Reaksmey Hong

War against drug is wasting money:  War against drugs is already known an aggressive approach and a failure in many ways. First, it is too expensive. Secondly, when the drug dealers are cracked down, the organized smaller groups blossomed, and black market and distribution system created; therefore, they are even harder to be cracked down. Thirdly, if a dealer is arrested, the other dealers are still working and at most, they shift to a different location, village, district, or city. Fourthly, war against drugs give an opportunity to law enforcement officers or even group of officers to corrupt and stay behind the dealers. This approach will still require continual fights forever. On Tuesday 25, 2014, on the Annual Meeting of NACD, his excellence Meas Vyrith told Cambodia daily 1 that in about a month NACD and provincial/municipal authorities have cracked down 90 bars which supply Shisha. Like attacking drug dealers, in 2012, 1,788 people were arrested. In 2013, 1,830 were arr...

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...