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Harvard Lecturer: Legalize Drugs to End Border Violence

Another voice in the small but growing crowd urging legalization of drugs to end the Mexico drug war violence: Harvard Senior Lecturer in Economics Jeffrey Miron.

Argument 1: Prohibition creates violence. It happened with alcohol and gambling. End the prohibition, end the violence. [More...]

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Swiss Approve Prescription Heroin Policy

Bump and Update: The Swiss voted to make permanent the experimental plan of providing heroin to addicts through doctor's prescriptions. The measure passed by 68%. (But they rejected an initiative to decriminalize pot):

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Swiss to Vote on Prescription Heroin Policy Sunday

Tomorrow, the Swiss head to the polls. On the ballot: whether to make an experimental program allowing doctors to prescribe heroin permanent.

In 1998 Switzerland introduced an experimental 10-year heroin prescription programme. Today around 1,300 patients across the country are on the programme.

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25 Ways to Lift the Drug War Curse

Mother Jones has a new issue, much of which addresses the failure of the war on drugs. Among those they interviewed was David Simon, creator of HBO's The Wire. Here's what he had to say (sorry, no link):

"We are the jailingest motherf*ckers on the planet. More than that, the number of violent offenders in federal prisons has gone down to its
lowest level ever in the history of the country -- in the single digits, by the Bureau of Prisons' own statistics. And the political party that
let this get out of control? It was the Democrats.

The drug war has actually destroyed the deterrent in inner cities by teaching whole police departments to chase drug stats when they should be solving crimes. And, of course, because they can't put all those people in prison, it doesn't even work as a draconian policy. Most people are just thrown back onto the street.

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