Pubdate: Wed, 23 Apr 2003
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2003 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Polly Toynbee

JUST SAY NO TO A DRUGS POLICY THAT DOESN'T WORK

UN and American attempts to enforce total prohibition are sheer folly. 'A 
drugs-free world - we can do it!" That is the official slogan of the UN's 
current 10-year war-on-drugs strategy. A drugs summit marking the halfway 
point in that 10-year plan ended in Vienna last week - and it has all been 
a triumphant success. Or so said the director of the UN office on drugs and 
crime in his breezy opening address. "Does drug control policy work?" he 
asked rhetorically. "This question can be answered in the affirmative and 
unanimously." Yes, the UN programme is "on target to reach its goals" - to 
eradicate drug abuse and the cultivation of coca, cannabis and opium by the 
year 2008. Yes, really.

It was a Comical Ali moment, a breathtaking lie which everyone in the hall 
knew was nonsense - and he knew they knew it. Out there, drug prices are 
still falling and drug use is generally thought to be increasing. A few 
optimistic experts say it has stabilised - but few believe it. In Britain, 
the national treatment agency says addiction is rising by 7% a year. Drugs 
continue to cause political disintegration in poor producer countries at 
the hands of international crime, while causing social mayhem among the 
poor in rich consumer countries.

In the corridors of the Vienna conference, delegates agreed that the 
message from the platform might have emanated from some drug-induced 
nirvana. But the only permissible line decreed in three UN conventions is a 
"Just Say No" policy. All countries signing the conventions must enforce 
total prohibition laws, so no delegate could question whether it works. 
Afghanistan's crop this year will be back up to pre-Taliban levels - 
providing 90% of heroin: the country has no other export and the growers 
are far beyond the reach of Kabul's feeble authority. Colombia's US-imposed 
crackdown on coca has lead to huge planting in Bolivia and Peru instead.

America's strong arm reaches deep into the interstices of every policy. It 
is America's war-on-drugs policy, pushed by Ronald Reagan and George Bush 
Sr, that imposes rigid prohibition on the rest of the world. No softening 
of internal laws is permitted. For poor countries, the penalties for 
failing to follow US/UN dictates on absolute prohibition - hunting down 
growers, traffickers and users - leads to heavy punishment in aid and 
trade. Richer countries can afford to be a little more independent in 
following their own policies, but not much without heavy censure.

Astonishingly, Britain was severely admonished just before this conference, 
for daring to slightly soften its stance on cannabis by reclassifying it 
from class B to class C. A sharp reprimand from the international narcotics 
control board, the UN body charged with policing enforcement of the 
conventions, said that Britain's decision would have "dangerous, worldwide 
repercussions". The INCB's British delegate even went so far as to say that 
this minor change would fill British psychiatric wards with cannabis 
victims in 10 years' time. Bob Ainsworth, Britain's drug minister, gave a 
robust riposte: he was not proposing a radical change in policy, only a 
sensible flexibility in response to "what works" evidence. "We want to 
inject some straight, open thinking," he said.

Most of Europe came under attack. The Swiss are to legalise cannabis in the 
next couple of years, Dutch cannabis cafes turn a blind eye, Portugal has 
decriminalised possession, Spain has downgraded possession to a civil 
offence, Austria and Greece are taking similar paths. In most of Europe, 
cannabis policy is hardly controversial.   (Only Sweden and France, alas, 
take the same US prohibition line.)

What really matters is how governments deal with the drugs that cause 
social havoc and high crime. Britain is extending its programme for 
prescribing methadone as part of treatment: currently around 40,000 are 
receiving prescriptions, if need be for life, to stop them committing 
crimes to feed their habit. Other European countries are shifting their 
hard drug policies increasingly away from law enforcement into health 
agencies. Some countries have needle-exchange schemes to reduce Aids risk; 
some have "shooting galleries" where addicts can take drugs safely, 
methadone programmes, or heroin-prescribing and pill-testing facilities. 
All these are proving successful in reducing harm, amid a growing sense 
that prohibition has been a calamitous failure. Yet a moderate attempt by a 
large group of NGOs failed to get the conference even to "review the 
effectiveness of the present UN strategy": presumably a study of the 
evidence would be too politically dangerous.

In Britain the government has moved with caution, not through any liberal 
instinct but under the sheer pressure of failure. The official guesstimate 
of the cost of drug addiction is somewhere between UKP10bn and UKP18bn a 
year - mostly in crime and its consequences: each addict is estimated to 
steal UKP13,000 a year to survive. Policy now centres on the 250,000 hard 
drug users reckoned to cause most of the crime. The government has greatly 
expanded treatment programmes: by 2008 most will have treatment. Yet still 
only half the addicts in prison get treatment - which is a mad false 
economy. Drug treatment pays for itself three to four times over.

Comparisons between countries are tricky. The Netherlands has had 
phenomenal success, with heroin addiction falling. Addicts are a shrinking 
and ageing group, well supervised and under control. Is that due to a good, 
well-financed, rational treatment programme? More likely it is due to the 
structure of Dutch life, a far more equal society with an absence of gross 
poverty. Those western societies such as Britain and the US, with the 
greatest wealth gap and the most poverty, have the worst drug problems: it 
is an affliction of poverty among affluence. In Britain hard drugs are a 
minor irritant to the middle classes and a relatively small risk to their 
children, compared with the devastation on housing estates with high 
unemployment. Drugs are a disease that fills the void in vacant lives, 
dragging down depressed are! as into disaster zones of crack houses, drug 
crime, guns and prostitution.  Ending poverty would be the best cure, among 
both the western consumers and the third world growers.

But second best would be an end to a global policy that turns drugs from a 
manageable disease of the few into a widescale social calamity. Prohibition 
has followed the same predictable course as the US experiment in banning 
alcohol: it breeds crime. If methadone or heroin were prescribed by doctors 
globally to all addicts, drug-fuelled crime would fall.

But US politics reduce all difficult issues to TV attack soundbites, making 
it impossible for politicians to debate what works: anything but "Just Say 
No", is a sure-fire election loser. So, yet again, US policies are imposed, 
and the crude deficiencies of American democracy are played out globally.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens