The War on Drugs: the Observer debate – as it happened
Live coverage of a panel discussion on drug laws with David Simon, writer of The Wire, documentary maker Eugene Jarecki, Rachel Seifert, the director of the documentary Cocaine Unwrapped and others at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. The debate was chaired by Observer editor John Mulholland
Eugene Jarecki and the campaign to end America's war on drugs
Andrew Anthony: It's cost $1tn and resulted in 45m arrests, and yet nothing has changed, argues the film-maker. So what did prisoners think when they saw his documentary?
Guatemala's president: 'My country bears the scars from the war on drugs'
Guatemala's president tells John Mulholland that leaders of drug-consuming countries in the west have to accept it has brought Latin countries to their knees
'This is the beginning of the end for marijuana prohibition across the world'
Colorado voted to legalise recreational use last week in a move that could hurt the cartels and challenge the long US 'war on drugs' reports Rory Carroll
What Britain could learn from Portugal's drugs policy
A decade ago Portugal took a radical new approach to illegal drugs by treating users as people with social problems rather than as criminals. Could it work in the UK?
Legalise drugs and a worldwide epidemic of addiction will follow
Antonio Maria Costa
Antonio Maria Costa: Those who argue we should decriminalise the trade in narcotics are blind to the catastrophic consequences
Britain's drug policy will not improve until we are bold enough to experiment
By Alex Stevens
We can't know the potential benefits of innovations like Portugal's unless we research and implement them, says criminal justice professor Alex Stevens
