Reaksmey Hong

It is already commonly known that illicit drugs can be harmful to users and profitable to the criminals who sell them, so why not simply stop drug trafficking by strictly enforcing the law? The US-led ‘war on drugs’, which promotes strict supply reduction at the expense of demand and harm minimization, has failed (just like its antecedent, the prohibition against alcohol in the US in 1930s). Aggressively prohibitive policies have resulted in increases in the quantities trafficked, reductions in their prices and increases in their potency. Other countries with draconian drug policies emphasizing punitive measures including death penalties operate in a number of South East Asian nations but these too continue to have drug problems. As an exception, Sweden’s approach which promotes a drug-free society and total rejection of drugs seems to have better results but Sweden is an outlier in many of its practices. As a response to the failures of the ‘war on drugs’, some countries have trie