Policy to control and reduce the supply of, and demand for, illicit drugs remains mired in controversy.
Despite intense campaigning for drug policy change, significant research efforts into drug and drug policy issues, and actions and statements by a number of governments and regional organizations that question the wisdom of the prevailing prohibitionist drug policy orthodoxy, the responses to the ‘global drug problem’ have seen only some gradual shifts in some regions. In many drug source and transit countries the ‘war on drugs’ continues largely unabated.