If Britain were fighting a war where 2,000 people died every year, where increasing numbers of our young people were recruited by the enemy and our opponents were always a step ahead, developing new weapons faster than we could combat them, there would be outcry and loud calls for change. Yet this is exactly the situation with the "war on drugs," and for far too long we have resisted a proper debate about the need for a different strategy.
Last week, I traveled to Colombia with the largest delegation of U.K. businesses ever to visit the country. Bilateral relations are growing stronger, exports are increasing and British businesses are making deals that will pay dividends for many years. Colombia is a country now realizing its great potential, but it is also a country still coming to terms with its past. That includes, with its neighbors, still suffering from the debilitating and socially corrosive effects of the global drugs trade.
Colombia's president, Juan Manuel Santos, has already shown the kind of courageous leadership that the world needs to tackle this issue. He sponsored last year's influential drugs report produced by the Organization of American States (OAS). In Bogota last week, we discussed the study's findings and the call for more research of this kind, which approaches the drugs problem without preconceptions. We agreed on the need to widen the debate beyond the false choice between rapid legalization of all drugs or military crackdown. Neither can solve the problem.