DAILY BEAST: Sam Branson needs a Coke. Diet won’t do. “I need the sugar,” he says. It’s the morning after the world premiere of Breaking the Taboo, a documentary released by his production company Sundog Pictures, and the 26-year-old son of Virgin mogul Richard Branson is bracing for his first real press tour. Last night the film—a potent chronicle of the rise, failures, and future remedies for the war on drugs—debuted at Google headquarters in Manhattan, and he didn’t even go out celebrating, preferring to get some rest and review his case against the global drug war.
It’s not only his case, of course. It’s the case of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, whose membership includes former presidents of Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Brazil and Poland, along with Richard Branson, who tells The Daily Beast that it’s time for President Obama to get moving on reform.
“If he wants to do something that would be perfectly acceptable on a national basis, he should announce immediately that we’re going to treat drugs as a health problem, not a criminal problem,” the elder Branson says by phone, and “nobody will go to prison ever again for taking drugs.” That’s also the case of Morgan Freeman, who spell-bindingly narrates the film, which is based on more than 175 interviews in eight countries. The conclusion, according to this chorus: “the global drug war is the biggest failure of global policy in the last 40 years.”… (more)
