Pubdate: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 Source: Tehran Times (Iran) Copyright: 2009 Reuters Contact: http://www.tehrantimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1903 Referenced: Costa's statement http://drugsense.org/url/3TcacLyY acL Bookmark: http://mapinc.org/ungass.htm (UN Vienna drugs conference) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hr.htm (Harm Reduction) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?137 (Needle Exchange) ANTI-NARCOTICS DRIVE FUELLED DRUG CARTELS: UN VIENNA (Reuters) - A UN anti-drug drive has backfired by making drug cartels so wealthy they can bribe their way through tracts of West Africa and Central America, the UN crime agency chief said on Wednesday. The 10-year campaign had cut drug production and the number of users, said Antonio Maria Costa, but drug gangs were using their enormous profits to undermine security and development in nations already plagued by poverty, joblessness and HIV-AIDS. Drug mobs were "buying officials, elections and parties, in a word, power," said Costa, director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. While ghettoes burn, West Africa is under attack (by drug traffickers), drug cartels threaten Central America and drug money penetrates bankrupt financial institutions," he said. The problem was compounded by the failure of many countries to take UN conventions against crime and corruption seriously. As a result, a number of countries now face a crime situation largely caused by their own choice. This is bad enough. Worse is the fact that quite often, vulnerable neighbors pay an even greater price." Costa spoke at the launch of a meeting of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs to review the decade since a UN General Assembly special session (UNGASS) set targets to tackle producers, traffickers and end users. Papering over internal dissent over how to make anti-drug policy more effective, the 53 nations on the commission were expected on Thursday to sign a declaration committing themselves to the program to fight the drug trade for another 10 years. If we look at the physical dimensions of the problem -- tons of (narcotics) production and numbers of addicts -- we can state that humanity has made measurable progress (since 1998)," said Costa. New Policies Global addiction had stabilized for several years, with demand falling for some drugs and rising for others. "This is no longer the runaway train of the 1980s and 1990s," he said. But he conceded world markets were still supplied with about 1,000 tons of heroin, around 1,000 tons of cocaine and untold volumes of cannabis (marijuana) and synthetic drugs. "So there is still much more to be done," he said. One solution was for nations to coordinate a more sensible and balanced anti-narcotics policy, he said. Drug control was disjointed, eradicating crops rather than poverty, displacing the drug trade from one country to another, Costa said. Drug markets and their mafia are integrated in their logistics, financing, marketing and bribery power. They do not stop at borders. Governments need to do the same," he said. Critics of UN anti-narcotics policy want more stress put on "harm-reduction" policies, such as needle exchanges to prevent the spread of HIV, or even legalization to remove the mafia element responsible for bloody turf wars and failing states. Costa agreed with more harm-reduction efforts but rejected calls for legalization as "extreme" and misguided. "Should humanity accept pedophilia, human trafficking or arms smuggling out of a naive sense of market inevitability or intractability? Lifting controls on drugs would reveal a state's impotence to fight organized crime or protect the health of its citizens," he said. "We should invest in the solid middle ground between criminalization and legalization -- by framing our collective efforts against drugs less like a war, and more like an effort to cure a social disease." - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake