Prohibition is by far the largest cause of crime. Worldwide, annual drug profits are in excess of 400 billion dollars. This is 8 percent of the world economy, and 80 percent of total criminal turnover. In the United States the War on Drugs has caused a fivefold increase in annual criminal profits in the past 10 years. In many countries, corruption related to the drug trade has become a fact of life, and public safety is endangered by armed gangs fighting over turf. In major cities, 80 percent of petty crime is related to drugs.
The economic and financial damage caused by prohibition is enormous. The economy is distorted by the huge flows of criminal money, and some nations have become highly dependent on illegal trade. Massive amounts of tax-payers' money are wasted fighting the crime that prohibition itself creates. In the United States, 15 billion dollars are fed into the federal drug control budget anually, and the total costs of property damage, police work and incarceration are a multiple of this amount.
Prohibition causes social and personal harm on a worldwide scale. Huge numbers of people thrown in jail, families torn apart, homeless persons, heroin prostitution, fear to go out at night, double locks on your backdoor, the 'nuisance' people in inner cities experience - and much more.
Prohibition doesn't have any of its intended effects. While crime rates soar, the number of drug users increases, and the health problem is made worse. In inner cities, the health situation of users of unsafe heroin has become so desperate that many police commissioners now are in favor of controlled provision of heroin by the state.
Moral standards are declining because of prohibition. Drug use and possession places ordinary people outside the law, which may cause disrespect for the rules and moral standards society wants to set. We live in a society in which 80 percent of all crime is related to prohibition. If we are really concerned about morality, we must first remove the cause of all this crime - prohibition.
The 'drug scourge' is a hoax. The actual health problem which prohibition is supposed to solve is minor in comparison to other health problems. Tobacco causes 6 percent of all deaths in the world. In the US, 400,000 people die from tobacco each year, 100,000 from alcohol, 5000 from drugs. For Britain, this is 110,000, 30,000 and 1000. In general, these numbers are at a 50 to 10 to 1 ratio.

but ... what is legalization ?

Laws must be made which state the conditions under which drugs can be used, bought and sold, like the laws regulating other substances such as alcohol and tobacco, which are more riskful than most drugs. This does not mean that everything will be available to everyone at will. To control tobacco, alcohol and drugs, we call on our politicians to

make rational and consistent laws !

Join the Legalize! Initiative at http://www.legalize.org

In 1937, with the passage of the Marihuana Tax Act, the United States effectively banned recreational and medicinal use of cannabis.(1) Many nations followed suit and, in 1961, through the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, fifty four nations agreed to "[a]dopt such measures as may be necessary to prevent the misuse of, and illicit traffic in the leaves of the cannabis plant."(2) Despite such restrictive control, cannabis has become the most widely used illicit drug in the western world.

Since the 1970's pressure has been building to move away from the total prohibition of cannabis. Over the past century, numerous reports from independent, government-sponsored commissions have documented the drug's relative harmlessness and recommended the elimination of criminal sanctions for consumption-related offenses.(3) Opinion polls show growing support for cannabis reform and scientific, medical and patient communities continually provide evidence of the drug's therapeutic potential. As the public demands legal access to cannabis for both medicinal and other responsible uses, policy makers are being forced to consider how to regulate the drug.

Holland has led the way in cannabis reform since it amended its Opium Act in 1976 to distinguish among drugs according to levels of risk. Identifying cannabis as a "soft drug," the Dutch government decided to treat possession and cultivation of up to 30 grams as activities "not for prosecution, detection or arrest." This policy of tolerance paved the way for the "coffee shop system" of publicly distributing both marijuana and hashish. More recently, in 1996 the voters of California passed Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act, so that sick and dying patients could legally use marijuana for medicinal purposes. Cannabis buyer's clubs, not unlike the Dutch hash coffee shops, have emerged to provide marijuana to those with legitimate medical need.