Pubdate: Tue, 26 Jun 2012 Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC) Copyright: 2012 The Vancouver Sun Contact: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/letters.html Website: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477 Author: Peter McKnight Referenced: The War on Drugs and HIV/AIDS: How the Criminalization of Drug Use Fuels the Global Pandemic: http://globalcommissionondrugs.org/wp-content/themes/gcdp_v1/pdf/GCDP_HIV-AIDS_2012_REFERENCE.pdf WAR ON DRUGS HARMS THOSE MEANT TO GAIN Global Commission Produces Powerful Report The war on drugs has failed, and policies need to change now. Those words come, not from some motley group of hippies fighting for their right to party, but from the august Global Commission on Drug Policy, an international consortium that includes such dignitaries as the former presidents of Colombia, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Poland and Greece, former U.S. secretary of state George Schultz and former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Paul Volcker. So some of the most forceful voices against the war on drugs are former high-level officials of the very countries that have long been at the forefront of that war. That alone speaks volumes. Yet as a commission report released today details, the evidence speaks even louder. Indeed, the report, titled The War on Drugs and HIV/AIDS: How the Criminalization of Drug Use Fuels the Global Pandemic, demonstrates not only that we have lost the war, but that we risk losing ourselves if we continue to fight it. Ironically, some of the evidence comes from the very groups most supportive of the war. For example, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which continues to favour aggressive drug law enforcement, reports that as the war increased dramatically over the last 30 years, so too did the supply of illicit drugs. In fact, the global supply of illicit opiates increased by more than 380 per cent between 1980 and 2010. Furthermore, according to the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy - the "drug czar," an enthusiastic drug warrior - the price of heroin in the U.S. decreased by 80 per cent between 1981 and 2002, while its purity increased an astonishing 900 per cent. These changes occurred despite an increase of 600 per cent in the drug czar's budget. Such data have convinced many people that the drug war doesn't achieve its goal of reducing the supply of drugs. But things are worse than that, for the war also produces immense collateral damage. Many studies have, for example, found an association between drug law enforcement and violence, and since a 2006 crackdown on illicit drugs in Mexico, more than 50,000 people have been killed and 1.5 million displaced. The war also disproportionately affects certain groups of people, including injection drug users, and that is the focus of the Commission's report. The report notes that roughly three million of the world's 16 million injection drug users have HIV, and that number could increase dramatically thanks to the war on drugs. There are many ways in which the war promotes the spread of HIV. Fear of arrest drives drug users underground, away from HIV testing and treatment, and into high-risk environments. If users do get caught and go to jail, they are more likely to engage in high-risk behaviours, such as needle sharing and unprotected sex. Furthermore, the war creates many barriers to treatment, including, in some countries, discrimination, refusal of services and breaches of confidentiality. Such barriers are bad for people living with HIV, obviously, but they could also promote the spread of HIV to others since antiretroviral therapy reduces the chances of transmission. Incarceration also serves as a barrier to treatment, with a B.C. study finding that the more times an individual is incarcerated, the less likely the individual is to adhere to antiretroviral treatment. This again increases the risk of transmission and also promotes HIV drug resistance. The report notes that the war on drugs also distorts public policy, where evidence-based public health approaches are downplayed or ignored in favour of enforcement. This is a problem in virtually every country, but in those most committed to the war, where public health approaches are all but nonexistent, the HIV epidemic is out of control. In Russia, for example, one out of 100 people now has HIV. In contrast, HIV infections have decreased substantially in countries that treat addiction as a health issue. In Portugal, which decriminalized possession of all narcotic and psychotropic drugs in 2001, the number of new cases of HIV decreased from 907 to 267 between 2000 and 2008. After implementation of a variety of innovative health policies, including a supervised injection site, accessible methadone programs, antiretroviral treatment and a heroin prescription trial, we here in B.C. saw the number of new HIV infections linked to drug injection decrease from 68 per cent in 1985 to about 15 per cent in 1997 to about five per cent in 2009. The report adds yet more evidence that the global war on drugs has harmed, and continues to harm, the very communities it is ostensibly helping. The evidence is now so overwhelmingly that it can no longer be credibly denied. But it can be ignored, which is what governments around the world, including our own, have done in the service of the drug war. If they continue to use our resources, our money, in prosecuting this war on drugs - this war on us - then shame on them. And if we allow them to do so, then shame on us. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom