Richard Branson says the U.N. is about to come out against the war on drugs
In a blog post published Monday on Virgin.com, British entrepreneur and multi-billionaire Richard Branson claimed the United Nations is about to take a stand against the drug war worldwide:
A longtime advocate of treating drug addiction as an illness rather than a crime, Branson said that it is "exciting that the UNODC has now unequivocally stated that criminalization is harmful, unnecessary, and disproportionate," but worried that the agency was subject to "an inordinate amount of pressure" from one government in particular that opposes decriminalization.
Branson included a UNODC briefing paper in his post which clearly advocated for recreational decriminalization, but the agency said in a statement that the paper "is neither a final nor formal document from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, and cannot be read as a statement of UNODC policy." The response also denied Branson's allegation of pressure to retract its decriminalization stance, commenting that "it is not possible to withdraw what is not yet ready."
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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