom lasted long; in the meantime addicts turned to alternatives, sometimes more dangerous ones. When clean needles were hard to get hold of, they used dirty ones. The drug war turned Latin American “cartels” into bands of sadistic, well-financed killers whose reach extended into governments, security forces, judiciaries and jails. Those preparing to prosecute the next drug war need only look west to see what lies ahead of them: more violence and corruption; more HIV/AIDS; fuller jails—and still the same, unending supply of drugs.
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Illegal drugs: The new drug warriors (The Economist)
As one side of the world softens its line against illegal drugs, another is getting tougher—and more vocal
THE war on drugs, it seems, is edging towards a truce. Half of Americans want to lift the ban on cannabis, the world’s favourite illicit drug. Four states have legalised it, as has Washington, DC. Latin American presidents whose countries once battled narcos with helicopter gunships now openly wonder if prohibition was a mistake; Uruguay has legalised weed. Much of Europe has decriminalised it; Portugal has decriminalised all drug-use (though not drug-dealing). Heroin addicts in Western countries usually have access to clean needles, substitutes such as methadone and, in parts of Europe, heroin prescriptions. Many governments are starting to believe that managing drug use causes less harm than trying to stamp it out.
(…)
Indonesia is only the highest-profile example of a trend across Asia and the Middle East, the only regions that routinely execute drug offenders. Saudi Arabia beheads smugglers of cannabis, a drug which is not conclusively linked to a single fatality among the 200m or so who use it each year. China’s president, Xi Jinping, called last year for “forceful measures to wipe [drugs] out”. In the first five months of 2014 nearly 40,000 people were sentenced for drug offences in China, 27% more than in the same period in 2013. In June most countries will mark the UN’s “international day against drug abuse” with speeches; China often celebrates it with a round of executions.
More enthusiastic still is Iran, where the government is increasingly alarmed about high rates of addiction. Since 2011 possession of as little as 30g of some drugs has been a hanging offence.
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Le Kiosque a publié:
Petite histoire de la guerre contre les drogues
L’an prochain, personne ne célébrera le centenaire de la guerre contre les drogues. Ni les Américains qui l’ont déclenché officiellement en décembre 1914, ni les pays qui, veut veut pas, ont suivi son exemple.
Tous s’attendaient à une brève escarmouche. Or, après des décennies d’efforts, la lutte continue, toujours plus âpre. Environ 2,3 millions d’Américains s’injectent des drogues, de la cocaïne à la métamphétamine (speed) en passant par l’héroïne et des opiacés comme la Dilaudid ou l’OxyContin. Au Canada ils sont 325 000; au Québec, quelque 23 000 dont la moitié à Montréal.
Depuis un siècle, les fournisseurs et le marché ont changé. Ainsi, le Québec importe encore l’héroïne et la cocaïne, mais il produit assez de marijuana, d’amphétamines, de drogues de synthèse pour fournir toute la province et exporter le reste. La plupart des pays étaient prêts à continuer la lutte aux côtés des Américains encore quelques siècles même s’ils ne croient plus à la victoire finale. Ils n’ont pas pu; les ravages du sida, la violence des cartels de la drogue, les profits du crime organisé leur ont sorti la tête du sable.
Depuis, ils cherchent des solutions. Pas le Québec.