The World Wide War on Drugs #7 - Uruguay is tegen, wie volgt?

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An alternative to the war on drugs

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In an article in the British Medical Journal, Steve Rolles summarises Transform's flagship publication, 'After the War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation', arguing that we need to end the criminalisation of drugs and set up regulatory models that will control drug markets and reduce the harms caused by current policy.

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Admits to Committing Abuses in the War Against Drugs

Felipe Calderon said “it’s not the doctor’s fault” for trying to cure Mexico from the disease of organized crime.

In an interview with El Pais on Tuesday, former Mexican President Felipe Calderon concedes that he made mistakes in Mexico’s war on drugs. He admitted that 60,000 to 70,000 dead represented a lot of casualties in his war on drugs, which spanned from 2006 to 2012.

“Yes, that’s a lot. And each one weighs on me more than anything, but those homicides were committed by criminals that I was fighting against,” he said.

The National Commission on Human Rights has also alleged there was a sharp increase in torture and mistreatment complaints during that period. "It’s true that federal operations increased and that there were abuses. However, they were the exception, not the norm. In all cases, the government took note and acted according to rule of law to bring to justice those responsible,” Calderon said.

Asked what part of his strategy he would have changed, Calderon said: “I would have started the changes a lot earlier, with greater force and more resources.” If he had done nothing, Mexico today would have been an open stage for organized crime, he argued.

Calderon referred to organized crime as a national sickness, which like a cancer patient, needs radical chemo-therapy like measures to cure. It leaves the patient in pain, but “it’s not the doctor’s fault.”

Moving forward, the ex-statesman said that now “I sleep better. I have less problems to think about.”

For a more indepth look at the impact of the war on drugs in Mexico, see The Legacy of the War on Drugs in Mexico

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Mother of dead girl says Mexican troops executed 22 drug-gang suspects

Incident occurred in southern Mexico on 30 June
Government says fierce shootout injured one soldier

A woman says she saw Mexican soldiers shoot and kill her 15-year-old daughter after a confrontation with a suspected drug gang, even though the teenager was lying wounded on the ground. Twenty other people were shot and killed in rural southern Mexico after they surrendered and were disarmed, the mother told the Associated Press.

The Mexican government has maintained that all died during a fierce shootout when soldiers were fired on in the early morning of 30 June. That version of events came into question because government troops suffered only one wounded, and physical evidence at the scene pointed toward more selective killings.

The witness said the army fired first at an armed group holed up in a warehouse. She said one gunman died in the initial shootout, and another gang member and her daughter were wounded. The rest of the gunmen surrendered on the promise they would not be hurt, she said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

After the gang surrendered, the girl, Erika Gomez Gonzalez, lay face down in the ground, a bullet wound in her leg. Soldiers rolled her over while she was still alive and shot her more than half a dozen times in the chest, her mother said. Another suspected gang member was injured in the initial attack.

“A soldier stood the kid up and killed him,” said the witness, who said she had gone to the warehouse the night before to try to retrieve her daughter from the gang she had apparently joined.

The soldiers interrogated the rest of the gang members in front of the warehouse, and then took them inside one-by-one, she said. From where she stood just outside the warehouse and in army custody, she heard gunshots and moans from the dying.

Several days after the killings, AP reporters took pictures of the warehouse and found little evidence of sustained fighting. There were few stray bullet marks and no shell casings. At least five spots along the warehouse’s inside walls showed the same pattern: one or two closely placed bullet pocks, surrounded by a mass of spattered blood, giving the appearance that some of those killed had been standing against the wall and shot at about chest level.

After the AP report, the state of Mexico prosecutors’ office released a statement saying there was “no evidence at all of possible executions”. The office said it found ballistic evidence of “crossfire with a proportionate interchange of gunshots”.

The state government refused to release autopsy reports the AP requested under Mexico’s freedom of information law, declaring them state secrets to be guarded for nine years.

Interviewed separately, relatives of three other gang members who were killed and a doctor who saw Erika Gomez Gonzalez’s body said the wounds were consistent with the mother’s account of how they were killed – with an incapacitating wound and a burst of gunshots to the chest. The death certificate for Gomez Gonzalez, seen by reporters, confirmed that she died on 30 June outside the town of San Pedro Limon, where the killings occurred, and gave bullet wounds as the cause of death. There are no details in the certificate on ballistics or the type of weapon used.

The gravestones of two other of those killed, Marcos Salgado Burgos, 20, and his brother, Juan Jose Salgado Burgos, 18, also record their death on 30 June.

Separately, a teenager in the nearby town of Ixcapuzalco said his older brother was among the 22 dead. He said he saw the body and said there was a bullet wound to the left leg – “it destroyed his knee” – and a shot through the back with an exit wound through the chest. His account could not be independently corroborated.

None of the relatives wanted to be identified, for fear of reprisals. The army and the state of Mexico so far have not provided a list of those killed. Human Rights Watch has demanded that the case be thoroughly investigated and that the witness be protected.

According to Erika’s mother the shootout was initiated by the army. This would be a violation of its own rules of engagement, which allow soldiers to fire on armed civilians only if the civilians fire first, and if soldiers’ or civilians’ lives are in danger. The army did not respond to requests for comment.

The federal attorney general’s office said there was an open investigation into the incident but that no evidence has been found so far to corroborate the witness’ account, originally reported by the magazine Esquire Latinoamerica.

The woman spoke angrily last weekend about her daughter’s death. She said she spent a sleepless night sitting on a pile of bricks on 29 June, after arriving to retrieve her runaway daughter.

The girl was involved with the wrong crowd, she said. The group had traveled from the town of Arcelia in Guerrero state to nearby San Pedro Limon in three pickups, with guns. All were teenagers or in their early 20s. Little is known about what the gang was up to or had been doing in the days before the shootings.

Local officials said Arcelia is controlled by the La Familia drug gang, which was run out of Michoacan state, where it was founded and now controls parts of the impoverished Tierra Caliente, or hot land, in neighboring Guerrero. Drug trafficking and conflicts with the military have occurred there for decades. Some farmers grow and traffic marijuana and poppies for opium, and violence is common.

Recently, supporters of the gang blocked roads and burned four Coca-Cola trucks, leading the soft drink company to shutter its distribution centre in Arcelia. Local journalists say they have been threatened for publishing stories the drug cartel didn’t like.

It was unclear if the AP was allowed to report freely in the area because the story casts the army in a poor light. But the gang appeared to keep close tabs on AP reporters while they were in the region. During an interview with the dead girl’s mother in a parking lot, a young man appeared, arms propped on the back of a pickup truck, staring fixedly and remaining until the end.

The area is patrolled heavily by army and marine units. When reporters were at a local soccer match interviewing a relative of the two dead brothers, a three-man marine detachment stood nearby. The unit’s leader told the journalists “It’s my turn to interview you”, and asked them what they were doing and where they were staying. Other marines photographed the journalists and their press ID cards.

Recalling the morning of her daughter’s death, the mother said confusion broke out inside the warehouse before dawn when one of the young gunmen appeared, shouting: “They’re on us!”

Troops from the Mexican army’s 22nd military zone were on patrol. Soldiers trained a spotlight on the warehouse and opened fire on those inside, she said.

After an initial exchange of gunfire, soldiers called out to those inside, saying their lives would be spared if they surrendered. They walked out with their hands on the back of their necks, she said.

The soldiers took her, two other women and two young men who claimed to be kidnap victims to a semi-enclosed room at one side of the entrance to the warehouse. From there, under soldiers’ custody, the woman could only catch glimpses of what was happening inside

“I was afraid to see too much,” she said, noting some of the detainees were shot standing, some were kneeling.

After a couple of hours, the two men who had claimed to be kidnap victim were separated from the three women, taken off by soldiers and shot, apparently because they did not believe their claims, she said.

The army said in its initial press release that soldiers rescued three women who were kidnap victims. The mother says she was one of three women taken by the army to the Mexico state capital, Toluca, and turned over to a state prosecutors’ agent. The other two women were promptly arrested and are still in custody.

The mother said she was photographed next to the guns confiscated from the gang and told she too would be arrested if she didn’t cooperate with authorities and confirm their version of events. She said she did not know the agent’s name, but described her as a tall woman with close-cropped hair who was constantly holding a cigarette.

She was later taken to the federal attorney general’s organised crime unit in Mexico City, and finally released with no charges.

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Drug War Debate Divides Latin America, U.S. at OAS Summit

Latin American governments traditionally allied with the U.S. on anti-drug efforts are increasingly divided ahead of a regional summit as countries from Costa Rica to Colombia seek a debate over legalization.

Officials from the 35 members of the Organization of American States are meeting in Guatemala City today in a special session called a year ago to address counter-narcotics policies. Uruguay last year made sales of marijuana legal and leaders or former leaders in Mexico, Brazil, Guatemala, Ecuador and Belize have said legalization should be debated.

As the human and financial toll from drug trafficking climbs, the U.S., which backed an $8 billion effort to fight drug-smuggling rebels in Colombia and funds interdiction and alternative crop programs across the hemisphere, has seen its historic position against legalization undermined by voter-backed referendums in Washington and Colorado supporting marijuana sales.

“There is no common position, least of all in the Americas,” Ecuador President Rafael Correa said during a visit to Guatemala last month. “The strategy against drugs has been a disaster. Things are being discussed now that used to be taboo.”

In a report published this month, Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos, who once led security operations supported by the U.S.-funded “Plan Colombia” counter-narcotics program, called for a fresh debate over how to fight illegal drugs.

‘New Approaches’

“The world needs to discuss new approaches,” he wrote in the report by the Global Commission on Drug Policy, whose members include former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso and former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan. “If that means legalizing, and the world thinks that’s the solution, I will welcome it.”

Costa Rican president Luis Guillermo Solis in June called for a debate on legalization, adding that “it’s not an issue we can solve right now.” Former Mexico President Vicente Fox has called the current approach toward illegal drugs “useless” and a “total failure.”

William Brownfield, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, said in a June teleconference “we have to accept that some countries will prescribe marijuana aggressively, while others, like Uruguay, will legalize it throughout their country.”

Brownfield called legalization “simplistic” during a trip to Panama this week, and the White House this month identified 22 countries as major illicit drug-producing or drug-transit countries, 17 of which are in Latin America or the Caribbean.

’Related Crimes’

“International cooperation remains the cornerstone for reducing the threat posed by the illegal narcotics trade and related crimes carried out by criminal organizations,” the White House said in a statement this week.

Illegal production of coca, the main ingredient in cocaine, is at its lowest level since estimates were collected in 1990, the U.S. said. The U.S. is the single-biggest consumer of cocaine, while nearly all coca production takes place in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia.

U.S. funding for anti-narcotics operations in Latin America and the Caribbean could fall by as much as 29 percent in 2015, including cuts to security initiatives such as Plan Colombia, the Merida Initiative for Mexico and the Central American and Caribbean Regional Security Initiatives, according to a report this month by the Congressional Research Service.

At the 43rd regular session of the OAS General Assembly in June 2013, member states called drugs a “public health problem” that must be accompanied by a “human rights perspective,” while demanding stronger efforts to fight the supply and demand of illicit drugs.

“There are still a lot of countries that associate drugs with violence and there is a fear that legalization could lead to more violence,” OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza said in a phone interview. “We have to be flexible. Things don’t change overnight.”

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A Chart That Says the War on Drugs Isn't Working

The controversial war on drugs not only costs a lot, it has done almost nothing to curb the drug addiction rate since 1970, according to this stunning chart by documentary filmmaker Matt Groff comparing the cost of drug control to the drug addiction rate. Groff used the rate of addiction to illicit drugs from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, pairing it with federal drug control budget spending numbers from the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy.

Groff, who made the chart for his new documentary on the drug war The 1315 Project, says that it shows the costly war on drugs simply isn't working. A note: The numbers on this chart alone don't add up to $1.5 trillion, which represents a more inclusive count of drug control spending, with prison costs and state level costs determined by the Office of National Drug Control Policy, but instead to $800 billion. Groff included that $1.5 trillion because the chart appears in the documentary as a source discusses that more complete amount.

As you can see, while the blue illicit drug addiction rate line has remained relatively steady at about 1.3 percent, the green line for drug control spending has skyrocketed. The increased spending did not correlate to lower addiction rates. "Drug use and abuse exists on a spectrum and as a society we must accept that some portion of the population will be addicted to drugs even if we don’t like it," Groff says.

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As Heroin Use And Teenage Pot Smoking Fall, Alarm About Them Rises

Survey data released last week by the federal government cast doubt on a couple of widely accepted beliefs about drug use trends: 1) that the nation is in the midst of an escalating “heroin epidemic” and 2) that loosening marijuana prohibition encourages teenagers to smoke pot.

In the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), the number of respondents who reported using heroin in the previous month fell by 14 percent last year, despite ever-rising concern about a new “heroin epidemic.” While NSDUH probably misses a substantial number of heavy users (exactly how many is unclear), the trends identified by the survey still should indicate whether heroin consumption is on the rise or on the wane (as both government officials and journalists tend to assume). Hence it is instructive to compare past-month heroin use measured by NSDUH (in thousands of users) with mentions of a “heroin epidemic” in the newspaper and wire service articles collected by Nexis:

On the face of it, there is no clear relationship between the level of heroin use and the level of press attention to it. Notice that the spike in 2006, when the number of past-month users was higher than it has been in any year since then, seems to have prompted no journalistic response whatsoever. The more gradual increase seen after 2009, by comparison, coincided with an initial drop in “heroin epidemic” mentions, followed by a slight increase. Then the number of mentions skyrocketed, rising from 82 in 2011 to 273 in 2012 and 633 in 2013. So far this year there have been more than 2,300 references to a “heroin epidemic” in these news sources, reflecting the tremendous attention attracted by the actor Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death on February 2 (which was caused by “mixed drug intoxication” but generally attributed to heroin alone). That single incident seems to have generated more talk of a “heroin epidemic” than everything else that happened in the previous 12 years. In any case, coverage of the putative epidemic really took off around the time when heroin use started to fall.

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Army unit in Mexico killings has past controversy

Associated Press= MEXICO CITY (AP) — An army officer and seven soldiers who face disciplinary action for their participation in the killing of 22 people in rural southern Mexico belong to an army battalion with a history of incidents.

The Mexican Defense Department said the eight were involved in the June 30 incident in San Pedro Limon, an encounter that the military initially reported as a shootout but that a witness has described as a massacre.

They belong to the 102nd Infantry Battalion of the 22nd Military Zone in Mexico state, according to media reports and two people with knowledge of the case who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak to the press. The battalion is based in San Miguel Ixtapan in the remote southwestern part of the state, about an hour's drive north of where the killings happened.

The area is said to be controlled by La Familia cartel, though it is also land where rival drug gangs have been fighting for territory.

The battalion was in the news last December when members shot four employees of the town of Arcelia in nearby Guerrero state, including the director and deputy director of municipal transportation, as they drove on a rural road returning from a shooting range. Arcelia is also the hometown of several of those killed in the June shootout. Media reports said the employees, who were carrying rifles and dressed in hunting camouflage, were mistaken for criminals. A sergeant, a corporal and two soldiers were arrested.

The 102nd was also in the spotlight in February 2012. Citing legal documents, the newspaper Reforma reported that throughout 2010 and into early 2011, soldiers in the battalion took money to inform La Familia of their operations. Six people, including two officers, were charged.

The latest incident was initially reported as a firefight on June 30 in which 22 suspected criminals were killed and one soldier was wounded. The official version came into question when The Associated Press visited the scene days later and found no signs of a prolonged battle.

Last week, a woman who says she witnessed the events told the AP that only one person died in an initial gunbattle and that the rest were shot after surrendering. The witness said the dead included her 15-year-old daughter, Erika Gomez Gonzalez, who had been wounded in the leg and was lying on the ground when she was killed.

The newspaper La Jornada published photos Friday showing bloody bodies, purportedly in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, with investigators and military personnel still at the scene.

The bloodstains on the cinderblock wall, evidence markers and debris shown in the pictures match those that AP journalists photographed days after the deaths were reported by the army.

Among the dead in the photographs is a girl lying on her back in the manner that the witness described. Erika Gomez's brother identified her in the photograph, lying next to an assault rifle, by her bloody and mud-covered clothing.

"I bought her that T-shirt," Saddam Guzman Gomez told the AP. "It's not true that she was shooting. They planted that gun. It looks like she was crawling."

Many of the dead are shown sprawled beside the wall of the warehouse. All pictured are holding or lying near assault rifles, which in some cases appear propped against the bodies. Most have mud on their knees, indicating they may have been kneeling or lying face down.

The AP is not distributing the photographs because it cannot determine their source.

A plain yellow envelope containing the photos on a USB memory stick was sent anonymously on Wednesday to MVT, a local news agency in Mexico state, said the agency's director, Mario Vazquez. He checked the photos with those his agency took the day of the shooting and concluded it was the same scene.

The officer and seven soldiers face disciplinary action for their participation, but the army has remained mum on what roles they played. They were being held at a prison in Mexico City on charges of crimes against military discipline, disobedience and dereliction of duty.

The federal Attorney General's Office is also carrying out a civil investigation, and the governmental National Human Rights Commission is conducting its own probe.

On Friday, Mexico's secretary of the interior defended the armed forces in a meeting in the lower house of Congress.

"If there was something they have done wrong, it would be the exception," Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said of the eight detained soldiers. "It's an isolated incident and doesn't reflect the behavior of our great army and navy in Mexico."

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The Role of the Media in the War on Drugs

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The war on drugs would have been impossible for the government to wage for the last 40 plus years without support from the media. The drug war is horrific. Earlier this month, a DEA agent shot a grandmother reaching for her child during a raid that found no drugs. In the summer, a SWAT team in Georgia threw a flashbang into a baby's crib, critically injuring it. There are more than 150 such raids each day in America, so there are a lot of horrifying stories that come out of that, on a regular basis. Rarely, if ever, do such stories break out of the local news and into the national news cycle. There is no equivalent of the Ferguson story when it comes to the drug war. But these stories are just as frightening and outrageous.

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The twisted way in which the media distorts the particulars of the drug war—sanitizing its destruction and hyperbolizing the dangers of its targets—has always perplexed me. Before coming to Reason I spent several years working at NBC and Fox News, and worked with people who had been all around the business for years and even decades. And there's a lot of drug use in journalism. A government study in 2007 found about 13 percent of employees in media admitting to using drugs in the previous month, in the top five professions for drug use. So how do so many members of the media get the drug war so wrong? I suppose for the same reason staffers in DC all seem to smoke pot but their bosses are mostly against legalizing the thing.

That's starting to change. Just like the politicians—the new first estate—are slowly catching up with the public and easing their positions against drugs, so the fourth estate will as well. In neither case will it be because politicians or journalists suddenly found religion. It will be because public opinion has shifted despite their best attempts to control it, because of the proliferation of media sources and viewpoints that make it increasingly more difficult for the powers that be to define the terms not just of the drug war debate but of the acknowledged realities of the drug war.

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How Should Our Society Deal With People Who Use Drugs?

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The war on drugs is a cruel joke. The U.S. spends more than $50 billion a year on the "war on drugs" with the goal of creating a "drug-free society" -- yet there has never been a "drug-free society" in the history of civilization. Virtually all of us take drugs every single day. Caffeine, sugar, alcohol, marijuana, Prozac, Ritalin, opiates and nicotine are just some of the substances that Americans use on a regular basis.

Drugs are so popular because people use them for both pleasure and for pain. Drugs can be fun. How many of us enjoy having some drinks and going out dancing? How many of us enjoy a little smoke after a nice dinner with friends? Many people bond with others or find inspiration alone while under the influence of drugs. On the flip side, many people self-medicate to try to ease the pain in their lives. How many of us have had too much to drink to drown our sorrows over a breakup or some other painful event? How many of us smoke cigarettes or take prescription drugs to deal with anxiety or stress? Throughout recorded history, people have inevitably altered their consciousness to fall asleep, wake up, deal with stress, and for creative and spiritual purposes.

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Hoe 57 Mexicaanse studenten plots verdwenen in de nacht

Een vrijdagnacht in de Mexicaanse stad Iguala in de zuidelijke staat Guerrero begint met een feestje en eindigt in zes doden en 57 vermiste studenten. De burgemeester waagde aan het begin van die avond nog een dansje op live muziek van een lokale band, maar hij ging naar bed voordat het geweld uitbrak. Die nacht botsten jongeren met de politie en liep de situatie volledig uit de hand.

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Op woensdag 1 oktober 2014 07:14 schreef Basp1 het volgende:
BNN met een petitie tegen het strenge straffen van mensen met gebruikershoeveelheden.

http://petities.nl/petitie/een-pil-te-veel-maakt-geen-crimineel

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Het is niet zo dat we het bezit van harddrugs uit het strafrecht willen halen. Ook willen we het gebruik van harddrugs niet promoten.

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Op woensdag 1 oktober 2014 16:53 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:

[..]

Wat een kut-petie. Niet getekend.

[..]

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Op woensdag 1 oktober 2014 16:54 schreef Basp1 het volgende:

[..]

Het zal met kleine stapjes moeten, waarom meteen alles willen. Het is toch een kleine moeite en als ze genoeg handtekeningen hebben mogen onze politici weer eens drankneus opstelten lastig vallen hiermee.

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Op woensdag 1 oktober 2014 21:27 schreef OllieWilliams het volgende:
http://www.vox.com/2014/1(...)on-maps-charts-facts

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'Nederlanders in cel Spanje voor xtc-handel'

Een 23-jarige en een 25-jarige Nederlander zijn door een rechtbank in het Spaanse Alicante veroordeeld tot elk 6 jaar gevangenisstraf voor de smokkel van 54.000 xtc-pillen. Ook moeten de twee samen een geldboete van ruim 705.000 euro betalen. Dat is de straatwaarde van de drugs.

Dat meldt de Spaanse krant La Verdad vandaag op gezag van justitie. Het ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken kan het bericht nog niet bevestigen.

De Nederlanders zijn in mei dit jaar aangehouden in de oostelijke havenstad Dénia. Ze wilden vandaaruit de veerboot naar Ibiza nemen. De politie vond tijdens een inspectie 54.000 xtc-pillen in de brandstoftank van de auto. De pillen waren in 21 zakken verdeeld.

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Culture High: The Riveting Truth Behind Marijuana Prohibition

If watching the trailer for The Culture High doesn't put you on the edge of your seat, there's not much that will. It features some of the foremost names in the marijuana legalization movement and is sure to land with a major impact when it hits theaters. Check out the trailer and be sure to check out the full film later this month:

Journeying across the North American landscape, The Culture High is the riveting story that tears into the very fiber of modern day marijuana prohibition to reveal the truth behind the arguments and motives governing both those who support and oppose the existing pot laws. With budgets to fight the war reaching billions and arrests for simple possession sky rocking to nearly a million annually, the debate over marijuana’s legality has reached epic proportions. Utilizing the quirky yet profound nature of its predecessor, The Union: The Business Behind Getting High, The Culture High raises the stakes with some of todays biggest names, unprecedented access to footage previously unobtainable, and incredibly moving testimonials from both sides of the spectrum. Top celebrities, former undercover agents, university professors and a slew of unforgettable characters from all points of view come together for an amusing yet insightful portrait of cannabis prohibition and the grasp it has on society as a whole. The Culture High will strip search the oddity of human nature and dare to ask the question: What exactly is going on here?

The film will premier is on Oct 11 and the public theatrical release is on Oct 17th.

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PvdA wil onderzoek naar kosten overmatig drankgebruik

De PvdA wil dat staatssecretaris Martin van Rijn (Volksgezondheid) een groot onderzoek laat doen naar de maatschappelijke kosten van overmatig alcoholgebruik. De uitkomst kan gebruikt worden om het beleid daar op af te stemmen. Tweede Kamerlid Marith Rebel zal dat vanavond zeggen in KRO Brandpunt. Rebel zal het ook voorstellen tijdens een debat met Van Rijn deze week, laat ze in een toelichting weten.

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Huge majority thinks 'war on drugs' has failed, new poll finds

An increasing proportion of Britons favours a more liberal approach to drugs and would support decriminalisation strategies, according to a comprehensive survey commissioned by the Observer.

An overwhelming majority also believes that the so-called "war on drugs" is futile, with 84% saying that the decades-long campaign by law enforcement agencies against the global narcotics trade can never be won.

The poll provides welcome reading for those campaigning for illegal drugs to be decriminalised, with 27% saying that Britain's drug laws are not liberal enough. A previous Observer survey into the nation's drug-taking habits, in 2008, recorded a figure of 18%, suggesting a society that is steadily moving towards greater tolerance of drug use.

The proportion of Britons who believe certain drugs should be decriminalised has risen from 27% to 39% since 2008.

More than half (52%) support the introduction of initiatives like that recently pioneered by two US states, Colorado and Washington. Colorado's decision to legalise the sale of recreational marijuana has been hailed a success by some, with reductions of crime reported in the state capital of Denver and concerns about social breakdown yet to be borne out.

In the UK, however, there appears to be little appetite among Tories for a fresh look at drugs policy despite David Cameron, as a young MP, endorsing more lenient penalties for ecstasy possession and formerly sitting on a parliamentary committee that called for an international debate on the legalisation of drugs. The Liberal Democrats are currently examining the decriminalisation of all drugs for personal use and allowing cannabis to be sold on the open market. This week the party will discuss a policy paper advocating such options at its annual conference.

Prohibition has failed to curb the popularity of narcotics, as the number of Britons who have taken drugs continues to increase. Almost a third of the adult population – up from 27% in 2008 to 31% now – say they have taken an illegal substance – about 15 million people. While men and women are equally likely to have taken drugs, those aged 35-44 are the most likely to have used narcotics, with almost half this age group having taken them.

Across all age ranges, around three million people continue to take drugs, half of whom are aged 16-34.

If drugs were decriminalised, however, the proportion of Britons who have never previously tried drugs but who would consider doing so in the future would increase fourfold to 16%, offering some proof to hardliners that drug laws act as a deterrent.

The effect would be most pronounced among young people. Among 16- to 24-year-olds, 30% of those who have never taken drugs say they would consider doing so if substances were decriminalised.

The recession appears to have a had an impact on drug consumption. In the 2008 poll, conducted towards the beginning of the global economic slump, 35% of users were more likely to use drugs in a pub/club/bar environment. This has now fallen to 16%, possibly an indication of more straitened circumstances. Users spend an average of £74.36 on drugs each month, compared with the £54.58 an average drinker spends on alcohol a month or the £76.73 a smoker spends on tobacco.

Concerns that legal highs would create an explosion in drug use have yet to appear, with only one in 10 Britons saying they had tried them. Among those aged 25-34 the proportion to have tried legal highs almost doubles to 19%.