Pubdate: Tue, 24 Jun 2014
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Willaim Patey

THE WAR ON DRUGS IS LOST - LEGALISE THE HEROIN TRADE

I did not believe it before I went to Afghanistan. But it's now clear
that prohibition is no answer to this deadly scourge

When Tony Blair deployed British troops in Afghanistan, ending the
illicit production and supply of opium was cited as a key objective. In
2001 the prime minister linked heroin use in the UK with opium
cultivation in Afghanistan: "The arms the Taliban buy are paid for by
the lives of young British people buying their drugs. This is another
part of the regime we should destroy." Yet after 10 years of effort with
tens of thousands of troops in the country, and having spent billions
trying to reduce poppy cultivation, Afghans are growing more opium than
ever before.

As the December US troop draw-down deadline approaches, the UN Office
of Drugs and Crime estimates that last year Afghanistan produced
nearly $3bn worth of opium, and its derivatives heroin and morphine.
Since 2002 the US has provided more than $7bn for counter-narcotics
efforts and agriculture stabilisation programmes.

John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghan reconstruction,
told a US Congress subcommittee recently: "On my trips to Afghanistan
in 2013 and earlier this year, no one at the (US) embassy could
convincingly explain to me how the US government counter-narcotics
efforts are making a meaningful impact on the narcotics trade or how
they will have a significant impact after." The illicit global trade
in drugs has an estimated annual turnover of $320bn and the war to
stop it costs $100bn a year.

In a country such as Afghanistan, with weak institutions, remote areas
ripe for poppy cultivation and a well-established smuggling network,
we are fighting a lost battle. It is well understood that not only
does illicit trade migrate towards "ungoverned spaces", particularly
those inhabited by people in dire poverty, it then makes matters far
worse.

In 2012 the International Institute for Strategic Studies published
Drugs, Insecurity and Failed States: The Problems of Prohibition,
concluding that "the present enforcement regime is not only failing to
win the 'war on drugs', it is also a major cause of violence and
instability in producer and transit countries". Afghanistan exemplifies
this in spades. The opium trade is corrupting Afghan institutions at all
levels - arming insurgents and warlords, and undermining security and
development.

In short, the war on drugs has failed in Afghanistan, and without
removing the demand for illicit opium, driven by illicit heroin use in
consumer countries, this failure is both predictable and inevitable.
If we cannot deal effectively with supply, then the only alternative
would seem to be to try to limit the demand for illicit drugs by
making a supply of them available from a legally regulated market.

Half of the world's opium is grown for the legal opiates market of
which the UK grows 3,500 hectares. This legitimate drug trade does not
fund the Taliban and warlords, and there is no reason why it cannot be
expanded to include non-medical trade and use.

I am not the first former ambassador who has served in a
drug-producing country to call for an end to prohibition. In 2001 my
colleague Sir Keith Morris, the former UK ambassador to Colombia, told
the BBC that if drugs were legalised and regulated the "benefits to
life, health and liberty of drug users and the life, health and
property of the whole population would be immense".

Many more have made the same plea. In 2002 the home affairs select
committee called on Britain to initiate a debate at the United Nations
on alternatives to drug prohibition - including legal regulation. One
of its members was David Cameron MP.

I understand why some politicians are reluctant to take up this
debate. Before going to Afghanistan my own instincts told me that it
could not be right to decriminalise drugs. But my experience there has
convinced me that all political parties need to engage seriously,
without trying to score points off each other.

I was deeply moved when I came across an article written by a mother
who had lost both of her sons to heroin overdoses. In the unregulated
prohibited market there is no quality control, no purity guide, and no
safer use advice. Had her two boys been able to acquire their heroin
from a doctor, they might well still be with us. In fact thousands of
dependent users around Europe are already prescribed heroin, including
a handful in the UK, with great benefits to them and society as a whole.

Tony Blair was absolutely right to make the link between opium
production in southern Afghanistan and heroin use in Britain. But it
is clear now that he and others were wrong to think this link could be
broken through military action internationally and police enforcement
domestically.

Putting governments in control of the global drugs trade through legal
regulation will remove the incentive for those in fragile, insecure
regions to produce and traffic drugs. Putting doctors and pharmacists
in control of supply in the UK will save lives, improve health and
reduce crime. Ultimately we could improve the underlying lack of
wellbeing that drives so many in the UK and Afghanistan into lives of
degradation and misery.

For the sake of both Afghans and British citizens, senior politicians
must take responsibility for the failings of global prohibition, and
take control of the drug trade through legal regulation.
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MAP posted-by: Matt