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."
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake