Pubdate: Tue, 19 Apr 2016 Source: Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) Copyright: 2016 The Sydney Morning Herald Contact: http://www.smh.com.au/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/441 Author: Greg Chipp Note: Greg Chipp is CEO of Drug Policy Australia. A DRUG-FREE WORLD IS STILL AN IMPOSSIBLE DREAM, BUT A SOBERING RETHINK WOULD HELP In 1998, a special session of the United Nations General Assembly agreed to set a 10-year deadline to make the world "drug free". After an embarrassing failure to achieve this goal, the deadline was extended a further 10 years, setting the world up for another inevitable failure in 2019. In the years since the use, availability and variety of illicit drugs have escalated exponentially. It is estimated by the UK charity Transform Foundation that 300 million people worldwide used illegal drugs in 2012, contributing to a global market worth $US330 billion a year. The vision of a drug-free world has faded. We are instead presented with a nightmare scenario, where a multi-billion dollar black market funds organised crime and terrorist organisations. In pursuing a drug-free world, national governments have unwittingly been responsible for the incarceration of millions of nonviolent drug offenders; heightened HIV and hepatitis epidemics; restricted access to morphine pain relief for 75 per cent of the world's population; human rights abuses; and avoidable loss of life. Apart from the human suffering caused by prohibition, the economic cost beggars belief. Estimates by Transform put the total expenditure on enforcing global prohibition at more than $US100 billion a year. By 2014, UN member states, including Mexico and Colombia, considered the unintended consequences of the UN Drug Control Conventions so catastrophic they called on the UN to hold a special session dedicated to the world's drug problem. Starting Tuesday 18 years after the 1998 United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Drugs (UNGASS) world leaders will again gather to discuss the global drug problem. UNGASS 2016 is an opportunity to reassess the utility and usefulness of the three UN Drug Control Conventions that provide the legal and moral foundation for global drug prohibition. Although it cannot alter the conventions the talks will have an immediate flow on effect to changes in drug policy being contemplated in Australia and around the world. The Drug Control Conventions ignore alcohol and tobacco, the two most widely used and deadly drugs, but require member states to control the possession of an evergrowing schedule of drugs and precursors regardless of their relative harmfulness. The 50-year-old UN conventions are out of step with the modern world. For example, they classify cannabis as a narcotic of extremely limited therapeutic value, listing it on the most restricted Schedule IV alongside heroin. This is despite the scientific evidence that acknowledges cannabis' enormous medical potential. Moves to thwart progress at the 2016 Special Session started at preliminary debates in April 2015, where the US sent a delegate to argue that policy reforms should fit "within the framework of the three United Nations drug control conventions". Last month, the 59th Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs met in Vienna and agreed to a draft outcome document which will form the basis of the UNGASS 2016 agenda and debate. This document fails to distinguish between drug use and drug abuse, excludes alcohol and affirms the delusionary call in the 2009 Political Declaration on the World Drug Problem to "eventually eliminate the availability and use of illicit drugs and psychotropic substances in order to ensure the health and welfare of humankind". Even more disappointing is that the Vienna draft outcome document focuses on demand and supply reduction but fails to mention "harm reduction" as a viable means to address the health consequences. Compared to 1961, when the first of the UN conventions was ratified, the world is now a different place. Alternatives to prohibition drug policies exist in Portugal which has decriminalised all drugs without the dire consequences predicted. America has fully legalised cannabis in four states, as has Uruguay. Canada and others have stated their intention to do so later this year. It is agreed, even among the most zealous, that a "drug free world" is an impossible dream. Neither governments nor the UN nor even loving parents can stop people using drugs. All we can do as a society, as parents, is make it as safe as possible when they do use drugs. If traditional interests hold sway at UNGASS 2016 and this assembly reaffirms the status quo, as seems likely, a chance will have been lost to resolve one of our great health and human rights issues. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom