Leaders | From the archive

Hooked on just saying no

Minimising the evil of drugs means learning to live with them, legally

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MR WILLIAM BENNETT, newly appointed as President Bush's "drug tsar", once suggested that the campaign he now heads was a war that America is losing. He was right. The lost battles bring personal disaster to many Americans and menace civil peace in some of its big cities. Moreover, the defeat is a calamity for several poor countries, some virtually in thrall to drug barons. A United Nations conference last month threw its moral, but otherwise non-existent, weight behind the Americans in their fight against drugs. Yet even if the weight were there, the solution would still be missing.

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