China and Tibet

中国和西藏

Rejoice, damn you

欢庆，去你妈的

Mar 25th 2009 | BEIJING
From The Economist print edition

China prepares to mark a dangerous anniversary in Tibet, amid claims of thuggery last year

这是去年中国在西藏举行了一次危险的周年纪念活动，暴行充斥。

IT’S official: “Tibet has moved from darkness to light, poverty to affluence, dictatorship to democracy and seclusion to opening up.” So proclaims the notice at an exhibition in Beijing marking the 50th anniversary of Tibet’s “democratic reforms”. To celebrate, officials in Tibet have designated Saturday March 28th as Serf Liberation Day. Lest anyone not share the mood of rejoicing, security will be tightened, dissidents kept behind bars and foreigners firmly steered away from the region.

官方声称：”西藏已经从黑暗走向光明，从贫穷走向富足，从独裁走向民主，从与世隔绝走向开放。”这项声明来自在北京举行的西藏“民主改革”50周年展览会上。为了表示庆祝，西藏的官员将3月28日设定为解放日。为了防止有人不参与到这样的欢庆活动中来，安全措施被加强了，反对者被监禁在狱中，外国人坚决的避退出了这片区域。

With grim determination the authorities are trying to manufacture joy. The streets of Lhasa, Tibet's capital, have been bedecked with floral displays. The official media are replete with stories of happy Tibetans. In Beijing, the Tibet exhibition aims to show how the region has flourished since coming under Communist rule in 1959 after “centuries of slavery and suppression”. Pride of place goes to a diorama showing former serfs merrily chucking “feudal documents” into a crackling fire.

当权者以其令人不快的决心试图营造欢乐的气氛。西藏首都，拉萨街头被花朵装饰一新。官方的媒体充斥着对幸福西藏人的报道。在北京，西藏展目力图展示自1959年接受共产党统治后这一地区结束了“几个世纪的奴役和镇压”发展得繁荣昌盛。展览最为得意之处在于一副描绘了从前的农奴欢欣鼓舞的将“封建统治的凭证”投入到火中烧掉的透视画。

Chinese officials say 90% of more than 1m people living in Tibet were “serfs” until China dissolved the pro-Dalai Lama Tibetan government on March 28th 1959, and began handing out aristocratic and monastic land to farmers and nomads. The exhibition includes instruments supposedly used to torture serfs before the uprising was crushed. The Indian-based Tibetan government-in-exile calls China’s description of the brutality and abject poverty of Tibetan serfdom a “big lie”.

中国官方声称在1959年3月28日解散前达赖喇嘛西藏政府并将贵族和寺院占有的土地分发给农民和流浪真之前西藏的一千多万人中有90%的人是“农奴”。展览包括了在在暴动镇压前在想象中对农奴施以酷刑的器具。在印度建立的西藏流亡政府将中国对残酷和极度贫困的农奴制的形容称之为“一个大的谎言”。

Just in case, back in Lhasa, troops are still patrolling the streets following an outbreak of rioting in March last year. They are also on full alert across the Tibetan plateau amid fears that Tibetans might stage their own commemorations. Many associate March 1959 not with liberation but with Tibet’s failed uprising against China and the flight of the Dalai Lama to India. Dozens of Tibetan monks have been detained in Ragya, a remote town in neighbouring Qinghai province, after violent protests there on March 21st triggered by the disappearance of a colleague who had raised a pro-independence flag.

在拉萨，为以防万一，自去年三月发生的暴动以来军队一直维持巡街。他们同样对西藏平原保持高度警惕，唯恐西藏人举行自己的纪念活动。许多人并不把1959年三月的事件同解放相联系，而是西藏对抗中国起义的失败和达赖喇嘛抗争出走印度的失败。在武装抗争被一位举旗后消失不见的同僚挑起后几十个西藏的僧侣被扣押在青海省一个僻远的小镇Ragya里。

As the anniversary approaches, China is in no mood to take chances. Alarmed by last year’s widespread unrest in Tibetan-inhabited areas, the government is waging offensives on all fronts. Chinese pressure prompted the South African government to deny a visa to the Dalai Lama who had been due to take part in a conference of fellow Nobel peace prize winners in Johannesburg. The organisers—South Africa’s football authorities—responded by postponing the event indefinitely.

当周年纪念来临之际，中国无意去冒险。受到去年在藏民居住地广泛传播的动荡的警示，政府与各方面的进攻势力斗争。中国强迫南非政府拒签达赖喇嘛为的是使达赖不能出席在Johannesburg举行的诺贝尔奖获得者集会。举办者-南非足球部门-答复将这一事件无限期推延。

YouTube, an internet video-sharing site, also looks like a possible victim. Access to it has been blocked in China since shortly after the Tibetan government-in-exile released video (see the image above) purporting to show Tibetan protesters being beaten by Chinese police. No such slur is permitted in Beijing. Officials say that the images and voices in the video were pieced together from a variety of sources, and thus it is “a lie”. The cause of human rights in Tibet, says an exhibition brochure, has made “remarkable progress”.

YouTube，一个英特网视频共享网站，同样被视为一个潜在的危害。在西藏流亡政府发布了一个关于西藏抗议者被中国警察殴打的视频后立刻被屏蔽。在北京这样的诋毁是不允许的。官方声称视频中的图像和声音是从许多地方截取并拼接在一起的，因此这是“一个谎言”。在一本展览会的小册子中这样提到，西藏人权已经有了”显著进步“。

The new world order

世界新次序
How China sees the world

中国怎么看世界
Mar 19th 2009
From The Economist print edition
And how the world should see China

与此同时，世界应当怎样看待中国
IT IS an ill wind that blows no one any good. For many in China even the buffeting by the gale that has
hit the global economy has a bracing message. The rise of China over the past three decades has been
astonishing. But it has lacked the one feature it needed fully to satisfy the ultranationalist fringe: an
accompanying decline of the West. Now capitalism is in a funk in its heartlands. Europe and Japan,
embroiled in the deepest post-war recession, are barely worth consideration as rivals. America, the
superpower, has passed its peak. Although in public China’s leaders eschew triumphalism, there is a
sense in Beijing that the reassertion of the Middle Kingdom’s global ascendancy is at hand (see article).

这是一阵让任何人都感到不适的恶风。在中国许多被这伤及全球经济的风暴所撼动的人得到一个鼓舞人心的消息。中国在过去三十年的崛起令人惊讶。但是它缺乏一个很必须的特征去满足民族极端主义：与西方世界相伴的衰退。现在资本主义在它的核心地带感到畏缩害怕。被卷入最深的战前危机欧洲和日本，勉强有价值被称为竞争对手。拥有超级实力的美国已经过了它的顶峰。尽管在公众面前中国领导人避免去提到中国必胜，但在北京能感受到中华帝国再掌全球霸权的主张。
China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, no longer sticks to the script that China is a humble player in world
affairs that wants to focus on its own economic development. He talks of China as a “great power” and
worries about America’s profligate spending endangering his $1 trillion nest egg there. Incautious
remarks by the new American treasury secretary about China manipulating its currency were dismissed
as ridiculous; a duly penitent Hillary Clinton was welcomed in Beijing, but as an equal. This month saw an
apparent attempt to engineer a low-level naval confrontation with an American spy ship in the South
China Sea. Yet at least the Americans get noticed. Europe, that speck on the horizon, is ignored: an EU
summit was cancelled and France is still blacklisted because Nicolas Sarkozy dared to meet the Dalai
Lama.

中国国家总理温家宝不再坚持中国并不擅长世界事务而仅仅只注重于自己的经济发展。他现在称中国为“强国”并担心美国花销太大会危及他在那一万亿的储备金。新的美国财政部部长无意的提及的中国已经解除对货币操纵的言论被认为是荒谬的；有些悔过的希拉里克林顿被欢迎到北京去，但是是作为对手的身份。在本月中国明显策划了一起在中国南海区域与美国间谍船的低等级海军军事对抗。这至少引起了美国的关注。欧洲，地平线上的斑点，被忽略了：一次欧盟高级会议被取消，并且法国因为尼古拉斯萨科奇大胆访问达赖喇嘛仍在黑名单之列。

Already a big idea has spread far beyond China: that geopolitics is now a bipolar affair, with America and
China the only two that matter. Thus in London next month the real business will not be the G20 meeting
but the “G2” summit between Presidents Barack Obama and Hu Jintao. This not only worries the
Europeans, who, having got rid of George Bush’s unipolar politics, have no wish to see it replaced by a
Pacific duopoly, and the Japanese, who have long been paranoid about their rivals in Asia. It also seems
to be having an effect in Washington, where Congress’s fascination with America’s nearest rival risks
acquiring a protectionist edge.

现在一个伟大的构想已经在遥远的中国传播开来：地缘政治现在已经两极化，只有美国和中国。因此下月在伦敦真正的交易将不是20国既集团会议而是而是胡锦涛和奥巴马的两人高级会议。这不仅让对布什的单极主义做好准备的欧洲感到担忧，他们不愿看到单极主义的政策被一个横越太平洋的双头寡头所取代，同样担忧的还有长期对它在亚洲的对手持有妄想态度的日本。这似乎对华盛顿也产生影响，在那里议会着迷于与美国实力接近的竞争对手要冒着遭受贸易保护主意的风险。
Reds under the bed

床下的赤色革命
Before panic spreads, it is worth noting that China’s new assertiveness reflects weakness as well as
strength. This remains a poor country facing, in Mr Wen’s words, its most difficult year of the new
century. The latest wild guess at how many jobs have already been lost—20m—hints at the scale of the
problem. The World Bank has cut its forecast for China’s growth this year to 6.5%. That is robust
compared with almost anywhere else, but to many Chinese, used to double-digit rates, it will feel like a
recession. Already there are tens of thousands of protests each year: from those robbed of their land for
development; from laid-off workers; from those suffering the side-effects of environmental despoliation.

在恐慌传播之前，值得一提的是中国新的自信在表现出其力量的同时也显示出了它的弱点。在温总理的话语中中国依然是一个贫穷的国家并且面对着新世纪以来最困难的一年。最新的对中国工作情况的猜测表明有两千万的岗位被缩减，这暗示中国目前问题的级别。世界银行已经将中国今年的经济增长预测调低到6.5%与大部分其他地区相比这是一个强健的增长，但对增长速度通常处于两位数的许多中国人来说，这感觉像是一个衰退。每年都会出现数以万计的抗议：来自土地被强征用作开发的人们，来自被解雇的工人，来自遭受环境受到掠夺后副作用的人们。
Even if China magically achieves its official 8% target, the grievances will worsen.
Far from oozing self-confidence, China is witnessing a fierce debate both about its economic system and
the sort of great power it wants to be—and it is a debate the government does not like. This year the
regime curtailed even the perfunctory annual meeting of its parliament, the National People’s Congress
(NPC), preferring to confine discussion to back-rooms and obscure internet forums. Liberals calling for
greater openness are being dealt with in the time-honoured repressive fashion. But China’s leaders also
face rumblings of discontent from leftist nationalists, who see the downturn as a chance to halt marketoriented
reforms at home, and for China to assert itself more stridently abroad. An angry China can veer
into xenophobia, but not all the nationalist left’s causes are so dangerous: one is for the better public
services and social-safety net the country sorely needs.

即使中国奇迹般的达到了官方宣称的8%的经济增长率，抱怨和不满将变本加厉。在显露出的自信的另一端，中国正经历着一场激烈的关于其经济系统和它应具备何种力量的讨论，这种讨论是政府不喜看到的。今年政府甚至简化了它敷衍草率的年度会议，十七届全国人民代表大会，将讨论限制在密室进行，并互联网论坛的讨论含糊对待。呼吁开放透明的自由主义者被处以一种由来已久的镇压的方式。但中国的领导人同样面对了来自左翼民族主义者的大量不满，他们视目前的经济低迷期为停止对内自由市场化改革并对外显示中国强硬的机会。一个愤怒的中国会变得仇视外国，但并不是所有的左翼民族主义者都这么危险：一项建议是建立更好的公共服务和这个国家强烈需要的社会安全网。
So China is in a more precarious situation than many Westerners think. The world is not bipolar and may
never become so. The EU, for all its faults, is the world’s biggest economy. India’s population will
overtake China’s. But that does not obscure the fact that China’s relative power is plainly growing—and
both the West and China itself need to adjust to this.

所以很多西方人认为中国处于一个不稳定的状况。世界不是两极的，并且永远也不会是。欧盟，尽管有缺点，是世界上最大的经济体。印度的人口将会超过中国。但中国相对力量明显增长的事实不容忽视,西方和中国自己都需要去适应这一点。
For Mr Obama, this means pulling off a difficult balancing act. In the longer term, if he has not managed
to seduce China (and for that matter India and Brazil) more firmly into the liberal multilateral system by
the time he leaves office, then historians may judge him a failure. In the short term he needs to hold
China to its promises and to scold it for its lapses: Mrs Clinton should have taken it to task over Tibet and
human rights when she was there. The Bush administration made much of the idea of welcoming China
as a “responsible stakeholder” in the international system. The G20 is a chance to give China a bigger
stake in global decision-making than was available in the small clubs of the G7 and G8. But it is also a
chance for China to show it can exercise its new influence responsibly.

对奥巴马而言，这意味着要努力实现一个困难的平衡。在更长的一段时间里，如果他离任之前没能诱使中国（同样还有印度和巴西）坚定地加入自由多边主义，历史将判定他是个失败者。短期内他需要让中国信守诺言同时责备它的过失，克林顿夫人应当已经将西藏和人权问题排入她的中国行程任务里。布什政府为将中国作为一个“责任重大的利益相关者”迎入国际系统做出了许多努力。20国峰是一个给中国下更大赌注的机会，让中国参与比G7或G8那样的小俱乐部做出的更为有用的全球决议。但它同样也是一个中国展示它能负责任的行使它的新影响力的机会。

The bill for the great Chinese takeaway

中式外卖的账单
China’s record as a citizen of the world is strikingly threadbare. On a host of issues from Iran to Sudan, it
has used its main geopolitical asset, its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, to
obstruct progress, hiding behind the excuse that it does not want to intervene in other countries’ affairs.
That, sadly, will take time to change. But on the more immediate issue at hand, the world economy,
there is room for action.

中国最为世界成员的记录是显目的不堪。在从伊朗到苏丹的一系列争端中，中国运用它主要的地缘政治资本，在联合国安全理事会的议席，躲在它不想干涉别国事态的理由后面阻碍解决进程。这一点，很悲哀，当然需要时间去改变。但在当前更为迫切的问题上，世界经济，中国有更多的空间去行动。
Over the past quarter-century no country has gained more from globalisation than China. Hundreds of
millions of its people have been dragged out of subsistence into the middle class. China has been a
grumpy taker in this process. It helped derail the latest round of world trade talks. The G20 meeting
offers it a chance to show a change of heart. In particular, it is being asked to bolster the IMF’s resources
so that the fund can rescue crisis-hit countries in places like eastern Europe. Some in Beijing would
prefer to ignore the IMF, since it might help ex-communist countries that have developed “an anti-China
mentality”. Rising above such cavilling and paying up would be a small step in itself. But it would be a
sign that the Middle Kingdom has understood what it is to be a great power.

在过去的四分之一个世纪里，没有国家比中国在全球化的进程中得到更多的好处。它数亿的人民从仅能生存的状态进入到中产阶级。中国在全球化的过程中是一个坏脾气的索取者。它让最新一轮的全球贸易和谈泡了汤。20国峰会给了中国一个从心改变的机会。尤其是它被要求支援国际货币基金组织，以便基金能拯救那些被危机所伤及的西欧国家。北京的一些人可能会忽视世界基金组织，因为它可能会用于帮助前共产主义国家会助长“反华力量”。 超越这样的看法并为世界基金组织付清款项对中国来说将只是一小步。但这将成为一个中华帝国已经明白如何做一个世界强国的标志。

How to stop the drug wars

如何停止毒品战争
Mar 5th 2009
From The Economist print edition
Prohibition has failed; legalisation is the least bad solution

禁令的方式失败了，立法成了最后也是最不坏的解决方式
A HUNDRED years ago a group of foreign diplomats gathered in Shanghai for the first-ever international
effort to ban trade in a narcotic drug. On February 26th 1909 they agreed to set up the International
Opium Commission—just a few decades after Britain had fought a war with China to assert its right to
peddle the stuff. Many other bans of mood-altering drugs have followed. In 1998 the UN General
Assembly committed member countries to achieving a “drug-free world” and to “eliminating or
significantly reducing” the production of opium, cocaine and cannabis by 2008.

在一百年前，一群外交家聚集在上海为禁运尼古拉做出着史无前例的国际性努力。在1909年2月26日他们同意建立一个国际鸦片委员会-仅仅在中英鸦片战争过去几十年后。许多其它针对改变情绪药物（如吗啡）的禁令也随之颁布。在1998年联合国委员会成员国达成了一项关于在2008年实现“无毒世界”和“停止或显著减少”鸦片，可卡因和大麻的生产。
That  is the kind of promise politicians love to make. It assuages the sense of moral panic that has been
the handmaiden of prohibition for a century. It is intended to reassure the parents of teenagers across the world. Yet it is a hugely irresponsible promise, because it cannot be fulfilled. Next week ministers from around the world gather in Vienna to set international drug policy for the next decade. Like first-world-war generals, many will claim that all that is needed is more of the same. In fact the war on drugs has been a disaster, creating failed states in the developing world even as addiction has flourished in the rich world. By any sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal,murderous and pointless. That is why The Economist continues to believe that the least bad policy is to legalise drugs.

这是一种政治家乐意做出的承诺。它缓和了与禁令伴随长达一个世纪的道德恐慌感。它意在打消全世界范围内青少年父母的顾虑。然而这是一个相当不负责任的承诺，因为它不能可实现。下周来自世界各地的部长们将聚集在维也纳为下一个十年制定世界毒品政策。就像一战时出生的那一代人一样，许多人会宣称所需的只是对原有的重复。事实上有关于毒品的战争已经演变成一场灾难，正如毒品在富裕国家里吸食成瘾，第三世界有的国家也因此而衰落。从任何明智的角度来看，这100年来的斗争都是很狭隘，残忍和无意义的。这就是为什么经济学家一直相信合法化毒品是最不糟糕的政策。

“Least bad” does not mean good. Legalisation, though clearly better for producer countries, would bring
(different) risks to consumer countries. As we outline below, many vulnerable drug-takers would suffer.
But in our view, more would gain.

“最不坏”并不意味着好。合法化，这当然很明显的对生产国有好处，它将带给消费国（不同的）风险。就像我们下面概括的，许多脆弱的毒品接受者将受到损害。但在我们的观点中，更多人将因此收益。
The evidence of failure

失败的证据
Nowadays the UN Office on Drugs and Crime no longer talks about a drug-free world. Its boast is that the
drug market has “stabilised”, meaning that more than 200m people, or almost 5% of the world’s adult
population, still take illegal drugs—roughly the same proportion as a decade ago. (Like most purported
drug facts, this one is just an educated guess: evidential rigour is another casualty of illegality.) The
production of cocaine and opium is probably about the same as it was a decade ago; that of cannabis is
higher. Consumption of cocaine has declined gradually in the United States from its peak in the early
1980s, but the path is uneven (it remains higher than in the mid-1990s), and it is rising in many places,
including Europe.

现在，联合国毒品和犯罪办公室不再谈论关于无毒世界的话题了。它们以毒品市场已经稳定为自豪，这意味着有多于两千万人，或者说世界上近5%的成年人口仍然在吸食非法毒品-和十年前的比例几乎一样。（像许多谣传的毒品事实，这个也仅仅是个个有根据的推测：准确的证明是另一项违法事故）。可卡因和鸦片的生产很可能和十年前一样；但大麻的产量变高了。可卡因的消耗量在美国正从80年代早期的最高峰逐年递减，但道路是不平坦的（在90年代中期消耗量依然很高），并且在许多地区这个数字在增加，包括欧洲。

This is not for want of effort. The United States alone spends some $40 billion each year on trying to
eliminate the supply of drugs. It arrests 1.5m of its citizens each year for drug offences, locking up half a
million of them; tougher drug laws are the main reason why one in five black American men spend some
time behind bars. In the developing world blood is being shed at an astonishing rate. In Mexico more
than 800 policemen and soldiers have been killed since December 2006 (and the annual overall death toll
is running at over 6,000). This week yet another leader of a troubled drug-ridden country—Guinea
Bissau—was assassinated.

这不是因为缺少努力的愿望。美国每年单独花费400亿试图消除毒品供应。它每年因毒品犯罪逮捕150万美国国民，关押50万人；严格的毒品法律是造成五分之一的美国黑人被关押在监狱的首要原因。在第三世界流血事件的发生处在一个惊人的比率。在墨西哥起至2006年十二月已有超过800个警察和士兵被杀。本周，另一个为毒品问题所困的国家几内亚比绍共和国领导人遇刺。
Yet prohibition itself vitiates the efforts of the drug warriors. The price of an illegal substance is
determined more by the cost of distribution than of production. Take cocaine: the mark-up between coca
field and consumer is more than a hundredfold. Even if dumping weedkiller on the crops of peasant
farmers quadruples the local price of coca leaves, this tends to have little impact on the street price,
which is set mainly by the risk of getting cocaine into Europe or the United States.

然而禁令本身也损害禁毒战争的效果。非法物品的价格更多的取决于销售成本而不是生产成本。就像可卡因：从种植地到消费者之间提价超过一百倍。即使将除草剂倾倒在个体农民的作物上让当地的古柯叶价格翻两番，这对可卡因的街价影响极小，因为街价主要取决于将可卡因运往欧洲和美国的风险。
Nowadays the drug warriors claim to seize close to half of all the cocaine that is produced. The street
price in the United States does seem to have risen, and the purity seems to have fallen, over the past
year. But it is not clear that drug demand drops when prices rise. On the other hand, there is plenty of
evidence that the drug business quickly adapts to market disruption. At best, effective repression merely
forces it to shift production sites. Thus opium has moved from Turkey and Thailand to Myanmar and
southern Afghanistan, where it undermines the West’s efforts to defeat the Taliban.

现在禁毒战士们要求减少一半的可卡因生产。去年一年，美国的街边价格有所上升，毒品的纯度有所降低。在另一方面，有大量证据证明毒品生意能很快适应市场的混乱。最多，有效的镇压也不过强迫毒品更换产地生产。因此，鸦片的产地土耳其和泰国转移到缅甸和阿富汗，在那里它破坏着西方世界对抗塔利班的努力。
Al Capone, but on a global scale

一个世界级的AI Capone（一个有名的芝加哥钱财诈骗犯)
Indeed, far from reducing crime, prohibition has fostered gangsterism on a scale that the world has never
seen before. According to the UN’s perhaps inflated estimate, the illegal drug industry is worth some
$320 billion a year. In the West it makes criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens (the current
American president could easily have ended up in prison for his youthful experiments with “blow”). It also
makes drugs more dangerous: addicts buy heavily adulterated cocaine and heroin; many use dirty
needles to inject themselves, spreading HIV; the wretches who succumb to “crack” or “meth” are outside
the law, with only their pushers to “treat” them. But it is countries in the emerging world that pay most
of the price. Even a relatively developed democracy such as Mexico now finds itself in a life-or-death
struggle against gangsters. American officials, including a former drug tsar, have publicly worried about
having a “narco state” as their neighbour.

的确，不同于减少犯罪，禁令造就了前所未有的世界级的犯罪规模。依照联合国可能夸大的估计，非法的毒品产业每年大约价值32亿美元。在西方它造成了其他的守法居民的犯罪（现在的美国总统能够以他年轻的经验简单的把监狱关闭）。禁令同样使毒品变得更加危险：上瘾者买来大量掺入次品的可卡因和海洛因；许多人使用肮脏的针管向自己注射，传播艾滋病；这些屈服于“快克”和”甲安非它明”的不幸人们超出法律范围之外，只有他们的推动者去“管”他们。但是其实是新兴世界国家支付了大部分的价格。即使是一个相对发展的民主政治像墨西哥，现在也发现在对待犯罪分子方面也处在一个与生死斗争的境地。美国的官员，包括前毒品部长也有公开的对要像他们邻居一样“充斥缉毒刑警的情形”的担忧。
The failure of the drug war has led a few of its braver generals, especially from Europe and Latin
America, to suggest shifting the focus from locking up people to public health and “harm reduction” (such
as encouraging addicts to use clean needles). This approach would put more emphasis on public
education and the treatment of addicts, and less on the harassment of peasants who grow coca and the
punishment of consumers of “soft” drugs for personal use. That would be a step in the right direction. But
it is unlikely to be adequately funded, and it does nothing to take organised crime out of the picture.
Legalisation would not only drive away the gangsters; it would transform drugs from a law-and-order
problem into a public-health problem, which is how they ought to be treated. Governments would tax
and regulate the drug trade, and use the funds raised (and the billions saved on law-enforcement) to
educate the public about the risks of drug-taking and to treat addiction. The sale of drugs to minors
should remain banned. Different drugs would command different levels of taxation and regulation. This
system would be fiddly and imperfect, requiring constant monitoring and hard-to-measure trade-offs.
Post-tax prices should be set at a level that would strike a balance between damping down use on the
one hand, and discouraging a black market and the desperate acts of theft and prostitution to which
addicts now resort to feed their habits.

毒品之战的失败使得一些勇敢的人们，特别是来自欧洲和拉丁美洲的人们，建议将关注点从关押转向公共健康和“减少伤害”（类似鼓励上瘾者使用干净的针头）。这种方法更强调公众教育和对待上瘾者的方式，而不是对种植古柯的农民的折磨以及对个人使用“软”毒品的消费者的惩罚。那将向正确的方向迈向一步。但是这未必能得到充分的资助，并且它对消除有组织的犯罪没有起到任何作用。合法化不仅可以驱逐犯罪分子；它同样可以将毒品问题从一个法律和次序问题转换成一个公共健康问题，这才是他们应该去做的。政府将能规范毒品交易并对其征税，同时使用基金（和从减少法律强制手段中省下的数千万美元）去教育公众吸毒的危害以及治疗上瘾者。对未成年人出售毒品的行为仍然应被禁止。不同的毒品将征取不同等级的税务采取不同的税收条例。这一系统将是高精度的和不完美的，需要持续不变的监管和难以衡量的贸易换算。税后的价格应当被设立在一个能在抑制使用和防止黑市产生间产生一个平衡并让以卖淫和偷窃满足毒瘾的瘾君子绝望。
Selling even this flawed system to people in producer countries, where organised crime is the central
political issue, is fairly easy. The tough part comes in the consumer countries, where addiction is the
main political battle. Plenty of American parents might accept that legalisation would be the right answer
for the people of Latin America, Asia and Africa; they might even see its usefulness in the fight against
terrorism. But their immediate fear would be for their own children.

甚至可以将这套系统推销给生产过的人们也相当的容易，因为在那里组织性的犯罪是最中心的政治问题。最大的阻碍来自消费国，那里上瘾者是政治斗争的主要力量。大量的美国父母可能会认同说立法的方式对拉丁美洲亚洲和非洲的人们来说会是一个好的选择，他们甚至看到它在抗击恐怖主义方面的有效性。但他们想到自己的孩子时立刻会感到害怕。

That fear is based in large part on the presumption that more people would take drugs under a legal
regime. That presumption may be wrong. There is no correlation between the harshness of drug laws and
the incidence of drug-taking: citizens living under tough regimes (notably America but also Britain) take
more drugs, not fewer. Embarrassed drug warriors blame this on alleged cultural differences, but even in
fairly similar countries tough rules make little difference to the number of addicts: harsh Sweden and
more liberal Norway have precisely the same addiction rates. Legalisation might reduce both supply
(pushers by definition push) and demand (part of that dangerous thrill would go). Nobody knows for
certain. But it is hard to argue that sales of any product that is made cheaper, safer and more widely
available would fall. Any honest proponent of legalisation would be wise to assume that drug-taking as a
whole would rise.

这一恐惧是极大地基于更多的人将通过合法的渠道得到毒品这样一个假定。这一假定可能是错的。在严酷的毒品之战和吸毒的影响之间没有任何关联。暴政下的人民（尤其是美国，英国也同样）吸食更多的毒品，而不是更少。财政困难的禁毒者将这个归结于文化的难题，但即使在及其类似的国家里严格的规定对吸毒者的数量没有造成丝毫的影响：严酷的瑞典和比较自由的挪威有几乎相同的上瘾者比率。立法可能同时减少供（经定义的贩卖者）需（部分危险的追求兴奋者会消失）双方。没有人能对此确定。但也很难说任何产品只要制造成本更低，更安全，更容易获得，它的销售量就会降低。任何正值的立法支持者都能有理智的推断整体而言吸毒者的数量将会上升。
There are two main reasons for arguing that prohibition should be scrapped all the same. The first is one
of liberal principle. Although some illegal drugs are extremely dangerous to some people, most are not
especially harmful. (Tobacco is more addictive than virtually all of them.) Most consumers of illegal
drugs, including cocaine and even heroin, take them only occasionally. They do so because they derive
enjoyment from them (as they do from whisky or a Marlboro Light). It is not the state’s job to stop them
from doing so.

这里仍然有两个主要理由去说明禁令应当被废除。首先是自由原则。尽管非法的毒品对某些人来说极度的危险，但大部分不是那么极端的有害（事实上烟草比它们中的所有都容易上瘾）。大部分非法毒品的消费者，包括可卡因甚至海洛因，仅仅是偶然吸食。他们这么做的原因是他们从中得到快乐（就像他们喝威士忌和抽万宝路一样）。制止他们这样的行为并不是政府的职责所在。
What about addiction? That is partly covered by this first argument, as the harm involved is primarily
visited upon the user. But addiction can also inflict misery on the families and especially the children of
any addict, and involves wider social costs. That is why discouraging and treating addiction should be the
priority for drug policy. Hence the second argument: legalisation offers the opportunity to deal with
addiction properly.

那么上瘾者又怎么样呢？第一个论证在一定程度上已经说明了这一点，伤害的大小主要取决于使用者。但上瘾同样使家庭遭受痛苦特别是上瘾者的子女，包括更广泛的社会成本。这就是为什么阻止上瘾和处理上瘾应当是毒品警察的首要任务。因此第二项论证时：合法化为处理上瘾提供适当的机会。
By providing honest information about the health risks of different drugs, and pricing them accordingly,
governments could steer consumers towards the least harmful ones. Prohibition has failed to prevent the
proliferation of designer drugs, dreamed up in laboratories. Legalisation might encourage legitimate drug
companies to try to improve the stuff that people take. The resources gained from tax and saved on
repression would allow governments to guarantee treatment to addicts—a way of making legalisation
more politically palatable. The success of developed countries in stopping people smoking tobacco, which
is similarly subject to tax and regulation, provides grounds for hope.

通过提供毒品对健康危害的真实信息，并相应定价，政府将引导消费者使用害处最小的产品。禁令在应对实验室任意研制毒品的种类暴涨这方面已经失效。立法可能会促使合法的毒品公司试图去改进毒品原料。从税收中以及从镇压行动中省下的资源将能保证政府对上瘾的治疗-这是一条使得法制化更加公平合理的道路。在发展中国家制止人们吸烟的成功也是使用类似税收和控制的方式，有理由给我们以希望。
A calculated gamble, or another century of failure?

一次精确计算的赌博，还是另一个世纪的失败？
This newspaper first argued for legalisation 20 years ago (see article). Reviewing the evidence again (see
article), prohibition seems even more harmful, especially for the poor and weak of the world. Legalisation
would not drive gangsters completely out of drugs; as with alcohol and cigarettes, there would be taxes
to avoid and rules to subvert. Nor would it automatically cure failed states like Afghanistan. Our solution
is a messy one; but a century of manifest failure argues for trying it.

这份报纸在20年前首次讨论了合法化的问题。回顾那些证据，禁令似乎害处更大，特别是对世界上贫穷和弱小的国家。合法化不可能完全消除毒品犯罪：就像烟酒犯罪一样，将会出现避免征税和破坏规则。不仅仅会自动的帮助困境的国家像阿富汗。我们解决方式并不好，但已经一个世纪的失败告诉我们值得一试。