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The global drug dilemma

This week, thousands of the world's elite gathered at a Swiss resort for the World Economic Forum. Five men sat on a panel to discuss the world's drug problem,…

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This week, thousands of the world's elite gathered at a Swiss resort for the World Economic Forum. Five men sat on a panel to discuss the world's drug problem, or rather, drug enforcement problem.

Mexican journalist and Univision anchor Enrique Acevedo moderated a panel that included Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, Ghanaian diplomat and former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth and Texas Governor Rick Perry.

Roth of Human Rights Watch began by calling drug policy a disaster. "Drug use is not down," Roth said, "It is time for a different approach."

"Drugs have destroyed many people," Annan continued, "But wrongful governmental policies have destroyed many more."

President Santos admitted that drug policy had its flaws. "What I think we should do is...try to find new ways, more effective ways to combat drug trafficking because what we are doing right now is not the most successful and the best thing we can do."

However, Governor Perry, representing the United States, began by reminding the panel of his anti-legalization stance. "We've been very successful in the state of Texas with drug courts," Perry said. Acevedo pointed out Texas's high prison incarceration rate, 20 percent for drug possession, but Perry just responded that he hadn't been governor forever.

Which raises the U.S.'s real drug dilemmaan inflated incarceration rate that disproportionately affects Latinos and African Americans. 

While four times smaller than China's population, the U.S. has 70 percent more prisoners, totaling to 2.4 million, the highest in the world. That's six times more than than the combined prison population of France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Spain. What's more, 9 percent of the entire world prison population is African American.

Unfortunately, five men in Switzerland did not find a solution to global drug issues in their hour-long panel. Watch the whole panel and more on global issues concerning women, education, the economy, technology and health.

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