Organization of American States launches groundbreaking report exploring alternatives to the war on drugs

Note: The following press release was issued today by the Latin American Programme for Transform Drug Policy Foundation and México Unido Contra Delincuencia.  The full OAS analytical report is available in English (pdf).  The full OAS scenario report is available here (pdf)

Organization of American States launches groundbreaking drug policy report exploring alternatives to the war on drugs

On Friday, 17 May, in Bogotá, Colombia, Organization of American States (OAS) Secretary General José Miguel Insulza will present Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos with the groundbreaking outcomes of a high level drug policy review. Mandated by 34 heads of state – including the US - at the 2012 Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, this report marks the first time in history that a high level multilateral agency has given serious consideration to the failings of current policies and potential alternative approaches, including decriminalisation and legal regulation.

Lisa Sanchez, coordinator of the Latin American Programme for Transform Drug Policy Foundation and México Unido Contra Delincuencia, and also a expert member of the OAS scenario planning team, speaking in Bogotá, Colombia, said:

“We welcome the reports from this ground-breaking high level initiative. Drug policy reform has been a taboo issue for decades - but for the first time representatives from 34 countries across the Americas have had the courage to break that taboo and envision real alternatives to the war on drugs. It is a clear acknowledgement that the global prohibition has failed to deliver what was promised and that a range of alternatives should be meaningfully explored.”

“The heads of State across the hemisphere who initiated the project can be proud of the fact that it has produced a set of four plausible scenarios, including one for the legal regulation of cannabis and other drugs - including the necessary reform of international law. And that, far from than being a disaster - the regulation scenario foresees a shift to legal regulation capable of producing positive outcomes.”

This report provides a groundbreaking visualization of alternatives to the existing regime – in the form of four scenarios of how drug policy and law could develop between now and 2025. These scenarios significantly include one involving the emergence of legally regulated markets for some currently prohibited drugs and explores how the international drug control system evolves to incorporate these developments.

Steve Rolles, Transform Senior Policy Analyst said:

“The reform scenario explored in the OAS report is already unfolding in reality, as Washington and Colorado move to tax and regulate cannabis for non-medical use, with Uruguay likely to follow suit later this year. This OAS project sets the scene for a vibrant high level debate on alternative approaches in the run up to the UN General Assembly Special Session in 2016 - where the reports will feed into the global debate on policy reform. It will rightly be seen as a watershed moment for the doomed global war on drugs.”

“We are urging governments in the region - and beyond - to take the opportunity created by these reports to initiate national dialogues on their central theme: alternatives to the war on drugs that can deliver the safer and healthier communities we all seek.”

ENDS

Notes to editors:

Contacts:

· Lisa Sánchez: 00 52 (1) 553 2007 029 (in Bogotá, Colombia from 14 to 19 May. In Mexico City from 20 to 24 May)

· Steve Rolles: +44 (0)7980 213 943 London UK

The OAS reports will feed into a number of political processes in coming weeks and years:

•  May 20-22: in Washington, the OAS report will be presented and discussed at the 53rd Regular Session of the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD).
• June 4 – 6: The OAS will hold its next General Assembly in Antigua, Guatemala. Drug policy will be the main item on the agenda. See also the civil society declaration to inform the General Assembly, which included mention of legal, regulated markets for cannabis.
• March 2014: The UN Commission on Narcotic drugs meets in Vienna for its annual gathering including the 5 year half way review of the current 10 year drug strategy (very much rooted in the status quo that the OAS report is critiquing).
• 2016: The United Nations General Assembly has convened a special session on drugs in 2016, at the behest of the same Latin countries that instigated the OAS drug review process. The OAS reports will doubtless be a major shaping influence on the UNGASS preparations and discussions.

Background

The heads of states of the Americas, gathered in April 2012 at the Sixth Summit in Cartagena, Colombia, chaired by President Santos, entrusted the OAS (Organization of American States) with the task of preparing materials for a hemispheric debate about the disappointing results and unintended negative consequences of current drug policies in the Americas and to explore new approaches for responding more effectively to the problem

For terms of reference see here:

http://www.cicad.oas.org/Main/Template.asp?File=/Main/policy/default_ENG.asp

and

http://transform-drugs.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/how-organization-of-american-states.html

The 10 most UN-likely critics of the war on drugs

The United Nations' role in shaping and enforcing global drug prohibition becomes stranger with each passing day. On the one hand, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) implements the three UN drug conventions that form the legal basis for the global 'war on drugs' and ensures member states don't deviate from the punitive enforcement model the UN system has built. On the other, the wider family of UN agencies is concerned with guaranteeing UN principles of health, human rights, peace, development and security.

The war on drugs has, even by the UNODC's analysis, both failed to deliver on its stated goals, and had a series of disastrous unintended consequences - specifically undermining health, human rights, peace, development and security. This has inevitably created tensions between various UN agencies and led to increasingly contorted rhetoric from within the UNODC itself - as it attempts the impossible task of reconciling drug-war rhetoric and overwhelming evidence of prohibition's failure with the principles of the UN.

These tensions and contradictions become all too evident in the public statements from many UN officials, now often openly or implicitly critical of the letter and spirit of UN's own prohibitionist drug policy and legal systems. Even Executive Directors of the UNODC itself have departed from the prohibitionist orthodoxy. The range of views held by officials in other UN agencies also reflects the lack of "system-wide coherence" within the UN, with many questioning the criminalisation of users at the heart of the punitive paradigm (particularly in relation to HIV and people who inject drugs), with others going even further and advocating market regulation approaches, specifically outlawed by the UN conventions.

Below is a selection of some of the most high-profile critics of the war on drugs to come from within the UN itself.

Incumbents

Ban Ki-moon, United Nations Secretary-General

The incumbent Secretary General of the UN, Ban Ki-moon, voiced his opinion on the war on drugs in 2008, following the publication of a report by the Independent Commission on AIDS in Asia. The report was critical of drug-war policies, stating that:

 "[initiatives such as] large-scale arrests of young drug users under the 'war on drugs' programmes ... can be counterproductive and can keep large numbers of at-risk groups and people living with HIV from accessing even the limited services being provided by the countries." 

Ban Ki-moon thoroughly endorsed the report's findings, saying:

"we need to to review legislation that risks hampering universal access - in cases where vulnerable groups are criminalized for their lifestyles" 

 "I look to the United Nations family and the donor community to help advance the implementation of the report’s recommendations, including through financial and technical resources." 

Yury Fedotov, Executive Director, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

Despite being the current head of the specific UN agency charged with overseeing the global drug control system, Fedotov is surprisingly receptive to the idea of legally regulating certain drugs, although only, it would appear, ones that for arbitrary historical reasons, sit outside the UN convention sheduling system. This year, he wrote an article on the staggering array of 'novel psychoactive substances' (NPS or 'legal highs' ) now legally available. But rather than calling for their outright prohibition, he endorsed innovative approach being taken in New Zealand bring certain lower risk NPS within a strict a system of legal regulation, He said:

"Today, we are staring at a new drug horizon where those willing to take these substances have become the participants in a lottery that puts lives at risk. Users are potentially one tweaked molecule away from death … Innovative approaches should be applied. For example, New Zealand has enacted creative legislation that places the onus of proving the substance is safe on the seller."

Fedotov is also on record apparently endorsing a decriminalisation of users approach, saying:

"We must look into what must be done in national frameworks to see what can be done to protect the health and rights of people, so that people are not treated as criminals, but as patients, in full respect of their human rights."

How such statements will translate in a substantive shift in UNODC mandated policy and law remains to be seen, but they at least highlight the inconsistency in holding such views while at the same time maintaining the prohibitionist status quo.

Antonio Maria Costa, then Executive Director, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

Fedotov's predecessor, Antonio Maria Costa, famously drew attention to some of the disastrous effects of the international drug control system, the system that his agency is responsible for. In a groundbreaking report, he outlined the negative "unintended consequences" of global drug policy, which include:

• the creation of a huge criminal black market;
• the balloon effect, whereby if supply is squeezed in one area, it is simply displaced
• the marginalisation of public health principles in favour of enforcement; and 
• the discrimination faced by many people who use drugs. 

His conclusion?

"there is a spirit of reform in the air, to make the [UN drug control] conventions fit for purpose and adapt them to a reality on the ground that is considerably different from the time they were drafted".

This perhaps helps explains why Costa went on to make a number of bold reform statements, again adopting a clear decriminalisation of possession and use offences position, for example declaring that the UN drug control conventions:

"permit parties to respond to [drug-related activities] proportionally, including through alternatives to conviction or punishment for offences of a minor nature", and arguing "it is clear that the use of non-custodial measures and treatment programmes for offences involving possession for personal use of drugs offer a more proportionate response and the more effective administration of justice."

Helen Clark, Head of the United Nations Development Programme

The former Prime Minister of New Zealand, now heading up the UN's development work, clearly recognises the negative impact that the war on drugs has on developing countries, declaring:

"To deal with drugs as a one-dimensional, law-and-order issue is to miss the point ... We have waves of violent crime sustained by drug trade, so we have to take the money out of drugs ... The countries in the region that have been ravaged by the armed violence associated with drug cartels are starting to think laterally about a broad range of approaches and they should be encouraged to do that ... They should act on evidence."

Some of the political tensions within the UN are visible from the defensive press release that UNDP immediately issued following Clark's comments.

Anand Grover, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right of Everyone to the Highest Attainable Standard of Physical and Mental Health

In his investigation into the effects of the current international drug control system for a UN report commissioned by and presented to the General Secretary, Anand Grover - whose mandate is derived from the UN Human Rights Council - recommended to the UN drug control agencies  

"that there is a need in the long term to consider alternatives to the current drug control system. One such alternative model may be the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, in which certain controlled medicines would be regulated in a manner similar to tobacco."

He also urged governments around the world to:

• Decriminalize or de-penalize possession and use of drugs;

• Repeal or substantially reform laws and policies inhibiting the delivery of essential health services to drug users, and review law enforcement initiatives around drug control to ensure compliance with human rights obligations; and

• Amend laws, regulations and policies to increase access to controlled essential medicines.

Michel Sidibé, Executive Director, UNAIDS

At the 2010 International AIDS Conference, the head of the UN agency responsible for HIV/AIDS policy, joined other leaders in endorsing the following statement:

“We resolve: that harmful laws that criminalize sex work, drug use and drug possession, homosexuality and same-sex relationships, and HIV transmission must be repealed and must not be replaced by a regulatory system that is equally prejudicial. Not only do these laws lead to serious human rights abuses, but they grievously hamper access to HIV services.”

In the introduction for HRI's 2012 Global State of Harm Reduction he again made clear his support for decriminalisation of drug users:

"Punitive laws and policies, whether via prohibiting the provision of sterile injecting equipment and opioid substitution therapy, criminalising drug use,possession of injecting paraphernalia, or denying HIV treatment to people who use drugs, violate people’s right to health and harm the community." 

Former senior UN figures who sit on the Global Commission on Drug Policy

Alongside the critique of the the 'war on drugs' in the Commissions flagship report, are a number of recommendations including:

"End the criminalization, marginalization and stigmatization of people who use drugs but who do no harm to others. Challenge rather than reinforce common misconceptions about drug markets, drug use and drug dependence.

Encourage experimentation by governments with models of legal regulation of drugs to undermine the power of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their citizens."

Kofi Annan, former United Nations Secretary-General

Louise Arbour, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

Thorvald Stoltenberg, former UN High Commissioner for Refugees

Asma Jahangir, former UN Special Rapporteur on Arbitrary, Extrajudicial and Summary Executions

Unitarians vote overwhelmingly in favour of Royal Commission on Drugs

Last week, at the Unitarian and Free Christian Churches' General Assembly meeting at Nottingham University, the Unitarians became one of the first faith groups in the UK to speak out on the drugs issue and call for a Royal Commission on Drugs or an independent inquiry into drug policy. The reolution was passed with overwhelming support;  154 voting in favour, 3 against and 1 abstention.

The vote followed presentations from David Barrie, Chair of Make Justice Work, and Jane Slater, Head of Operations at Transform Drug Policy Foundation.

The motion stated:

“This General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches asks the UK Government to establish without delay a Royal Commission or an interdepartmental public inquiry to: 

1) examine the present UK drug-related health and crime situations and compare those in other countries 

2) examine and review the efficacy of current UK legislation in relation to drugs both those which are illegal and those which are legal 

3) review options for alternatives to the current criminal justice-based approach, drawing on the experience of other countries, including the appropriateness of the medicalisation and decriminalisation of drug substances and the treatment of addictions.”

The Unitarians are now embarking upon a campaign to persuade the government to set up a Royal Commission or interdepartmental inquiry, which would give alternative approaches the consideration they deserve and represent an important first step away from counterproductive prohibitionist policies.

The Unitarians now join a growing list of public figures and organisations who want to see a review of UK drug policy:

• Nick Clegg DPM, personally
• Bob Ainsworth MP, former Labour Home Office drugs minister and secretary of state for defence
• Peter Lilley MP, former Conservative Party deputy leader
• Caroline Lucas MP, Green Party leader
• The Home Affairs Select Committee
• The All Party Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy Reform
• Liberal Democrats (almost unanimously at Conference 2012)
• Plaid Cymru leader Leanne Wood
• Carel Edwards, former Head of the European Commission's Anti-Drug Coordinating Unit
• Professor John R Ashton CBE, Chair UK Public Health Association
• Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, outgoing President of the Royal College of Physicians 
• Professor Richard Wilkinson, Author of 'The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better'
• Professor Neil McKeganey, Centre for Drug Misuse Research, University of Glasgow
• Professor Ben Bowling, Professor of Criminology & Criminal Justice, King's College London
• Dr Nick Heather, Emeritus Professor of Alcohol and Other Drug Studies at Northumbria University
• Dr Linda Cusick, Reader in Substance Use, University of the West of Scotland
• Professor David Nutt, Chair of Neuropsychopharmacology, Imperial College London, and Chair of the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs
• A range of other organisations including the Prison Governors Association, Health Poverty Action, The Howard League for Penal Reform, and Human Rights Watch.

News release: Prison Governors Association criticises the War on Drugs and calls on government to explore alternatives

News release 25/04/13

This week the Prison Governors Association became the latest organisation to sign up in support of an international initiative that calls upon the government to “quantify the unintended negative consequences of the current approach to drugs, and assess the potential costs and benefits of alternative approaches”.

50 Years of the War on Drugs – Time to Count the Costs, is a global project that has the support of nearly 70 NGOs around the world and two former presidents.

Eoin McLennan-Murray of the PGA said:

“The blanket prohibition on class A drugs allows criminals to control both the supply and quality of these drugs to addicts who turn to crime to fund their addiction.  The Prison Governors' Association believe that a substantial segment of the prison population have been convicted of low level acquisitive crimes simply to fund that addiction. 

The current war on drugs is successful in creating further victims of acquisitive crime; increasing cost to the taxpayer to accommodate a higher prison population and allowing criminals to control and profit from the sale and distribution of Class A drugs. A fundamental review of the prohibition-based policy is desperately required and this is why the Prison Governors' Association are keen to support the 'Count the Costs' initiative.” 

Martin Powell, co-ordinator of the Count the Costs initiative said:

"We are delighted the Prison Governors Association - whose members witness the day to day futility of the UK's current enforcement-led approach to drugs - is supporting the global Count the Costs initiative. Increasingly, those involved in picking up the pieces of our failed war on drugs want to see alternatives to prohibition explored. The coalition should heed the PGA's call, and commission a comprehensive policy review as a matter of urgency."

ENDS

Contact:

Eoin McLennan-Murray:

Martin Powell, Count the Costs Co-ordinator: 07875 679301

Notes for Editors:

Supporters of the Count the Costs initiative include:

Human Rights Watch, the Howard League for Penal Reform, the International AIDS Society and the Washington Office on Latin America.

Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Former President of Brazil

Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León, Former President of Mexico and Director of the Yale Centre for the Study of Globalization

Michael Kazatchkine, Former director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria

Sir Richard Branson, Founder and chairman of Virgin Group

For the full list of supporters see: http://www.countthecosts.org/supporters

At the PGA Conference in 2010 the following motion was passed:

“This conference believes that the current “War on Drugs” is expensive and ineffective and mandates the NEC to engage with the prisons minister to consider other ways of tackling the drugs problem both within prisons and the wider community.”
http://tinyurl.com/c3jcd3h

A recent letter organised by rap mogul Russell Simmons attracted a wide range of signatories, including:
Susan Sarandon, Justin Bieber, Harry Belafonte, Cameron Diaz, Jim Carrey, Will Smith, Ron Howard, Mark Wahlberg
http://globalgrind.com/endthewarondrugs/

Academic refutes 'soft on cannabis' media claims

On 5 April the Daily Mail published this news article: The price of going soft on cannabis: Labour's experiment 'pushed up hard drug use and crime'.

The public letter reproduced below and here (PDF) from Dr Nils Braakmann of Newcastle University emphatically refutes the way that the Mail and a number of newspapers reported his research.

Contrary to the news reports, his research (which were only provisional findings presented at a conference, not yet published in a peer reviewed journal) did not show that reclassifying cannabis from Class B to Class C led to an absolute increase in cannabis use or crime. He says that he never looked at this, and the research results: "should not be interpreted as evidence that the declassification was “bad”. "

He goes on to say:

"...our estimates do not contradict potential aggregate crime reducing effects of cannabis depenalisation. As stated earlier, it is quite possible that the aggregate or regional effects of cannabis depenalisation are positive."

The Daily Telegraph piece making similar inaccurate claims for the research has now been removed, but the other reports mentioned in Dr Braakmann's letter, including by the Daily Mail, remain online. The report was cited again in the Mail on Sunday in this article from 21 April.

It was robustly challenged by Ewan Hoyle of Lib Dems for Drug Policy Reform on Politics.co.uk in an article titled 'The sloppy journalism that misrepresents cannabis use'.

Prof Alex Stevens of the University of Kent also challenged another piece of research discussed in the coverage, carried out by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which relates specifically to the experiment with tolerant cannabis policing in Lambeth (London), and was cited by the Mail and the Telegraph as further evidence of the negative impact of cannabis depenalisation.

This story provides yet another example of how the need to support a particular policy perspective can distort objective science reporting. Whilst a common theme in science reporting generally, drug policy has a particularly poor record.   

Dr Nils Braakmann's letter

11 April 2013 

To the interested public, 

Some further comments on the press coverage and contents of my research on cannabis consumption, consumption of other drugs and crime. 

I am the lead researcher on the cannabis research piece that received (somewhat distorted) coverage in the Daily Mail and the Telegraph on Friday, April 5, 2013, and the Daily Star on Saturday, April 6, 2013.  

Several members of the interested public have contacted me to ask questions about the research in question. The following is a brief reply to these questions. It is also an extension to our initial reaction to the press overage published on https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/nubs/ on Friday, April 5, 2013. I also recommend the excellent comment and summary of our findings (as well as those by Adda, McConnel and Rasul) by Ewan Hoyle. 

First and foremost, this research is in its early stages and was presented in front of a professional audience at the Royal Economic Society annual conference on Friday. It was never intended to reach an audience beyond professional scholars at this conference. The paper is not publicly available, we never made any press release and we never talked to any journalist.  

My personal opinion is that research should only influence public policy or public opinion after undergoing peer review, not necessarily because all peer-reviewed research is correct, but because (a) peer review ensures that the work has at least received some outside scrutiny and (b) only after peer review and the final publication of a piece of research can we be sure that the respective study will not change anymore (of course, results can still be overturned by later research – and often are as human knowledge progresses).  

As such, I am deeply unsympathetic towards premature press coverage of work in progress. Of course, I understand the freedom of the press to cover any story in the public domain, but I think it is vital that the press and the public are aware that academic conferences are not press conferences. Discussion of early-stage academic work at conferences is a necessary step in the development and maturing of academic papers, but results are often still preliminary and work at this stage will regularly undergo changes. As such even competent and best-case coverage of such work always runs the risk of commenting on results that might not be there in the next revision of an academic paper. 

In this case my work has also been misquoted and misrepresented by sections of the press. While I would still prefer not having to discuss the results in the open at this point in time for the reasons explained above, I feel it is important to be clear about the things we do, the things we find and in particular the things we do not find: 

1) Contrary to press reports, we do not find any absolute increase in cannabis consumption, (a) because we never looked at absolute increases in cannabis consumption and (b) because as far as I know there has never been any absolute increase in cannabis consumption. 

2) We also do not find any absolute increase in crime, essentially for the same reasons. 

3) We also do not evaluate the 2004 declassification. Our interest was whether cannabis consumption might lead to increased criminal behaviour among consumers. The obvious difficulty here is to rule out that criminal behaviour causes cannabis consumption or that things like lifestyle changes cause both cannabis consumption and criminal behaviour. The 2004 declassification provides a relatively clean experiment to answer this broader question as it should only influence cannabis consumption but not the other things. Our basic idea is that the declassification and the associated changes in punishments has different effects on different groups of people: There are some people who did not consume cannabis under the old punishment regime but start doing so after the declassification. For some of these people, deterrence through the earlier tougher punishments mattered. We compare the behaviour of the previous non-consumers with the behaviour of people who already smoked cannabis prior to the declassification. The 25% reported in the press is the relative difference in the change in annual consumption between those two groups (note that this is slightly simplified and the actual piece is more technical). It arises as previous non-consumers have increased their consumption post-2004, while previous consumers decreased theirs. 

4) As pointed out by Professor Alex Stevens from the University of Kent there is a risk that these changes just reflect that consumption for non-consumers can only increase, while it can change in both ways for the other group. We are aware of this possibility and are currently looking for ways to investigate and possibly get around this issue. One reason why we present research at conference is to have an informed conversation with other academics about such problems and look for solutions. 

5) Again somewhat simplified: We find similar changes for (low-level) crime and behavioural problems. We do not find anything for cannabis consumption and the consumption of other drugs. 

6) We make it very clear in the paper that our study does not say anything about the overall effect of the 2004 declassification and our results should not be interpreted as evidence that the declassification was “bad”. To quote from the conclusion: “Overall, the estimates indicate that cannabis consumption may induce people to adopt a riskier lifestyle that goes hand-in-hand with low-level criminal activities, such as criminal damage, anti-social behaviour, fighting and victimisation. One should keep in mind that our estimates do not say anything about whether individuals are turned towards a life of crime – in fact this seems somewhat unlikely given the choice of criminal activities and the overall picture that emerges from the estimates (after all hardened criminals do not necessarily spend their time spraying graffiti). […]  

Finally, it should be stressed that our estimates do not contradict potential aggregate crime reducing effects of cannabis depenalisation. As stated earlier, it is quite possible that the aggregate or regional effects of cannabis depenalisation are positive as found in Adda, McConnel and Rasul (2011).”

I hope this clarifies a few things. I am very happy to have a further discussion with the wider public on these results, but I would suggest that this should wait until a point in time when this research is finished and published. 

Kind regards, 

Dr Nils Braakmann

Transform is recruiting

We are currently looking for an Administrator, to work in our head office in Bristol (21 hours per week).

The main duties are to oversee the financial and operational administration of the organisation. For a full job description and person specification, please download the files below.

Now is a great time to join the drug policy reform movement, so if you think you have the required skills and would like to apply, please send your CV and cover letter to jane@tdpf.org.uk.

The closing date for all applications is Friday 10th May at 12.00 noon

Interviews will take place on Friday 17th May 2013.

Job description (PDF)

Person specification (PDF)

Drug Courts: A cause for celebration or a misguided attempt at progress?

In 1989 the first known drug treatment court was established in Miami in response to a crack epidemic. Two decades later, such courts are widespread across the US, offering treatment instead of prison time to some defendants arrested for drug-related felonies. Who is offered treatment is entirely at the discretion of the judge and defendants are usually required to plead guilty in order to be considered. Those who are offered and accept treatment are routinely drug tested throughout the process. Additionally judges can reward or punish the behaviour of those in treatment; incentives used includes certificates, cards and applause from the courtroom while sanctions include admonishments, assigned essays and, disturbingly, increased drug testing and court appearances or even a few days in jail.

This year, according to the National Association of Drug Court professionals, 120,000 people will be tried in 2734 drug courts spread across all 50 states. The question of whether these courts are a step in the right direction, towards viewing drug addiction through the sphere of public health as opposed to criminality, has never been so pertinent. 

The clear positive aspect of this model is that less people are going to prison for drug offences. Many people convicted for non-violent drug-related offences are offered an opportunity to reclaim their lives and access the treatment they need. It is also worth celebrating that people under this model can be saved from needless incarceration and that fewer families will be arbitrarily separated as a result of this.

A reported 75% of people who complete the drug court programme are not arrested again for 2 years. This also means that one in every four is, usually for another drug-related offence. Judges acknowledge that relapse is extremely common for an individual fighting an addiction, and the role of a strong support network along the road to recovery cannot be emphasized enough. Given that drug courts appear to subscribe to a model of addiction that allows for relapse, it is odd that relapse is punished and treated as ‘non-compliance’. Could it be that the pressure of an environment in which failing to complete the program successfully could result in incarceration is not conducive to effectively battling an addiction? Perhaps being publicly admonished in a courtroom in front of others who are in treatment, being given a telling off at the point when support and compassion are most needed, is not the best incentive to give up drugs. The use of a few nights in jail as a sanction is an incredibly irresponsible part of any treatment program and can only be a means by which to satisfy the public’s desire to see criminals punished. Given the high levels of stress, helplessness and guilt often associated with attempted recovery, especially in the first year, an experience as stressful as being given jail time, even for only a few nights, could easily push someone back into relapse. It is also likely that not everyone successfully completing ‘treatment’ is addicted to drugs: given that some people have been offered treatment as opposed to sentencing for the crime of possession, it is probable that some recreational users have accepted treatment as preferable to jail. The success rate with genuine addicts would therefore be lower than 75% in reality.

The figure of 75% becomes even less impressive when we consider that a meta-analysis by Latimer, Morton-Bourgon and Chrétien indicates that 45% of those admitted to treatment via drug courts drop out. It is likely that these 45% who are let go by the treatment system are in fact the most in need. What happens to them instead is that they face jail time and, often, an increased sentence for ‘non-compliance’ with the treatment. The drug courts’ treatment program fails nearly half of those attending. The International Drug Policy Consortium claims that judges are biased towards those who are perceived as ‘easy’ cases; in their eagerness to prove that the increased federal funding is justified, judges choose cases in which they believe the individual has the greatest chance of success under the minimum financial and institutional effort. This systematically excludes the most problematic users who are the most in need of help.

The problem with an arrangement that twins principles of treatment and punishment is that it cannot deliver treatment effectively. The drug court is first and foremost an instrument of the law, and therefore treatment is compromised because the program is still a part of the justice system, and the punitive element will always dominate this arrangement.

There is a huge tension between the act of sending someone who is in court for a drug-related felony to a treatment program and sending anyone failing this program to prison. While judges apparently understand that ‘relapse is part of addiction’, and try to accommodate this, individuals who are unable to do what the court asks of them, including abstaining from drugs, are let go from the program and are incarcerated. If the court recognizes, at the point at which treatment is offered as an alternative to prison, that an individual’s criminality derives solely from their dependence on drugs and that they need and deserve help, how then do they justify punishing those addicts who fail the program and are surely the most in need by forcing them to carry out a prison sentence? 

Most drug users are not problematic drug users. However, for those who are, it is important to ask ourselves, why did it take choosing treatment over prison for these people to receive help? Why were these people allowed to find themselves in court – in some cases for stealing to fund their addiction – and be processed by the legal system before they could be identified and helped by a health professional? The illegality of certain drugs, as well as the media's perpetuation of the stereotype of drug users as feckless and incompetent, stigmatises those who use them, including and especially those who are addicted.

Public antipathy towards people who are dependent on drugs is widespread, and this is fuelled by irresponsible and offensive media reporting. Stigmatising language such as ‘junkie’ is used in the media as bywords for social deviance; their effect is to dehumanize the subject, reducing the sum of a person’s character to their drug use. This heavily perpetuated stigmatisation can make it extremely difficult for an individual to admit to their doctor, their family or even themselves that their drug use is no longer recreational and has become problematic. The specific stigma associated with illegal drug use, on top of the more generalised stigma towards seeking help that exists in capitalist Western societies, means that many individuals who need professional help are not getting it. Attempts to recover from an addiction without the professional help of any kind can be incredibly dangerous if an individual decides to go cold-turkey and suffers the effects of a sudden withdrawal. In addition to the social stigma, many drug users are denied or have restricted access to healthcare. The fear of judgement and arrest deters the hardest-to-reach individuals from seeking treatment. The lack of empathy by many hospital staff towards drug users further exacerbates this. 

To this extent, the existence of drug courts is a good thing, because many people who may not have otherwise sought help are offered treatment. However, there is also a risk that drug courts can increase the stigmatisation associated with drug use, and specifically with those who are in rehabilitation from drug addiction. The fact that the treatment is accepted only to avoid prison unavoidably links treatment with punishment in an unhealthy way. People in this treatment program are made to attend court frequently, and  one of the punishments handed out for ‘non-compliance’ is having to attend court more often. This is creates an environment in which recovering addicts feel like they are there to be punished more than helped. Moreover, in wider society, if people see judges handing out treatment programs as sentences, this can only further entrench the stigma attached to all people in recovery from drug addiction, whether voluntary or not.

Another problem with the treatment program offered by drug courts is the metric by which they measure success. Due to prohibitionist drug laws, these treatment programs are abstinence-only. Many people fail at abstinence and, surely, a harm reduction program of treatment would be preferable to incarceration?

Furthermore, it's interesting to look at who benefits from the massive amounts of discretion given to judges in deciding who should be offered treatment. Despite the fact that there is almost no difference in drug use between Black and White people in the US, Black people are over 10 times more likely to be imprisoned for a drug offence than White people. African Americans are more significantly more likely to be stopped and searched, arrested and prosecuted for drug-related offences than people of any other race in the US. The NYCLU report that Black people and Latinos combined make up 90% of those imprisoned in New York for drug offences. Most illegal drug users in New York are White.

Surely then, if the judges exhibit no institutional racism, and 90% of those tried in court for drug-related offences are African-American, then around 90% of people going into treatment should also be African-American. However, figures from the Brooklyn Drug Treatment Court show that this is not the case: 75-80% of people tried in this court are Black, 15% Latino and 10% White, yet Black people are at least 30% more likely than White people to be expelled from drug court than White people being tried for the same offence. 

It appears that when judges are allowed large margins of discretion, the same institutional racism that poisons much of the justice system at the level of ‘random’ stop-and-searches, and at the level of detainment and arrest, is apparent in the court room. Given the close correlation that still exists between race and class in the US, and given that richer individuals can afford to deal with a struggle with addiction in a private setting, the all too familiar treatment of African Americans within the drug courts seems even more pernicious.

While it is tempting to celebrate the expansion of drug courts as a progressive step towards a more tolerant attitude to drug use, the reality is far removed from this image. In reality, drug courts are just as rife with institutionalised racism as much of the justice system, focus narrowly on those who are the least in need of help, and take a punitive attitude to recovery because they are, by necessity, bound up with the criminal justice system.

The war on drugs: time to count the costs to women

The below post is reproduced from the Count the Costs blog. 


Given that today is International Women’s Day, it seems an appropriate time to highlight the fact that the war on drugs has disastrous effects for not only men, but women too. The below extract is taken from the Count the Costs stigma and discrimination briefing, and outlines the particular ways in which the drug war causes undue suffering to women across the globe. (See the full briefing for references.) If you work for, or are a member of, an organisation that promotes women's rights, please email info@countthecosts.org to join our list of supporters.

Although most commonly convicted for low-level, non-violent drug offences, and not the principal figures in criminal organisations, women are disproportionately impacted by the war on drugs.

Mandatory minimum sentencing for trafficking often fails to distinguish between quantities carried, and even lower-end sentences can be very harsh. Rigid sentencing guidelines often limit judges’ discretion, preventing them from considering mitigating factors that might reduce the sentences handed down. The result has been that many women involved in drug supply at a relatively low level are subject to criminal sanctions similar to those issued to high-level market operatives and large-scale traffickers.

This results in particularly severe sentences for so-called “drug mules” – those women who carry illicit drugs from one country to another either in their luggage or inside their person. Usually coming from socially and economically marginalised backgrounds, such women are commonly driven to drug trafficking either by desperation (a lack of wealth and opportunity), or by coercion and exploitation from men further up the drug trading hierarchy. The prison sentences drug mules can receive are all the more excessive considering that these women are often characterised by low levels of literacy, mental health or drug dependence issues, and histories of sexual or physical abuse. Any dependents of these women are a frequently overlooked additional population of drug-war casualties.

The war on drugs contributes to the sexual abuse and exploitation of women, with sex sometimes used as currency on the illicit drug market, or women being forced to have sex to avoid arrest or punishment by law enforcement. Reports from Kazakhstan, for example, have described police performing cavity searches on female injecting drug users found in areas near to known dealing points – with any seized drugs reclaimable in exchange for sex.

Expending resources on criminal justice responses to drug use, rather than investing in effective public health measures, further places an undue burden on women. Gender-specific treatment programmes that allow women to live with their children are often lacking (where they exist at all), and in certain countries, pregnant dependent drug users do not have access to the safest and most appropriate treatment practices, compromising both their health and that of their unborn children.

Drug taking is often equated with negligence or mistreatment of children, as a woman’s drug use or dependence can be grounds for removing a child from her care. This is blanket discrimination on the basis of a lifestyle choice or health condition, often fuelled by populist political and media stereotypes (the term “crack mom” is a notable example). Such weighty decisions should in fact be made on an individual basis, taking into account the real risk of abuse or neglect in each case.

Drug-related violence, the victims of which have historically been young men, is now also claiming the lives of women. In Central America, some of this violence has been attributed to “femicides” – the murders of women who are killed because of their gender. Although a concrete link between the drug war and such killings is difficult to demonstrate, there is a growing consensus that in many regions the atmosphere of violence and impunity created by the drug cartels has led to an environment in which women are deemed disposable and, as such, can be subjected to horrific forms of abuse.

• Globally, women are imprisoned for drug offences more than for any other crime

• One in four women in prison in Europe and Central Asia are incarcerated for drug offences, with levels as high as 70% in some countries

• From 1986 to 1996, the number of American women incarcerated in state facilities for drug offences increased by 888%, surpassing the rate of growth in the number of men imprisoned for similar crimes

• In Eastern Europe, women who have experienced domestic violence can be refused entry into women’s shelters if they are active drug users

• In Russia, opioid substitution therapy – which is an important and internationally recognised treatment option for pregnant women who use opioids – is not available and is actively opposed by the government