RT

Hollywood heartthrob Brad Pitt called on the US government to rethink its 40-year ‘War on Drugs’ policies, saying it “makes no sense.” The 48-year-old movie star addressed the issue while promoting a documentary he produced, just released in the US.

The ‘Fight Club’ star was executive producer of Eugene Jarecki’s ‘The House I Live In,’ which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

Before a Los Angeles screening of the film, Pitt gave his take on the America’s drug policy that, according to the documentary, has cost more than $1 trillion and resulted in over 45 million arrests since 1971. US drug policy affects mostly poor and minority communities, and has made America the world’s largest jailer.

The documentary also examines how political and economic corruption have fueled these policies for decades, “despite persistent evidence of its moral, economic, and practical failures.”

Filmed in more than 20 states, ‘The House I Live In’ shows the perspectives of multiple victims and perpetrators of the War on Drugs, from the dealer to the grieving mother, the narcotics officer to the senator, the inmate to the federal judge.

“I know people are suffering because of it. I know I’ve lived a very privileged life in comparison and I can’t stand for it,”Pitt told Reuters, calling US drug policy a “charade.”

“It’s such bad strategy. It makes no sense. It perpetuates itself. You make a bust, you drive up profit, which makes more people want to get into it,” he said. ”To me, there’s no question; we have to rethink this policy and we have to rethink it now.”

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Readers Comments (1)

1. fragileswan says:

   November 2, 2012 at 2:54 pm

   It doesn’t require much thought to figure out that most preventable drug deaths are the result prescription-drug abuse, a war also fought by the US Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).

   Also, as can be seen in the middle east, drug lords use profits to finance violence against Americans. The entire nation of Afghanistan exists only to grow opium and cannibus, for the manufacture heroin and hashish destined for sale in the US black market.

   The war on drugs deprives international drug-production and distribution rackets of financial resources needed to slaughter the innocent and to terrorize the world.

   Legalizing drugs leads to worse problems than banning them, because the costs associated to drug abuse pervade and multiply within a society.

   Government is ultimately pressed to set standards for price, purity and availability, and must oversee production, and distribution of dangerous drugs to the citizens they govern.

   Nothing could present a larger conflict of interest than supplying dangerous drugs meant for abuse, AND law-enforcement services to the general public.

   It’s kind of like government lighting houses on fire and then calling on fire departments to put out the flames.