Conference in El Paso

LEAP is in Texas this week. Terry Nelson is at the University of Texas at El Paso, where he is participating in "A Global Public Policy Forum" about drug prohibition. The description of the conference is compelling:

Along the border the drug war has reached our backyard and our neighborhoods. Yet we continue our bi-national way of life. A public evaluation of the successes and failures of the policy is long overdue. However, such an evaluation should shift from a Washington D.C.-centered policy analysis, to where the drug war is happening now: in our border community.

The Newspaper Tree, El Paso's online newspaper, quotes Nelson from his panel yesterday:

He spoke about the root of crime in countries affected by the drug war. “Prohibition of drugs causes crime. The drug use doesn’t. It’s a bad choice. It’s a bad decision.” He continued: “Drugs and illegal trafficking corrupts everything they touch. All the countries in Central America have deaths because of the drug war. We can’t think of it as just an American solution or American problem. It’s a global problem.”

P.S. I'm going offline for about a week, so a few of the other folks at LEAP will be handling the blog for the next few days. I have written some posts which will appear automatically, but I won't be responding to any comments or emails until the end of the month. After working hard on the blog for over a month, I'm going to enjoy some downtime in the "real" world.