Radio New Zealand - Te Reo Irirangi o Aotearoa

This year marks the hundredth anniversary of the first international meeting on the prohibition of drugs.

Diplomats from 13 countries gathered in Shanghai and set the ground work for an international system of drug prohibition which continues to this day.

Ironically, the agreement came just decades after the so-called opium wars when Britain went to war with China to force to open its borders to the British dominated opium trade.

A century later there are growing calls for a re-think of the policy of prohibition.

Britain's Economist newspaper has declared the policy a manifest failure and says the time has come to take a calculated gamble and legalise all drugs.

This week in Ideas we hear about the terrible cost of the war on drugs on the people of Latin America, talk to a former deputy drug Czar of Britain, and hear from the director of the New Zealand Drug Foundation Ross Bell.

Links

New Zealand Drug Foundation http://www.nzdf.org.nz/

International Drug Policy Consortium http://www.idpc.info/

Economist editorial http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13237193