WASHINGTON —- In its annual report on world drug use, the United Nations concludes that global markets for cocaine, opiates and marijuana are holding steady or in decline. Yet about 28 million people are heavy drug users likely to be physically or psychologically dependent on drugs, the report said. Opium cultivation in Afghanistan, where 93 percent of the world’s opium is grown, dropped by 19 percent last year, the Vienna-based U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime reported Wednesday. And there was a 28 percent decline —- the report called it staggering —- in production of cocaine in Colombia, which produces half the world’s cocaine, the report said. [continues 89 words]
UN Report Blames Asian, Biker Gangs For Dramatic Shift Asian and "traditional" biker gangs have dramatically stepped up production of illegal "party" drugs in Canada, turning the country into a significant exporter, the United Nations said yesterday. In a global survey of illegal drug production and trafficking, Canada is identified as a "primary" world source of ecstasy, and probably the biggest supplier of methamphetamine "uppers" to Australia and Japan. "Canada has become a major trafficking hub for meth and ecstasy," says the World Drug Report 2009 prepared by the Vienna-based UN Office on Drugs and Crime. [continues 210 words]
Canada has become a major producer of illegal "party" drugs, a United Nations report released yesterday says. Asian gangs and outlaw bikers stepped up their production of methamphetamine -- a very addictive stimulant drug that affects the central nervous system -- from 2003 to 2006, says the 306-page survey. Asian organized crime groups primarily on the West Coast also focused on ecstasy, a psychoactive drug that is chemically similar to the stimulant methamphetamine and the hallucinogen mescaline. They had turned "ecstasy" laboratories into "large scale facilities" by 2007, World Drug Report 2009 says. [continues 121 words]
Meth and Ecstasy Asian and "traditional" biker gangs have dramatically stepped up production of illegal "party" drugs in Canada, turning the country into a significant exporter, the United Nations said yesterday. In a global survey of illegal drug production and trafficking, Canada is identified as a "primary" world source of Ecstasy, and likely the biggest supplier of methamphetamine "uppers" to Australia and Japan. "Canada has become a major trafficking hub for meth and Ecstasy," says World Drug Report 2009 by Vienna-based UN Office on Drugs and Crime. [continues 399 words]
Top Supplier to Australia, Japan Asian and "traditional" biker gangs have dramatically stepped up production of illegal "party" drugs in Canada, turning the country into a significant exporter, the United Nations said Wednesday. In a global survey of illegal drug production and trafficking, Canada is identified as a "primary" world source of ecstasy, and likely the biggest supplier of methamphetamine "uppers" to Australia and Japan. "Canada has become a major trafficking hub for meth and ecstasy," says World Drug Report 2009 by Vienna-based UN Office on Drugs and Crime. [continues 275 words]
************ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtBl0KNKha4 ************ Since 1965, police have arrested over 20 million Americans for violating marijuana laws. Obama shouldn't laugh at questions about legalizing it. http://drugsense.org/url/v47yij8y ************ http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/2009/03/27.html#a3380 ************ This was the debate between Kirk Tousaw and Barry Joneson which took place as part of the Langara College Dialogues series held in Vancouver. [continues 512 words]
The United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) is meeting in Vienna this week, seeking a new course for the international war on drugs. A strategy session was held last week and will continue at lower levels until the end of this week as envoys try to work out a document that would replace a 10-year program adopted in 1988 aiming at eradicating all illegal drugs, from marijuana to heroin, under the slogan "A Drug-Free World -- We Can Do It." [continues 391 words]
Re: Barely illegal (Bruce Strachan column, March 12). It has become clear that the war-on-drugs approach has failed to undercut the violence and substance abuse tied to the illegal drug trade that plagues our cities. While the World Health Organization (WHO) has stated its support for harm-reduction strategies, the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs is currently meeting in Vienna to discuss adopting the approach and the U.S. appoints a prevention-focused national drug policy chair, the Canadian government is looking the other way and is refusing to listen to the science on the issue of drug policy and harm-reduction strategies. [continues 191 words]
The Obama administration signalled today that it was ready to repudiate the prohibition and "war on drugs" approach of previous presidents, and steer policy towards prevention and "harm reduction" strategies favoured by Europe. David Johnson, an assistant secretary of state, said the new administration would embrace policies supporting federally funded needle exchanges. The aim, he said, was to establish a policy based on public health needs. "This will result in a policy that is broader and stronger than the one we had in the past," Johnson said on the sidelines of a UN drug strategy conference in Vienna. [continues 442 words]
It has become clear that the war on drugs has failed to undercut the violence and substance abuse tied to the illegal drug trade that plagues our cities. While the World Health Organization (WHO) supports harm reduction strategies, the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs meets in Vienna to discuss adopting the approach and the U.S. appoints a prevention-focused national drug policy chair, our government is looking the other way and refusing to listen to science on the issue of drug policy. The government has kept programs like Vancouver's INsite and drug treatment courts across the country on a shoestring, constantly threatening to cut funding, which would kill the programs. Additionally, last summer, former health minister Tony Clement embarrassed himself at an international WHO meeting where he spoke out against WHO support for the strategy, calling harm reduction "a sham". If we are serious about addressing gang violence and the illegal drug trade here, we must make the connection between violence, the illegal trade and the demand for these substances. The answer is to address substance abuse as a medical problem and cut the link between users and organized crime through harm reduction. The war on drugs has not reduced crime, harm or drug use. Canada should be a leader at the international meeting in Vienna and come out clearly in support of harm reduction. Esquimalt - Juan de Fuca (Well obviously, yeah, but the feds just don't get it.) [end]
President Barack Obama's youthful drug use, including cocaine, seems to have had little effect on the support he enjoys while leading the free world through the most troubling times in recent history. Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps has not been as fortunate. The now-famous photo of Phelps smoking from a bong ended with a contract termination and his picture being yanked off the Kellogg's Corn Flakes box. With such confusing messages is it any wonder that there is little consensus among stakeholders in the war on drugs? [continues 675 words]
THIS week in Vienna, a meeting of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs took place that will help shape international antidrug efforts for the next 10 years. I attended the meeting to reaffirm Bolivia's commitment to this struggle but also to call for the reversal of a mistake made 48 years ago. In 1961, the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs placed the coca leaf in the same category with cocaine — thus promoting the false notion that the coca leaf is a narcotic — and ordered that "coca leaf chewing must be abolished within 25 years from the coming into force of this convention." Bolivia signed the convention in 1976, during the brutal dictatorship of Col. Hugo Banzer, and the 25-year deadline expired in 2001. [continues 451 words]
VIENNA -- A group of drug researchers is urging diplomats at a United Nations meeting to drop their prohibition on cannabis and allow the psychoactive substance to be sold and taxed like tobacco. "Our message to politicians is that 'you don't have to worry too much about the effects of cannabis and that the kids aren't listening to you in any case,' " Peter Room, a public health professor at the University of Melbourne, said today at a briefing. He helped chair a scientific committee that produced a report saying that marijuana isn't a public health menace and that half the U.S. population born after 1970 and at least 21 years old has tried the drug. [continues 400 words]
It comes in from South America to west Africa, then via Spain, Portugal or the Netherlands and into Britain through the Channel ports. Cocaine's journey ends on the streets of cities such as London, Manchester, Sheffield, Liverpool and Birmingham, where a wrap of high-purity coke can be bought for UKP 50 a gram and more heavily adulterated varieties for as little as UKP 30. The vast majority of consumers will give little thought to the long line of destruction that leads to the short line of powder in front of them. Mindful of this, Colombia has even tried shaming Europe's cocaine users into desisting by highlighting the trade's civilian casualties and rainforest destruction. [continues 385 words]
Cocaine production has surged across Latin America and unleashed a wave of violence, population displacements and corruption, prompting urgent calls to rethink the drug war. More than 750 tonnes of cocaine are shipped annually from the Andes in a multi-billion pound industry which has forced peasants off land, triggered gang wars and perverted state institutions. A Guardian investigation based on dozens of interviews with law enforcement officials, coca farmers, refugees and policymakers has yielded a bleak picture of the "war" on the eve of a crucial United Nations drug summit. [continues 568 words]
In Tijuana, Mexico, drug gangsters have been breaking into police radio frequencies and threatening specific police officers with death. These are no idle threats; shortly after they're made, the marked police officers are found dead. This reveals just how powerful drug gangs are in Mexico, and has led to deeply demoralized and increasingly corrupt police forces. More than 500 officers have been killed in the past year, and their worn-out equipment and body armour is no match for the state-of-the-art gear used by drug lords. [continues 973 words]
Governments Struggle To Respond As Resurgent Trade Moves Into Uncharted Areas From Colombia, Peru and Bolivia through Mexico and on to a half dozen west African states, the new cocaine supply route - and the war against it - is leaving a trail of mayhem in its wake. In Peru, Shining Path guerrillas have revived their movement by trading in Maoist ideology for coca cultivation and links with Mexican cartels, driving cocaine production to its highest level in a decade, according to US figures. [continues 703 words]
Campaigners Criticise Draft Paper for Not Including Harm Reduction Tactics United Nations member states are set to paper over their differences today and sign up to 10 more years of the much-criticised "war on drugs" at a drugs summit in Vienna. A draft policy declaration tabled at the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs last night did not mention the innovation that campaigners had hoped for: "harm reduction" strategies such as needle exchange programmes to prevent the spread of HIV, or even legalisation and regulation to help erode the power of traffickers and drug lords. [continues 449 words]
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. [continues 463 words]
A UN anti-narcotics drive has backfired by making drug cartels so rich they can bribe their way through west Africa and central America, UN crime agency chief Antonio Maria Costa has admitted. The ten-year "war on drugs" had cut drug output and user numbers, he said yesterday. But as a "dramatic unintended consequence" profit-gorged trafficking gangs had destabilised nations plagued by poverty, joblessness and HIV-Aids. "When mafias can buy elections, candidates, political parties, in a word, power, the consequences can only be highly destabilising," Mr Costa, head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, told a UN drug policy review meeting. [continues 439 words]
Evo Morales, the Bolivian leader, ate a coca leaf in front of delegates at the UN summit on drugs yesterday, to underline his demand that the raw ingredient of cocaine should be allowed for medicinal and other uses. President Morales, a former peasant coca farmer, brandished the leaf during an impassioned speech, saying: "This is coca leaf, this is not cocaine, this is part and parcel of a culture." He told ministers that the ban on coca was a "major historical mistake". [continues 130 words]
When Canadian cities like Vancouver become the setting for gang warfare, when Mexico's stability teeters because of drug violence and the cartels infiltrate normally quiet American towns, global policymakers start to wonder where they went wrong. Representatives from Canada and 52 other countries will scrutinize international narcotics policy beginning Wednesday at a major United Nations conference in Vienna. The declaration they agree to later this week will indicate whether participants still favour a 10-year approach that focuses on enforcement - the "war on drugs" - or on reducing the demand for drugs and the harm they cause. [continues 154 words]
Our policy is based on the belief that the war against drugs is winnable. It is not The first I ever heard of drugs was "Just Say No". Coined by Nancy Reagan, the phrase became a rallying cry for prohibitionists and preachers of abstinence on both sides of the Atlantic. I was five when the cast of Grange Hill used the slogan as the title of a spin-off chart hit. Though at least one of the young actors was using illegal substances at the time, their preaching earned them a trip to the White House. That the cast of a "progressive" BBC children's drama and the First Lady were united in the Rose Garden shows just how messed up things had become. Nancy's words, even now, continue to colour public discourse. [continues 963 words]
Global drug policies have failed over the past 10 years to reduce the problem in any way, according to an EU report presented in Vienna, ahead of a UN conference on narcotics. The report, which was carried out for the European Commission by an independent group of international experts, "found no evidence that the global drug problem has been reduced during the period from 1998 to 2007". While increased action has been taken against producers and sellers, the report noted that prices in Western countries "have fallen since 1998 by as much as 10 to 30 per cent". [continues 162 words]
Surge In Abuse Blamed On West's Failings In Afghanistan, But Addicts Go Untreated At a playground just off the busy Prospekt Mira thoroughfare in central Moscow, there aren't any children playing on the swings. The slide is covered in dirty snow, the sandpit is strewn with empty vodka bottles and, on close inspection, a few used syringes. Mothers whisper to each other that the playground is the home of narkomany - drug addicts - and wheel their pushchairs swiftly past. It's just one small sign of a vast hidden epidemic of heroin use that Russian officials and civil society groups say threatens the very existence of the nation. "It's a threat to our national security, our society, and our civilisation itself," said Viktor Ivanov, Russia's top drugs official, at a meeting with reporters recently. He estimated that there are more than two million drug addicts in Russia, which amounts to one addict for every 50 Russians of working age, a level that is up to eight times higher than in EU countries. [continues 669 words]
A GLOBAL campaign by the United Nations to cut supply and demand for illegal drugs has made no progress, a European Commission report has said. The report yesterday came on the eve of a ministerial-level meeting in Vienna by the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs to review the ten years since the campaign was launched. Papering over dissent on how to make anti-drug policy more effective, UN members are expected to sign a declaration committing themselves to the programme for another decade. [continues 81 words]
VIENNA -- A United Nations campaign to cut supply and demand for illegal drugs has shown no progress globally in the decade since it was launched, a European Commission report said yesterday. The report came on the eve of a ministerial-level meeting by the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs here to review the war on drugs. The members are expected to sign a declaration committing themselves to the program for another 10 years. The report said enforcing drug bans had backfired by displacing drug traffickers to relatively lawless regions. The report was based on research in 18 states -- Australia, Brazil, Britain, Canada, China, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, India, Mexico, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the U.S. [end]
Flying in the face of all the evidence, the UN is about to recommit to the tried and failed approach Ten years ago, I represented Britain at a UN general assembly special session in New York, where political leaders reviewed progress in tackling the illegal drug market, and set out a 10-year plan to eliminate the illicit production and use of drugs such as cannabis, heroin and cocaine. Fast forward to this week in Vienna - where a similar gathering is tasked with reviewing progress and setting out a framework for international drug controls for the decade to come - and the lack of headway is striking. [continues 522 words]
A landmark UN summit in Vienna opens today to review the 10-year-old global "war on drugs" policy amid tensions between the US and European governments over what many see as a flawed approach. "It's been a failure and it's been a licence for impunity," said Genevieve Horwood, an adviser to the UK drugs charity Release. "It has been a failure in the sense that the world drug problem has increased and in the sense that new consequences and problems have arisen as a result of the enforcement-heavy and supply reduction-heavy decade," she added. [continues 318 words]
The UN strategy on drugs over the past decade has been a failure, a European commission report claimed yesterday on the eve of the international conference in Vienna that will set future policy for the next 10 years. The report came amid growing dissent among delegates arriving at the meeting to finalise a UN declaration of intent. Referring to the UN's existing strategy, the authors declared that they had found "no evidence that the global drug problem was reduced". They wrote: "Broadly speaking, the situation has improved a little in some of the richer countries while for others it worsened, and for some it worsened sharply and substantially, among them a few large developing or transitional countries." [continues 588 words]
Last-minute negotiations on a new UN declaration on drugs, which is due to be agreed and signed this week in Vienna, were still in the balance last night with the deadline looming. Deep divisions have opened up between countries that favour continuing the "war on drugs" strategy, led by the US and Russia, and those, including most EU and Latin American countries, that seek a recognition that "harm reduction" in the form of needle exchange programmes and drug treatments should be addressed. [continues 176 words]
COCAINE production has surged across Latin America and unleashed a wave of violence, population displacements and corruption, prompting urgent calls to rethink the drug war. More than 750 tonnes of cocaine are shipped annually from the Andes in a multibillion-dollar industry that has forced peasants off their land, triggered gang wars and perverted state institutions. Dozens of interviews with law enforcement officials, coca farmers, refugees and policymakers have yielded a bleak picture of the "war" on the eve of a crucial United Nations drug summit. [continues 230 words]
Legalization Drives Away Gangsters and Makes Health, Not Crime, the Issue A hundred years ago, a group of foreign diplomats gathered in Shanghai for the first-ever international effort to ban trade in a narcotic drug. On Feb. 26, 1909, they agreed to set up the International Opium Commission -- just a few decades after Britain had fought a war with China to assert its right to peddle the stuff. Many other bans of mood-altering drugs have followed. In 1998, the UN General Assembly committed member countries to achieving a "drug-free world" and to "or significantly reducing" the production of opium, cocaine and cannabis by 2008. [continues 1606 words]
Governments Struggle to Respond As Resurgent Trade Moves into Uncharted Areas From Colombia, Peru and Bolivia through Mexico and on to a half dozen west African states, the new cocaine supply route - and the war against it - is leaving a trail of mayhem in its wake. In Peru, Shining Path guerrillas have revived their movement by trading in Maoist ideology for coca cultivation and links with Mexican cartels, driving cocaine production to its highest level in a decade, according to US figures. [continues 698 words]
In 1998 the UN general assembly special session on drugs met under the slogan "A drug-free world, we can do it". A letter to Kofi Annan, sent in advance of the event and signed by religious leaders, ministers and other prominent individuals from around the world, stated that the UN needed to be "willing to ask and address tough questions about the success or failure of its efforts", stating that "we believe that the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug misuse itself". [continues 189 words]
A decade ago, world leaders at a special UN session adopted an unrealistic but laudable goal -- achieving "real progress" in reducing illicit drug production by 2008. "It is time for every nation to say 'no' to drugs," said then UN secretary general Kofi Anan at the 1998 UN gathering. "It is time for all nations to say 'yes' to the challenge of working towards a drug-free world." The drug cultivators, traffickers and users don't seem to have paid any attention. "I think one would say that the situation's not getting better," says Michel Perron, CEO of the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse. [continues 488 words]
Governments Are Reassessing How to Tackle the Mainstream Problem of Illicit Narcotics, Bill Bush Writes In Shanghai a hundred years ago, the world's most far-reaching international regime was conceived. Hyperbole? What other international regime is intimately connected with failed states and the suspension of a Canberra schoolchild; with destabilising rifts within NATO strategy in Afghanistan and over-stretched hospital emergency rooms; with a woman in the Andes picking leaves to make a stimulant tea that her ancestors have always made and the New South Wales budgetary crisis; with yet another crazy small business hold-up and the $12 billion that the head of the Australian Crime Commission says is flowing out of Australia each year? [continues 810 words]
A decade ago, world leaders at a special UN session adopted an unrealistic but laudable goal - achieving "real progress" in reducing illicit drug production by 2008. "It is time for every nation to say 'no' to drugs," said then UN secretary general Kofi Anan at the 1998 UN gathering. "It is time for all nations to say 'yes' to the challenge of working towards a drug-free world." The drug cultivators, traffickers and users don't seem to have paid any attention. "I think one would say that the situation's not getting better," says Michel Perron, CEO of the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse. [continues 489 words]
The harm caused by prohibition is staggering, yet still politicians cling to the blinkered ambition of a global 'war on drugs' This year marks the 100th anniversary of global drug prohibition, and what an inglorious centenary it is when we consider the millions of lives that have been blighted as a consequence of the war on drugs. And yet the majority of governments have supported a worldwide ban on the cultivation, distribution and use of psychoactive substances ever since the signing of the Shanghai convention, which aimed to target opium use, in 1909. [continues 838 words]
Prohibition Has Failed; Legalisation Is the Least Bad Solution A HUNDRED years ago a group of foreign diplomats gathered in Shanghai for the first-ever international effort to ban trade in a narcotic drug. On February 26th 1909 they agreed to set up the International Opium Commission--just a few decades after Britain had fought a war with China to assert its right to peddle the stuff. Many other bans of mood-altering drugs have followed. [continues 1653 words]
A decade ago, world leaders at a special UN session adopted an unrealistic but laudable goal -- achieving "real progress" in reducing illicit drug production by 2008. "It is time for every nation to say 'no' to drugs," said then UN secretary general Kofi Annan at the 1998 UN gathering. "It is time for all nations to say 'yes' to the challenge of working towards a drug-free world." The drug cultivators, traffickers and users don't seem to have paid any attention. "I think one would say that the situation's not getting better," says Michel Perron, CEO of the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse. [continues 488 words]
A decade ago, world leaders at a special UN session adopted an unrealistic but laudable goal - achieving "real progress" in reducing illicit drug production by 2008. "It is time for every nation to say 'no' to drugs," said then UN secretary general Kofi Anan at the 1998 UN gathering. "It is time for all nations to say 'yes' to the challenge of working towards a drug-free world." The drug cultivators, traffickers and users don't seem to have paid any attention. "I think one would say that the situation's not getting better," says Michel Perron, CEO of the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse. [continues 499 words]
A decade ago, world leaders at a special UN session adopted an unrealistic but laudable goal -- achieving "real progress" in reducing illicit drug production by 2008. "It is time for every nation to say 'no' to drugs," said then UN secretary general Kofi Annan at the 1998 UN gathering. "It is time for all nations to say 'yes' to the challenge of working towards a drug-free world." The drug cultivators, traffickers and users don't seem to have paid any attention. "I think one would say that the situation's not getting better," says Michel Perron, CEO of the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse. [continues 487 words]
The Vatican has been accused of putting the lives of thousands at risk by attempting to influence UN drugs policy on the eve of a major international declaration. The Vatican's objection to "harm reduction" strategies, such as needle exchange schemes, has ignited a fierce debate between the US and the EU over how drugs should be tackled. A new UN declaration of intent is due to be signed in Vienna on 11 March. However, there are major disagreements between member countries over whether a commitment to "harm reduction" should be included in the document, which is published every 10 years. [continues 423 words]
The Government will look at an open-minded and balanced approach to reducing drug use but there will be no relaxation of the laws around cannabis, Associate Health Minister Peter Dunne said today. There were too many mental health problems, respiratory diseases and social issues related to cannabis for the Government to consider legalising the drug, he told an international drug policy symposium in Wellington. Reports that levels of cannabis and methamphetamine use had levelled off were encouraging, but were not a reason for complacency, he said. [continues 471 words]
Narcotics Board Targets Cannabis For Strong Action Drugs Reform Group Hits Out At 'Irrational' Approach The internet is playing an increasing and "alarming" role in the trafficking of both illegal and unauthorised prescription drugs, according to the body that monitors the trafficking and use of narcotics. Chemicals used for making heroin and cocaine and a range of drugs from methadone to amphetamines are being sold online by organisations that hide their identities from the authorities. The report, compiled by the International Narcotics Control Board, paints a picture of an ever-expanding and increasingly violent drugs market, with new trafficking routes being opened regularly. It calls for governments to take stronger measures against drugs, in particular cannabis. The board was criticised by drugs reform groups last night for taking an "irrational" approach. [continues 744 words]
