Professor Peter Baume's opinion piece is excellent. It needs to be read by all Australians who want the current unsustainable drugs policy to be replaced with a new policy that delivers far better social and economic outcomes for Australia. This issue needs to be debated on ABC TV as well as in federal and state parliaments. It is a great pity that PM Gillard chose to stick with the status quo. It only shows that she is out of touch with policies that are adversely impacting on Australians across cultures and ages and can not support solutions that are presented to her in the form of the Australia21 Report.

The Australian Macedonian community has had its fair share of death of young people due to easy access to drugs in all major metro and regional centres. We have had enough of ineffective policies and the leaders who maintain the status quo.

Clearly and succinctly argued. This debate has been a long time coming, and Australia needs more of Foreign Minister Carr's good sense and less of PM Gillard's knee jerk denial.
Another telling development on this topic is being played out right now in Columbia. There, a Summit of the Americas is ending without a final joint declaration due to an impasse over inviting Cuba to the next one, Argentina's position on the Falkland's and the US's refusal to even talk about the drug wars that have so devastated the countries south of the Rio Grande.
In Mexico the War on Drugs has spawned the drug wars that are estimated to have cost just over 34,000 lives from the start of the drug war in December 2006 until the end of 2010. And that leaves the dead from one whole year uncounted.
Vietnam and heroine, Afghanistan and opium, Columbia and cocaine: Do they have a common denominator other than each hosting large contingents of US military personnel?

... Decriminalizing the use of illegal drugs is the thin end of the wedge for dealing with the social catastrophe of alcohol. That move will lead down a path of more strict controls on alcohol abuse as a consequence.

...Finally, the huge incidence of alcohol related crime will be dealt with in tandem with other social menaces stemming from abuse of illegal drugs: I am all for it.

Prohibition does not work! But it has created quite massive illegal international cartels and or organised crime, gangs and gang warfare, with their illegal firearms manufacture and or drive by shootings.
The war on drugs has been going on for decades at enormous cost in both lives and national treasure. Money that would be far better spent elsewhere! There is simply no justification; for treating a medical problem, with incarceration?
Portugal decriminalised most drugs years ago, with no obvious increase in usage. Anyone can buy a joint in almost any cafe in Holland. Abortion used to be illegal; but like any other unenforceable law was abandoned in favour of properly regulated outcomes and procedures performed by medically qualified personal, which resulted in far less loss of life or permanent harm.
The Taliban rely almost exclusively rely on the illegal drug market for all their funding. A legal market would allow it to be properly regulated and taxed. This would separate the Taliban and organised crime from their principle sources of funding, it would also reduce crime and prison populations by as much as 90%? We used to prohibit most gambling including 2 up. Again sanity prevailed and we eliminated most illegal SB bookmaking by providing alternative legal options. Trying to continue to control the use of so called party drugs like ecstasy, is a horse that has already bolted.
Legalising recreational drugs would at least allow them to be regulated, with purity requirements and properly licensed outlets, who in turn, could ensure they were sold with bottled water, to ensure that dehydration, the most common cause of death in this area, was avoided.
There is no valid argument that can be put for continuing a war that was already well and truly lost decades ago; and no matter how much money we throw at it, will only ever result in ever increasing loss of life; and, has already cost too many lives, many of them young and innocent. Rhrosty.

"We want our children to be safe, we do not want them mixing with criminals, we do not want them to acquire criminal records"

You don't achieve this by legalizing something that is illegal. It's a bit rich to argue that after 30 years of harm minimization the reason we still have a problem is 'not enough harm minimization'.

@Phillipic, Prof. Baume's argument is that we have not really tried harm minimisation, either in terms of resource allocation or policy commitment, and that our existing policy has failed.
As Rhrosty points out, it would seem that the only beneficiaries of prohibition have been the criminals, who are given a monopoly of supply, with the consequences of poor quality control (and consequently toxicity) of the drugs provided, and high prices (and consequent criminal acts of users to get the purchase price). Prohibition has affected the price and quality of drugs available, but has had a limited effect on the availability as such. If anything it has pushed people toward the more potent (and hence compact and illicitly transportable) drugs and away from the less hazardous wild-type marihuana. (Less hazardous due to lesser direct toxicity, less risk of contamination, and lower variabity of potency.)