The Prohibition Project

Addiction, Corruption, Organised Crime, Agency-overreach (ACOG) – the fall out from prohibition has been the biggest avoidable threat to political stability and the growth of good governance across the globe. It has been a leading contributor to avoidable deaths, environmental degradation and the corrosion of civil liberties. Unlike many other factors Prohibition is construed entirely from noble intentions, the desire to protect the world from the danger and moral peril of addiction as laid out in the preamble to the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs promulgated by the United Nations. The project, for this is what it should best be seen as, has embedded itself into the sinews of global governance. If the vision of a drug free world were the well intended stones with which the road to prohibition-perdition was paved, it is here where the demolition must begin. For progress to be made prohibition must first be stood in the entire banality of its evil. It is construed entirely from a web of overlapping strings of self interest shared by government officials, security services, criminals, policy makers and entire professions, while the costs are literally borne by the entire population.

The Prohibition-Perdition project is an effort to identify some of the key drivers behind the extension of the prohibition system. It is planning to conduct detailed analysis of prohibition advocacy, the language used and arguments marshalled in the polemics of repression, and identify the material the self interests of the major parties pushing for it.

Findings will be disseminated inter alia on this platform and in virtual conferences in the latter part of 2025.