Twenty-six years ago, on 17 December 1986, my uncle, Guillermo Cano Isaza, editor of the Colombian daily newspaper, El Espectador, was killed by gunmen paid by Pablo Escobar and his drug trafficking cartel. He had led a journalistic crusade to denounce the corruptive and violent power of drug trafficking. He paid with his life. The newspaper he edited was bombed and became a target as we lived through the bloody years of the so-called "war on drugs".

Deputy prime minister says politicians know 'war on drugs' is failing and prime minister must show courage over issue

Divisions between David Cameron and Nick Clegg over Britain's "war on drugs" emerged on Friday after the Liberal Democrat leader said that current policy was not working and accused politicians of "a conspiracy of silence".

The Drug Equality Alliance has made multiple submissions to this inquiry from the outset; we have sought to demand a re-think about the errors of law within the terms of reference to the inquiry, but we have been almost entirely ignored (except footnote 27). The report thus fails to take note of these essential pervasive criticisms that subsumed the whole inquiry with various meaningless concepts. The failure of the HASC and key witnesses to address the proper issues, preferring to partake in the charade of debating the straw man argument about the merits of de-criminalisation / legalisation of drugs led directly to the derisory government response:

Since 2006, the Mexican government has undertaken a US-backed crackdown on drug cartels. Estimates suggest that around 60,000 people have been murdered, and the number of deaths is still rising.

At the same time, in countries like Britain, we're buying more and more of the drugs that flow through Mexico. Our prohibition approach has failed to stop drug use, and it puts money in the hands of narco-terrorists and international criminals.

The former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has admitted the change in the legal status of cannabis she introduced caused “confusion and dissent”.

The politician, who resigned from the Cabinet in the wake of the expenses scandal and then lost her seat in the 2010 election, was criticised at the time by her own scientific advisers when she upgraded the legal status of the drug from class C to class B in 2009 — bringing in a tougher line against users and dealers.