Pubdate: Sun, 5 Sep 2010
Source: Observer, The (UK)
Page: 27 of the Main section
Copyright: 2010 Guardian News and Media Limited
Contact:  http://www.observer.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/315
Author: Antonio Maria Costa
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion)

LEGALISE DRUGS AND A WORLDWIDE EPIDEMIC OF ADDICTION WILL FOLLOW

Those Who Argue We Should Decriminalise the Trade in Narcotics Are 
Blind to the Catastrophic Consequences

The debate between those who dream of a world free of drugs and those 
who hope for a world of free drugs has been raging for years. I 
believe the dispute between prohibition and legalisation would be 
more fruitful if it focused on the appropriate degree of regulation 
for addictive substances (drugs, but also alcohol and tobacco) and 
how to attain such regulation.

Current international agreements are hard to change. All nations, 
with no exception, agree that illicit drugs are a threat to health 
and that their production, trade and use should be regulated. In 
fact, adherence to the UN's drug conventions is virtually universal 
and no statutory changes are possible unless the majority of states 
agree - quite unlikely, in the foreseeable future. Yet important 
improvements to today's system are needed and achievable, especially 
in areas where current controls have produced serious collateral damage.

Why such resistance to abolishing the controls? In part, because the 
conventions' success in restraining both supply and demand of drugs 
is undeniable.

Look first at production. Drug controls slashed global opium supply 
dramatically: in 2007, it was one-third the level of 1907. What about 
recent trends? Over the last 10 years, world output of cocaine, 
amphetamines and ecstasy has stabilised, and in many instances 
dropped. Cannabis output has declined since 2004. Since the mid-90s, 
opium production moved from the Golden Triangle to Afghanistan where 
it grew exponentially at first, but started to decline (since 2008).

My first point is factual: in the distant past as well as recently, 
production controls have had measurable results. What about drug-use 
levels? There are 25 million addicts (daily use) in the world, 0.6% 
of the population. Ten times as many people (5% of the world's 
population) take drugs at least once a year. As these amounts are 
relatively small, statements such as "there are drugs everywhere" or 
"everybody takes drugs" are nonsense. The drug numbers compare well 
with those of tobacco, a legal drug used by 30% of the world's 
population. Even more people consume alcohol. Tobacco causes 5 
million deaths per year and alcohol 2 million, against the 200,000 
killed by illicit drugs.

My second point is logical: in the absence of controls, it is not 
fanciful to imagine drug addiction, and related deaths, as high as 
those of tobacco and alcohol. What are recent drug-use trends? In 
rich countries, addiction is high but declining. In North America and 
Australia, it has declined in the past 10 years, especially among the 
young. In Europe, opiates use has declined, offset by greater cocaine 
sales; cannabis and amphetamines are stable or lower. In developing 
countries, drug use is low, but growing. In South America and west 
Africa, this applies to cannabis and cocaine; in Asia and southern 
Africa to heroin.

My third point is intuitive: rich countries are addressing the drug 
problem, while poor countries lack resources to do so. With the 
building blocks of my reasoning in place (stability of the world drug 
supply; alcohol and tobacco hurt more than drugs; the divergent drug 
trends in poor and rich nations), I find it irrational to propose 
policies that would increase the public health damage caused by drugs 
by making them more freely available.

At the same time, drug controls are not working as they should. The 
resulting collateral damage is the platform upon which critics build 
the abolitionist argument.

Let's look at health, security and human rights. Health must be at 
the centre of drug control, because drug addiction is a mix of 
genetic, personal and social factors: gene variants (predisposition), 
childhood (neglect), social conditions (poverty). The pharmacological 
effects of drugs on health are independent of their legal status. 
Drugs are not dangerous because they are illegal: they are illegal 
because they are dangerous to health. Unfortunately, ideology has 
displaced health from the mainstream of the drug debate and this has 
happened on both sides of the prohibition versus legalisation dispute.

In the past half-century, drug control rhetoric by governments has 
been right, but prevention and treatment programmes have lagged. 
Priority was wrongly given to repression and criminalisation. 
Similarly, those in favour of legalisation have lost sight of health 
as the priority. They prioritise handing out condoms and clean 
needles, while addicts need prevention, treatment and reintegration, 
not only harm reduction gadgets. In short, the debate on drug policy 
has turned into a political battle. But why? There are no ideological 
debates about curing cancer, so why so much politics in dealing with 
drug addiction?

But there is more. Drugs do harm to health, but they can also do 
good. Greater use of opiates for palliative care would overcome the 
socio-economic factors that deny a Nigerian suffering from Aids or a 
Mexican cancer patient the morphine offered to Italian or American 
counterparts. Yet such relief is not happening.

Next is the security question. Drugs pose a threat not only to 
individuals. Entire regions - think of Central America, the Caribbean 
and Africa - are caught in the crossfire of drug trafficking. In 
Mexico, a bloody drug war has erupted among crime groups fighting for 
the control of the US drug market. The legalisers' argument on 
security is striking, though it leads to the wrong conclusion. 
Prohibition causes crime by creating a black market for drugs, the 
argument goes, so, legalise drugs to defeat organised crime. As an 
economist, I agree. But this is not only an economic argument. 
Legalisation would reduce crime profits, but it would also increase 
the damage to health, as drug availability leads to drug abuse.

Drug policy does not have to choose between either protecting health, 
through drug control, or ensuring law and order, by liberalising 
drugs. Society must protect both health and safety.

In a world of free drugs, the privileged rich can afford expensive 
treatment while poor people are condemned to a life of dependence. 
Now extrapolate the problem on to a global scale and imagine the 
impact of unregulated drug use in developing countries, with no 
prevention or treatment available. Legalised drugs would unleash an 
epidemic of addiction in the developing world.

Last but not least, there's the question of human rights. Around the 
world, millions of people caught taking drugs are sent to jail. In 
some countries, drug treatment amounts to the equivalent of torture. 
People are sentenced to death for drug-related offences. Although 
drugs kill, governments should not kill because of them. The 
prohibition versus legalisation debate must stop being ideological 
and look for the appropriate degree of controls. Drug control is not 
the task of governments alone: it is a society-wide responsibility. 
Are we ready to engage? 
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