A half-smoked joint

“I’M GONNA smoke’a de ganja until I go blind,” sang Bob Marley. “You know I smoke’a de ganja all a de time.” Jamaicans who share his devotion to cannabis have long risked arrest. But this month the government said it intended to decriminalise possession of small amounts of the drug. Several countries in Europe and Latin America have already taken this step. On the day that Jamaica announced its plans, a report commissioned by the Kofi Annan Foundation argued that minor drug offences should be decriminalised in West Africa to reduce violence and corruption.

After decades of failure it is hardly surprising that people are seeking alternatives to the ruinously expensive, bloody “war on drugs”. Prohibiting narcotics has failed to prevent an increase in their use, mainly in the rich world but increasingly in emerging markets (Brazil is now the world’s biggest customer of crack cocaine). At the same time it has enriched the criminal mafias which spread corruption and murder from London’s East End to Tijuana’s barrios, and which threaten to make failed states of countries in Africa and Latin America. Even Britain’s official advisory panel on drugs opposed the government’s move this week to criminalise khat, a mild and little-known stimulant whose users may now turn to more harmful alternatives (see article).