Jimmy Carter: "End the global war on drugs"

In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, with a full program of treatment for addicts.

I also cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and summarized by saying: "Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself."

These ideas were widely accepted at the time. But in the 1980s President Ronald Reagan and Congress began to shift from balanced drug policies, including the treatment and rehabilitation of addicts, toward futile efforts to control drug imports from foreign countries.

This approach entailed an enormous expenditure of resources and the dependence on police and military forces to reduce the foreign cultivation of marijuana, coca and opium poppy and the production of cocaine and heroin. One result has been a terrible escalation in drug-related violence, corruption and gross violations of human rights in a growing number of Latin American countries...

And the single greatest cause of prison population growth has been the war on drugs, with the number of people incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses increasing more than twelvefold since 1980.

Not only has this excessive punishment destroyed the lives of millions of young people and their families (disproportionately minorities), but it is wreaking havoc on state and local budgets...

More at the StarTribune.

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Meanwhile due to the "War on Drugs" they are more plentiful and profitable than ever:

Gulsum,12, holds a baby cannabis plant plucked out of the field while she works with her father Ghafordin on May 15, 2011 in Wakhil, in the mountainous upper Panjshir region, Afghanistan. The farmer has been growing cannabis for three years and has seen the prices triple since 2008. This spring he is planting less wheat in order to increase his marijuana crops. Known as the world's largest producer of opium, the raw ingredient of heroin, Afghanistan has now become the top supplier of cannabis, with large-scale cultivation in half of its provinces, according to a 2010 report by the United Nations. 

(Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)