Curb Aids and HIV by decriminalising drugs, say experts

[CHIMO]

The use of illicit drugs must be decriminalised if efforts to halt the spread of Aids are to succeed, one of the world's leading independent authorities on the disease has warned.

In an unprecedented attack on global drugs policy, Michele Kazatchkine, head of the influential Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria, has told the Observer that, without a radical overhaul of laws that lead to hundreds of thousands of drug users being imprisoned or denied access to safe treatment, the millions of pounds spent on fighting HIV and Aids will be wasted.

Kazatchkine will use his keynote speech at the 20th International Harm Reduction Association conference tomorrow in Bangkok to expose the failures of policies which treat addiction as a crime. He will accuse governments of using what he calls "repressive" measures that deny addicts human rights rather than putting public health needs first.

He will argue that governments should fully commit to the widespread provision of harm reduction strategies aimed at intravenous drug users, such as free needle exchanges and providing substitutes to illicit drugs, such as methadone.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/19/drugs-decriminalisation-aids

Humbug.

Who needs public health when we have prisons, gated communities and rent-a-cops. Just liberals wanting more government taxes and interference.

[Warpy]

1. There is no real benefit to substituting methadone for heroin

beyond once or twice a day dosing rather than more frequent dosing. Just legalize the lot of them, drive the black marketeers out of business, and break the drug gangs. Street crime would drop practically overnight.

That it will also give us benefits from reducing the spread of HIV and reducing the prison population is icing on the cake.

People can get all the drugs they want now, only those drugs are not produced safely in standard doses. There is no way an addict who can get his drugs in a pharmacy is going to risk shooting cement dust or Drano into his veins from street drugs.

As for the constant howl about the children, most kids now know exactly where the black market pharmacies are. Making drugs legal and available in pharmacies will restrict the access children now have by driving the black marketers out of business.

The drug war as it stands now is useful only to the men whose political power is based upon it. It outlived any usefulness it might ever have had a century ago.

[bemildred]

2. They will never do squat about the drug cartels unless they legalize.

It's all the money.