The Global Commission urges experiments with legal cannabis regulation

In June 2011 the Global Commission on Drug Policy published War on Drugs. Its recommendations included experiments with legally regulated drug markets, with particular emphasis on cannabis.

The commission brought former political leaders together with public-health figures, writers and other public figures. It was chaired by former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso and built on the Latin American commission’s earlier work.

Beyond a possession reform

The report urged an end to criminalisation of people who use drugs without harming others. It paired that position with health services, credible prevention and enforcement aimed at violent criminal organisations. It also asked governments to review international drug classifications and permit meaningful policy experimentation.

Its cannabis proposal went beyond considering a lesser penalty for personal possession: it invited governments to test legal regulation itself.

A report in a longer campaign

In A Narco History, Carmen Boullosa and Mike Wallace describe the 2011 report as a stronger intervention than the regional declaration of 2009. They place both within a growing challenge to prohibition, alongside national debates and the later state-level votes in the United States.

That is an account of political advocacy. The commissioners could recommend a direction, but could not change a treaty or instruct a country’s police and courts. The report belongs in the history of reform arguments; it does not itself mark a new legal permission to possess, grow or sell cannabis.^[1][2][3]