The war on drugs has brought only casualties

[namkha]

The war on drugs has brought only casualties |

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/28/war-on-drugs-no-victory

Danny Kushlick

28th June 2012

After 50 years of the enforcement-led international drug control system, the war on drugs is coming under unparalleled scrutiny. Its goal was to create a "drug-free world". Instead, despite more than a trillion dollars spent fighting the war, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), illegal drugs are used by an estimated 270 million people, and organised crime profits from a trade with an estimated turnover of over $330bn a year – the world's largest illegal commodity market. In fact, most indicators suggest drugs are cheaper and more available than ever.

But beyond this failure, the UNODC now acknowledges that choosing an enforcement-based approach is having a range of major negative "unintended consequences", including: creating a vast criminal market, displacing the illegal drugs trade to new areas and new drugs, diverting funding from health and stigmatising users.

The UNODC is right about this. As well as prohibiting production, supply and use of some drugs for non-medical purposes, the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs also regulates production, supply and use of many of the same drugs for medical purposes. Half the world's opium is legally grown for this medical market, but with few if any of the negative consequences that we see in the equivalent prohibited market.

It is, however, unacceptable that neither the UN nor its member governments have meaningfully assessed these unintended consequences to establish whether they outweigh the intended consequences of the current system. The Alternative World Drug Report, a publication from the Count the Costs initiative, co-ordinated by Transform Drug Policy Foundation, for which I work, fills this gap. It details the full range of negative impacts resulting from choosing an enforcement-led approach. The report also describes the options for controlling drugs, including intensifying the war on drugs, maintaining the status quo, health-led approaches and legal state regulation and control.

It ends with a call on UN member states to count the costs of the war on drugs, and properly explore all alternatives that might deliver better outcomes – a call now backed by over 100 NGOs from across the globe.

This call is starting to have resonance worldwide. In April, the summit of the Organisation of American States (OAS), committed to conduct the first ever official review of all policy options in the region. During discussions, President Obama said: "I think it is entirely legitimate to have a conversation about whether the laws in place are ones that are doing more harm than good in certain places." He had earlier said that he considered legalisation an "entirely legitimate topic for debate".

Meanwhile, the UK does not even having an evaluation framework to assess the efficacy of its current drug strategy, let alone a system to assess possible alternatives. As the home affairs select committee progresses toward the completion of its current evidence sessions, inquiring into UK drug policy, it is more important than ever that it calls for a comprehensive evidence-based review of all policy options.

Successive governments are spending our hard-earned cash on a prohibition-based approach that at the least is causing and exacerbating significant harms. In all likelihood it is, as Obama says, causing more harm than good. The "war on drugs" is a policy choice. There are other options that, at the very least, should be debated and explored using the best possible evidence. For the sake of their citizens, all UN member states have a duty to make sure that now happens.

Edited June 28, 2012 by namkha

[pier09]

It looks like the winds are changing direction...slowly.