Is it a sea change? Certainly we don’t expect reform to come from the top down — it’ll take an overwhelming revolt by the population to overcome the governmental self-interest. And the U.S. is firm in its resolve to keep the drug war going unchanged.
And yet, we have a huge number of leaders of Latin American countries blatantly calling for a discussion of legalization, and the two hard-line prohibitionists in the Western Hemisphere — Canada’s Stephen Harper and U.S.’s Barack Obama actually felt the need to express these thoughts this weekend:
Harper: “I think what everyone believes and agrees with, and to be frank myself, is that the current approach is not working, but it is not clear what we should do.”
Obama: “I think it is entirely legitimate to have a conversation about whether the laws in place are ones that are doing more harm than good in certain places.”
primus