If you only read one article this weekend, might I suggest you make it Ben Wallace-Wells long and brilliant Rolling Stone piece on the multiple – if well-intentioned – idiocies and failures of the War on Drugs. Since it’s been running since the Nixon administration you might think that it’s time for a fresh approach. Wallace-Wells concludes on a hopeful note: there are grass roots signs of a shift in attitudes amongst police departments across America and there are some signs that Democrats and some Republicans are learning from the War’s manifest $50bn a year failure.
On the other hand, Washington is sufficiently thrilled with the success of Plan Colombia that it’s creating a Plan Mexico and trying to replicate its Latin American triumphs (sic) in, of all places, Afghanistan. And so the madness continues. But Wallace-Wells’ piece is an excellent primer of how we got into this mess.
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