The strongest call for a major review of antidrug policies so far has
been issued by a group of world leaders mustered by the same Latin American trio
of former presidents — Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Ernesto Zedillo of
Mexico and César Gaviria of Colombia — who, two years ago, set the ball rolling
within their own region. Their main message is that the ‘war on drugs' has
failed so badly that changing course has become a matter of
urgency.
The Global Commission on Drug Policy includes among its 19 members the:
current prime minister of Greece, Georgios Papandreou; former Swiss president
Ruth Dreifuss; former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan; former Nato chief and EU
foreign policy representative Javier Solana; former US secretary of state George
Shultz; and former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker.
Its report, issued on 2 June, is in clear line of continuity from the
September 2009 final report of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and
Democracy -co-chaired by Cardoso, Gaviria and Zedillo- and with the July 2010
Vienna Declaration, penned by a panel of leading scientists, which called for an
anti-drugs policy based on scientific evidence.
From the outset, the Global Commission does not mince its words. It states,
‘The global war on drugs has failed. When the United Nations Single Convention
on Narcotic Drugs came into being 50 years ago, and when President Nixon
launched the US government's war on drugs 40 years ago, policymakers believed
that harsh law enforcement action against those involved in drug production,
distribution and use would lead to an ever-diminishing market in controlled
drugs such as heroin, cocaine and cannabis, and the eventual achievement of a
"drug-free world". In practice, the global scale of illegal drug markets –
largely controlled by organized crime – has grown dramatically over this period.
While accurate estimates of global consumption across the entire 50-year period
are not available, an analysis of the last 10 years alone shows a large and
growing market' (see table below).
This approach, the Commission says, also led to a series of ‘unintended
consequences'. These include: 1) the growth of a huge criminal black market,
financed by the risk-escalated profits of supplying international demand for
illicit drugs; 2) extensive policy displacement, the result of using scarce
resources to fund a vast law enforcement effort intended to address this
criminal market; 3) geographical displacement, often known as ‘the balloon
effect', whereby drug production shifts location to avoid the attentions of law
enforcement; 4) substance displacement, or the movement of consumers to new
substances when their previous drug of choice becomes difficult to obtain -for
instance, through law enforcement pressure; and (6) the perception and treatment
of drug users, who are stigmatized, marginalized and excluded.
How drug use has expanded
UN estimates of annual drug consumption
1998-2008 (m users)
|
Opiates |
Cocaine |
Cannabis |
| 1998 |
12.9 |
13.4 |
147.4 |
| 2008 |
17.3 |
17.0 |
160.0 |
| % increase |
34.5 |
27.0 |
8.5 |
Source: Global Commission Report 2011.
The report argues that the main focus of the policy is wrong. ‘Arresting and
punishing drug users,' it says, ‘does little to reduce levels of drug use,
taking out low-level dealers simply creates a market opportunity for others, and
even the largest and most successful operations against organized criminals
(that take years to plan and implement) have been shown to have, at best, a
marginal and short-lived impact on drug prices and availability. Similarly,
eradication of opium, cannabis or coca crops merely displaces illicit
cultivation to other areas.'
‘Core principles' of the review
In its attempt to devise
an alternative approach, the Commission adopted what it described as ‘four core
principles', which it summarises as follows:
1. Drug policies must be based on solid empirical and scientific
evidence. The primary measure of success should be the reduction of harm to the
health, security and welfare of individuals and society.
2. Drug policies must be based on human rights and public health
principles. We should end the stigmatization and marginalization of people who
use certain drugs and those involved in the lower levels of cultivation,
production and distribution, and treat people dependent on drugs as patients,
not criminals.
3. The development and implementation of drug policies should be a
global shared responsibility, but also needs to take into consideration diverse
political, social and cultural realities. Policies should respect the rights and
needs of people affected by production, trafficking and consumption, as
explicitly acknowledged in the 1988 Convention on Drug Trafficking.
4. Drug policies must be pursued in a comprehensive manner, involving
families, schools, public health specialists, development practitioners and
civil society leaders, in partnership with law enforcement agencies and other
relevant governmental bodies.
Conclusions & response
To judge by media headlines,
the main recommendation made by the Commission was that drugs should be
decriminalised and regulated. In this regard, what its recommendation actually
said was, ‘Encourage experimentation by governments with models of legal
regulation of drugs [with cannabis, for example] that are designed to undermine
the power of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their
citizens.'
It added, ‘If national governments or local administrations feel that
decriminalisation policies will save money and deliver better health and social
outcomes for their communities, or that the creation of a regulated market may
reduce the power of organised crime and improve the security of their citizens,
then the international community should support and facilitate such policy
experiments and learn from their application.'
In line with the findings of the scientists who produced the Vienna
declaration, the Commission says, ‘National authorities and the UN need to
review the scheduling of different substances. The current schedules, designed
to represent the relative risks and harms of various drugs, were set in place 50
years ago when there was little scientific evidence on which to base these
decisions. This has resulted in some obvious anomalies — cannabis and coca leaf,
in particular, now seem to be incorrectly scheduled and this needs to be
addressed.'
Almost inevitably, political and media response, which was almost instant,
focused on this aspect of the report. In several cases, Latin American leaders
gave the impression that they had not read the Commission's full set of 11
recommendations (see box below), save a pro-forma nod or two in the direction of
its call for an ‘open debate' on the current policies.
The strongest rejections came, unsurprisingly, from countries that have
invested much in the repressive approach, or are in the process of seeking funds
to pursue it. In Mexico, the technical secretariat of the national security
council (CSN) — headed be Alejandro Poiré, the government's public security
spokesman — said that the government was in favour of a ‘comprehensive and
global' debate on the regulation of drugs, with emphasis on ‘global', because
‘Adopting partial measures is insufficient and inefficient, because
[drug-trafficking] is a transnational phenomenon which must be analysed in a
much broader context than that of a single state.'
The full set of recommendations
• Break the taboo.
Pursue an open debate and promote policies that effectively reduce consumption,
and that prevent and reduce harms related to drug use and drug control policies.
Increase investment in research and analysis into the impact of different
policies and programs.
• Replace the criminalization and punishment of
people who use drugs with the offer of health and treatment services to those
who need them.
• Encourage experimentation by governments with models
of legal regulation of drugs (with cannabis, for example) that are designed to
undermine the power of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of
their citizens.
• Establish better metrics, indicators and goals to
measure progress.
• Challenge, rather than reinforce, common
misconceptions about drug markets, drug use and drug
dependence.
• Countries that continue to invest mostly in a law
enforcement approach (despite the evidence) should focus their repressive
actions on violent organized crime and drug traffickers, in order to reduce the
harms associated with the illicit drug market.
• Promote alternative
sentences for small-scale and first-time drug dealers.
• Invest more
resources in evidence-based prevention, with a special focus on
youth.
• Offer a wide and easily accessible range of options for
treatment and care for drug dependence, including substitution and
heroin-assisted treatment, with special attention to those most at risk,
including those in prisons and other custodial settings.
• The UN
system must provide leadership in the reform of global drug policy. This means
promoting an effective approach based on evidence, supporting countries to
develop drug policies that suit their context and meet their needs, and ensuring
coherence among various UN agencies, policies and conventions.
• Act
urgently: the war on drugs has failed, and policies need to change now.
|
Latin American Commission on Drugs &
Democracy
September 2009 |
Global Commission on Drug Policy
June 2011 |
| General Alberto Cardoso (BR) |
Kofi Annan (GH) |
| Fernando Henrique Cardoso (BR) |
Louise Arbour (CA) |
| Paulo Coelho (BR) |
Richard Branson (GB) |
| Diego García Sayán (PE) |
Fernando Henrique Cardoso (BR) |
| César Gaviria (CO) |
Marion Caspers-Merk (DE) |
| Enrique Krauze (MX) |
Maria Cattaui (CH) |
| Patricia Marcela Llerena (AR) |
Ruth Dreifuss (CH) |
| João Roberto Marinho (BR) |
Carlos Fuentes (MX) |
| Tomás Eloy Martínez (AR) |
César Gaviria (CO) |
| Antanas Mockus (CO) |
Asma Jahangir (PK) |
| Moisés Naím (VE) |
Michel Kazatchkine (FR) |
| Sonia Picado (CR) |
George Papandreou (GR) |
| Ana Maria Romero de Campero (BO) |
George Shultz (US) |
| Enrique Santos Calderón (CO) |
Thorvald Stoltenberg (NO) |
| Mario Vargas Llosa (PE) |
Javier Solana (ES) |
| Ernesto Zedillo (MX) |
Mario Vargas Llosa (PE) |
|
John Whitehead (US) |
|
Ernesto Zedillo (MX) |
|
Paul Volcker (US) |
Moreover, said the commission, ‘‘Legalisation does not put an end to
organised crime nor to its rivalries and violence. To think that organised crime
in Mexico is equivalent to drug trafficking is to ignore that organised crime
commits other offences such as kidnapping, extortion and robbery.' In Colombia,
president Juan Manuel Santos told a graduating class of army officers, just
before the Global Commission's report was released to the public, ‘I tell you
beforehand that we welcome this new approach [...] but until a different
solution is found at the global level — and it must be global, because no
country must take decisions in isolation — we will continue to fight with soul,
heart and hat against the scourge of drug trafficking.'
Costa Rica's president, Laura Chinchilla, said on 5 June: ‘The great dilemma
of legalising a drug like marijuana is that organised crime has a logic: to
profit from illegality — and we will not change that mindset. I think it is
naïve to say, let us legalise marijuana and the profits will fall.' She went on
to argue that legalising ‘soft' drugs would only lead organised crime to seek
their profits in ‘hard' drugs, which would only enlarge the markets for crack,
heroin and cocaine. At her side, Guatemala's president, Alvaro Colom, said: ‘I
believe that all of us presidents feel tempted to legalise drugs so that for
once and for all they will leave us in peace from all this violence, but I don't
think that it is the correct path.' Both presidents were preparing for the
meeting scheduled for 22-23 June in Guatemala, in which they would be seeking
US$900m from international donors for regional security.
The Commission had hardly overlooked the question of repressing organised
crime. As noted above, its diagnosis underlined its role in its identification
of the ‘unintended consequences' of the policies pursued so far. Back in 2009,
the Latin American Commission - co-chaired by Cardoso, Gaviria and Zedillo - had
included among its recommendations the following item: ‘Focus repressive
strategies towards an unrelenting fight against organised crime.' Public
policies, it said, ‘should grant priority to the fight against the most harmful
effects on organised crime on society, such as violence, the corruption of
institutions, money laundering, arms trafficking and the control of territories
and populations. In this respect the development of regional and global
strategies is important.'
