 A drug-free world, we can do it. This was the slogan of the United Nations Drug Summit in 1998, where governments adopted an action plan to eliminate or significantly reduce drug use and drug trafficking. Many world leaders still believe that they can get rid of drugs once and for all. But history teaches us another lesson. In this video, we will present you five arguments why the pursuit of a drug-free world is not only an utter failure, but a harmful experience for humankind. First, drug prohibition simply doesn't work. Although it is estimated that $100 billion are spent on drug law enforcement every year, we could not eliminate or even significantly reduce drug use and drug trafficking. According to an explanation given by the experts of the London School of Economics, in a world with constant demand for drugs, the harder you try to suppress the supply, the more lucrative you make the market for criminals. Second, drug prohibition creates a huge black market, the size of which is estimated to be $300 billion every year. This is the single largest illicit markets on earth and reaching criminal organizations that are responsible for growing violence across the world. In Mexico, for example, where the government declared a war on drugs in 2006, tens of thousands of innocent people were killed. In some Central American countries, where the murder rate is the highest on earth, illicit drug trafficking is a major factor behind violence. Money generated by illicit drug trafficking is laundered by big banks, increasing inflation and weakening economies. Third, the global war on drugs undermines development and fuel civil wars. Warlords, insurrectionists and terrorist groups are funded by illicit opiate production in Afghanistan and Myanmar. Gary Lassen paramilitary groups profit from illicit cocaine production in Latin America. Cocaine is often smuggled to Europe through West Africa, where poor countries are turned into narco-states. Aggressive eradication campaigns could not eliminate drug cultivation in producer countries, but they take away the livelihood of farmers and contribute to deforestation and pollution. Fourth, the global war on drugs leads to human rights violations. 1,000 people are executed every year for drug related charges in the world. 500,000 people are detained in so-called rehabilitation centers in Southeast Asia, where they are often abused in the name of treatment. The war on drugs fuels mass incarceration in many countries. For example, the United States has 5% of the global population, but 25% of the global prison population. Negative consequences always fall the heaviest on minorities. Afro-American men in the US are sent to prison for drug charges 13 times the rate of white men. Fifth, criminalization and repression threatens public health and pushes people use drugs to take more risks. The black market generates ever more potent and risky substances often cut with contaminants, encouraging high risk behaviors in unsupervised and unhygienic environments. As a result, Americans are now more likely to die of a drug overdose than in a car accident. Outside of Sub-Saharan Africa, the sharing of injecting equipment accounts for one-third of new HIV infections. Criminalization undermines efforts to stop the epidemic. Some people think the idea of a drug-free world is a nice dream, like a world peace, but they are wrong. This dream turned to be a nightmare. The leaders of the world must quit their dangerous dependence on repression. But what are the alternatives? We will explore them in the next episodes of the Just Say No series. Please share this video with your friends. Stay with us, follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook.