Costa's legacy: Human Rights and the UNODC

Before talking about far more important things going on at this years CND, briefly to this morning, when the NGO representatives had a particularly fractious meeting with the UNODC Executive Director, Antonio Maria Costa. Instead of having a constructive dialogue with the NGOs representatives present, the Director prompted an audible gasp as he immediately lashed out, angrily accusing half of us of being 'pro-drug' (again) and not caring if we killed millions in poor countries. Inevitably several present felt bound to take him to task on these offensive, and frankly ridiculous comments, and depressingly familiar scenes ensued. All rather pointless. There may be other accounts of all this but I won't dwell on it now. Costa is stepping down in May and hopefully a more positive relationship will be possible with his successor. We should also remember that the UNODC is far more than just its figurehead.

More on the activities at CND today from IHRA HR2's day three report , and all the nerdy detail on the CNDblog

Despite Costa parting company with many in the NGO community on a rather sour personal note this morning, the UNODC under Costa has, in fact, seen some considerable improvements in some areas of its NGO engagement - even if often rather begrudging, and more often behind the scenes than at the big showpiece events like the CND, as we have seen.

We should give credit where due; this engagement has delivered some meaningful progress, the Beyond 2008 NGO meeting, for example, producing a potentially useful document (even if CND chose to completely ignore it). Perhaps the most significant development on this front has been the dramatically improved incorporation of human rights analysis from the NGO sector into the wider drug control discourse (for which IHRA's HR2 program and others including Human Rights Watch can take considerable plaudits). Costa, to his credit, has made a series of useful statements on human rights issues, notably on the death penalty.  

As he prepares to bow out he may well also look back at today's publication by the UNODC of new a discussion document, 'Drug control, crime prevention and criminal justice: a human rights perspective - Note by the Executive Director' , as one legacy for which he can be justifiably proud. It contains a level of sophistication in its analysis that has long been absent from the high level drug policy UN discourse. It is an authoritative document and one of potentially huge importance in the longer term. UN drug control, and international drug policy more generally has been uniquely divorced from much of the mainstream human rights analysis that flows through the very core of the wider UN family. This new document goes some way to correcting this historical anomaly  - at least on paper - covering a range of issues including:

• The nature of state human rights obligations within drug enforcement, 
• Issues of proportionality in sentencing
• The use of imprisonment and the death penalty for drug offenses, 
• Due process and treatment of drug offenders, 
• The right to health - including access to clean needles and substitute opiate prescribing for injectors (including in prisons)
• Personal rights regarding coerced treatment and testing 
• The right to provision of essential medicines
• Mainstreaming of human rights in international drug control, including - we were pleased to see  - a call for  a human rights impact assessment  to be used as a evaluative and developmental policy tool, as well as incorporating a human rights compliance assessment into the annual World Drugs Report, and provision of human rights training.

You will forgive the lengthy excerpts that follow, but this is material really worth highlighting. I fully recommend you read the complete report (which provides the context and the references for the quotes below, (that btw include my emphasis)). The body of the report is only 15 pages and by UN standards, its pretty accessible and free of heavy legalese/waffle.

from Para 2:

"The normative foundation of the United Nations’ work in the area of the rule of law work is the Charter and the body of international law, including international humanitarian law, international criminal law, international refugee law, and international human rights law. Responses to drugs, crime and terrorism that are based on the rule of law must therefore also incorporate human rights law and principles. Too often, law enforcement and criminal justice systems themselves perpetrate human rights abuses and exclude and marginalize from society those who most need treatment and rehabilitation"

Para 3:

"Placing human rights at the centre of drug control, crime prevention and criminal justice provides an organizing set of principles that dissolves boundaries between the fields and promotes a single coherent response. Effective drug control cannot exist without fair criminal justice and successful crime prevention. Human rights offer guidance on the delicate balance between the protection of fundamental freedoms and the protection of public health, morals and security. It sets out the broad responsibilities of the State to respect, protect and fulfil the health and wellbeing of its peoples and specific due process guarantees, such as for those suspected or accused of a criminal offence."

 Para 4:

"Such an approach represents more than “added value”; it is a legal obligation. In the 2005 World Summit Outcome, Member States resolved that the promotion and protection of human rights should be both integrated into national policies and mainstreamed throughout the United Nations system. That the fight against drugs, crime and terrorism must conform to human rights is clear. The challenge is to understand how these policies may be pursued in a manner that not only respects and protects human rights, but also contributes towards their positive fulfilment."

Para 8:

"These bodies of treaty law are interdependent and are intended to support elements of the same pillars of peace and security, development and human rights. Nonetheless, references to human rights within the crime, terrorism and drug-related treaties are sparse. This does not mean that human rights law has no application to drugs, crime and terrorism. Rather, where references to human rights do occur in the drug, crime and terrorism conventions, it is clear that the intention is to highlight that international human rights law must be fully respected in their implementation. This is consistent with the core Charter obligation to promote respect for, and observance of human rights."

Para 9:

"No treaty, however special its subject-matter, applies in a normative vacuum, as both general international law (including customary international law) and particular concurrent international obligations affect its interpretation and application.

The question of whether a particular criminal law is inconsistent with international human rights must be assessed on a right-by-right basis. One reason for this is that while some rights (such as freedom of expression, for example) may be limited on the grounds of public safety, order, health, morals and the rights and freedoms of others, other rights may not be limited under any circumstances."

from Para 15:

"In particular, the balance between State action and individual rights can be different when it comes to vulnerable groups. Indeed, human rights law can be said to have a particular focus on marginal groups, vulnerability, disadvantage and discrimination"

Para 17 (on children drugs and rights):

"With respect to children who use drugs and abuse alcohol, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child considers that the right of the child to protection demands that such children should be treated as victims and not as criminals. Indeed, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child — as the only core United Nations human rights treaty to refer specifically to drug use — has a strong focus on protection rather than punishment."

Para 18 (on harm reduction):

"Similarly, as concerns persons vulnerable to HIV/AIDS, the International Guidelines on HIV and Human Rights emphasize that criminal law should not be an impediment to reducing the risk of HIV transmission among injecting drug users, or to provision of HIV-related care and treatment for injecting drug users. " In particular, Member States should consider the repeal of laws criminalizing the possession, distribution and dispensing of needles and syringes, in favour of the authorization or legalization and promotion of needle and syringe exchange programmes.

 from Para 21 (on proportionality)

"..the principle that the severity of penalties must not be disproportionate to the criminal offence is found in a wide body of human rights related standards. This principle includes the notions that imprisonment should be used as a penalty of last resort, and that the choice between penalties  should take into consideration the likelihood of the offender being rehabilitated"

Para 23 - (making a clear case from decrim of personal possession/use)

"In the context of drug laws and sentencing, the drug-control conventions generally require parties to establish a wide range of drug-related activities as criminal offences under their domestic law. Nonetheless, they permit parties to respond to them proportionally, including through alternatives to conviction or punishment for offences of a minor nature. Serious offences, such as trafficking in illicit drugs, must be dealt with more severely and extensively than offences such as possession of drugs for personal use. In this respect, 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. Moreover, the criminal justice response should not be considered proportionate if it results in the denial of another individual human right. Where imprisonment for possession/use offences precludes access to appropriate drug-dependence treatment, for example, this may constitute a denial of the right to the highest attainable standard of health or even the right to freedom from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, rendering the criminal justice response de facto disproportionate."

Para 25/26 (making it clear the death penalty is illegal for any drug crime including trafficking):

"The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights specifies that in countries which have not abolished the death penalty, the sentence of death may be imposed only for the “most serious crimes”. The concept of “most serious crimes” is limited to those where it can be shown that there was an intention to kill which resulted in the loss of life. The weight of opinion indicates that drug offences (such as possession and trafficking) and those of a purely economic nature do not meet this threshold. Moreover, States that have abolished the death penalty are prohibited to extradite any person to another country where he or she might face capital punishment."

"Despite such prohibitions, a considerable number of the 47 retentionist States that continue to use capital punishment have carried out executions for drug offences in recent years. In some of these countries, drug offenders constitute a significant proportion of total executions As an entity  of the United Nations system, UNODC advocates the abolition of the death penalty and calls upon Member States to follow international standards concerning prohibition of the death penalty for offences of a drug-related or purely economic nature.

Para 27:

Overall, while human rights law does not usually direct the content of criminal laws or penalties per se, it does demand strict scrutiny to ensure that laws do not deny the rights of individuals. In the case of drug laws in particular, obligations to establish offences under the international drug conventions must be fulfilled while at the same time respecting a range of rights, including the right to health, to the protection of the child, to private and family life, to non-discrimination, to the right to life, the right not to be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and the right not to be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention. As noted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, drug laws frequently overemphasize criminalization and punishment while underemphasizing treatment and respect for human rights.

Para 41 (clarifying the right to health includes access to needle exchange and opiate substitution)

"Accordingly, the right to health calls for access to measures such as counselling, advice, clean needles and syringes, and drug dependence psychosocial and pharmacological treatment, including, where appropriate, opioid-agonists therapy (or long lasting opioid-agonists). Such requirements are fully compatible with those of the international drug control conventions. The International Narcotics Control Board notes that governments should adopt measures that may decrease the sharing of hypodermic needles among injecting users in order to limit the spread of HIV/AIDS.72 It is also of the view of the Board that the implementation of drug substitution and maintenance treatment does not constitute a breach of treaty provisions, whatever substance is used for such treatment in line with established national sound medical practice."

Para 59: (on human Rights Impact Assessments)

"UNODC will consider using, where appropriate, the Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) as a predictive tool for assessing the potential human rights impact of a policy or programme, with the aim of informing decision makers and affected persons. By helping to identify the nature and extent of the potential impact, the HRIA facilitates the adjustment of the proposed policy, mitigating the negative and maximizing the positive human rights impacts. HRIA is a combined tool for risk assessment, civil society engagement and decision-making, geared towards ensuring, from the outset, that human rights are at the centre of all policy and programmes. This is a relatively new and developing area and not without its difficulties, but one which could be of significant value for UNODC as a mechanism to mainstream human rights and operationalize human rights commitments and responsibilities. To this end, the HRIA includes a wide range of activities intended to identify and  manage human rights risk and to evaluate humanrights impact, positive and negative, throughout the life of each project."

Of course, This should all have been said years ago - and might have helped avert all manner of drugwar excess and horror if it had been. None the less, progress is progress and this is a useful foundational document for moving forward. So, well done Costa, thank you, and farewell.

World Drug Report Preface majors on legalisation

Below is the text from the Preface to World Drug Report 2009 - dominated by a detailed rebuttal of the growing calls for a debate on legal regulation of drug production and supply. We have deconstructed these kind of critiques so many times before, we won’t be doing it again here - other than to observe it is the same confused mix of misrepresentations, straw man arguments, and logical fallacies that we are used to hearing from the UNODC's drug warriors. The particularly strange thing here though is that some of the analysis of the problem, the critique at least, is actually fairly good - it's where it leads that is so extraordinary....

See previous for comprehensive deconstruction:

• UNODC mugged by reality
• UNintended Consequences - side effects and contra indications of global prohibition
  
• Fear prevails at the UN as voices for drug law reform are smeared
  
• UN bodies betray principles of peace by supporting the war on drugs
  
• Afghan Opium and the Emperor’s New Clothes
  
• The opium war's front line: Afghanistan, Iran and Hampshire
  
• UNODC director goes to Amsterdam: the lost report
  
• UNODC Director declares international drug control system is not ‘fit for purpose’
  
• UNODC director describes DPA event as '1000 lunatics', 'obviously on drugs'
  
• When all else fails: blame Amy Winehouse
  
• UNODC director (lamb) addresses the DPA (slaughter)
  
• UNODC ramps up the weird drug warrior rhetoric

Firstly, it might be useful to view this preface as a barometer of the debate globally, and of Transform and other reform NGOs having a real impact on the international debate at the highest levels, including the UNODC. It is a reflection of the progress the reform movement has made that the legalization/regulation issue takes up so much of the space in the preface, and that the UNODC feels the need to go on the defensive this prominently.

Secondly, we would suggest that it is indicative of an institutional problem at UNODC, that something as internally inconsistent as this passes muster and is allowed into the public domain. They fully acknowledge that prohibition, under the auspices of the UN drug agencies and international drug control infrastructure, has been a generational disaster on multiple fronts - and yet then call for more of the same, brushing off those who call for a debate on alternatives with the offensive and childish smear of being 'pro-drugs'. Costa has a seemingly unique politician's ability to be simultaneously insightful and manifestly wrong, demonstrating a similar trick with those who challenge him by being both conciliatory and offensive.

Thirdly and last, it is not all bad. The text makes clear reference to the need to address wellbeing:

“The problem can only be solved by addressing the problem of slums and dereliction in our cities, through renewal of infrastructures and investment in people – especially by assisting the youth, who are vulnerable to drugs and crime, with education, jobs and sport.” (our emphasis)

So if the only answer to drug misuse is to deal with the social problems that underlie it - where does that leave all that punitive enforcement?

Preface to World Drug Report 2009

The end of the first century of drug control (it all started in Shanghai in 1909) coincided with the closing of the UNGASS decade (launched in 1998 by a General Assembly Special Session on Drugs). These anniversaries stimulated reflection on the effectiveness, and the limitations, of drug policy. The review resulted in the reaffirmation that illicit drugs continue to pose a health danger to humanity. That’s why drugs are, and should remain, controlled. With this sanction in mind, Member States confirmed unequivocal support for the UN Conventions that have established the world drug control system.

At the same time, UNODC has highlighted some negative, obviously unintended effects of drug control, foreshadowing a needed debate about the ways and means to deal with them. Of late, there has been a limited but growing chorus among politicians, the press, and even in public opinion saying: drug control is not working. The broadcasting volume is still rising and the message spreading.

Much of this public debate is characterized by sweeping generalizations and simplistic solutions. Yet, the very heart of the discussion underlines the need to evaluate the effectiveness of the current approach. Having studied the issue on the basis of our data, UNODC has concluded that, while changes are needed, they should be in favour of different means to protect society against drugs, rather than by pursuing the different goal of abandoning such protection.

A. What’s the repeal debate about?

Several arguments have been put forward in favour of repealing drug controls, based on (i) economic, (ii) health, and (iii) security grounds, and a combination thereof.

I. The economic argument for drug legalization says: legalize drugs, and generate tax income. This argument is gaining favour, as national administrations seek new sources of revenue during the current economic crisis.

This legalize and tax argument is un-ethical and uneconomical. It proposes a perverse tax, generation upon generation, on marginalized cohorts (lost to addiction) to stimulate economic recovery. Are the partisans of this cause also in favour of legalizing and taxing other seemingly intractable crimes like human trafficking? Modern-day slaves (and there are millions of them) would surely generate good tax revenue to rescue failed banks.

The economic argument is also based on poor fiscal logic: any reduction in the cost of drug control (due to lower law enforcement expenditure) will be offset by much higher expenditure on public health (due to the surge of drug consumption). The moral of the story: don’t make wicked transactions legal just because they are hard to control.

II. Others have argued that, following legalization, a health threat (in the form of a drug epidemic) could be avoided by state regulation of the drug market. Again, this is naive and myopic. First, the tighter the controls (on anything), the bigger and the faster a parallel (criminal) market will emerge – thus invalidating the concept.

Second, only a few (rich) countries could afford such elaborate controls. What about the rest (the majority) of humanity? Why unleash a drug epidemic in the developing world for the sake of libertarian arguments made by a pro-drug lobby that has the luxury of access to drug treatment? Drugs are not harmful because they are controlled – they are controlled because they are harmful; and they do harm whether the addict is rich and beautiful, or poor and marginalized.

Drug statistics keep speaking loud and clear. Past runaway growth has flattened out and the drug crisis of the 1990s seems under control. This 2009 Report provides further evidence that drug cultivation (opium and coca) are flat or down. Most importantly, major markets for opiates (Europe and South East Asia), cocaine (North America), and cannabis (North America, Oceania and Europe) are in decline. The increase in consumption of synthetic stimulants, particularly in East Asia and the Middle East, is cause for concern, although use is declining in developed countries.

III. The most serious issue concerns organized crime. All market activity controlled by the authority generates parallel, illegal transactions, as stated above. Inevitably, drug controls have generated a criminal market of macro- economic dimensions that uses violence and corruption to mediate between demand and supply. Legalize drugs, and organized crime will lose its most profitable line of activity, critics therefore say.

Not so fast. UNODC is well aware of the threats posed by international drug mafias. Our estimates of the value of the drug market (in 2005) were ground-breaking. The Office was also first to ring the alarm bell on the threat of drug trafficking to countries in West and East Africa, the Caribbean, Central America and the Balkans. In doing so we have highlighted the security menace posed by organized crime, a matter now periodically addressed by the UN Security Council.

Having started this drugs/crime debate, and having pondered it extensively, we have concluded that these drug-related, organized crime arguments are valid. They must be addressed. I urge governments to recalibrate the policy mix, without delay, in the direction of more controls on crime, without fewer controls on drugs. In other words, while the crime argument is right, the conclusions reached by its proponents are flawed.

Why? Because we are not counting beans here: we are counting lives. Economic policy is the art of counting beans (money) and handling trade-offs: inflation vs. employment, consumption vs. savings, internal vs. external balances. Lives are different. If we start trading them off, we end up violating somebody’s human rights. There cannot be exchanges, no quid-pro-quos, when health and security are at stake: modern society must, and can, protect both these assets with unmitigated determination.

I appeal to the heroic partisans of the human rights cause worldwide, to help UNODC promote the right to health of drug addicts: they must be assisted and reintegrated into society. Addiction is a health condition and those affected by it should not be imprisoned, shot-at or, as suggested by the proponent of this argument, traded off in order to reduce the security threat posed by international mafias. Of course, the latter must be addressed, and below is our advice.

B. A better policy mix

The crime/drugs nexus was the subject of a Report entitled Organized Crime and its Threat to Security: tackling a disturbing consequence of drug control1 that I presented to the Commission on Narcotic Drugs and the Crime Commission in 2009. Because of the importance of this subject, we have devoted the thematic chapter of this year’s Report to examining further the issue and its policy implications. Here are some of the main points.

First, law enforcement should shift its focus from drug users to drug traffickers. Drug addiction is a health condition: people who take drugs need medical help, not criminal retribution. Attention must be devoted to heavy drug users. They consume the most drugs, cause the greatest harm to themselves and society – and generate the most income to drug mafias. Drug courts and medical assistance are more likely to build healthier and safer societies than incarceration. I appeal to Member States to pursue the goal of universal access to drug treatment as a commitment to save lives and reduce drug demand: the fall of supply, and associated crime revenues, will follow. Let’s progress towards this goal in the years ahead, and then assess its beneficial impact on the next occasion Member States will meet to review the effectiveness of drug policy (2015).

Second, we must put an end to the tragedy of cities out of control. Drug deals, like other crimes, take place mostly in urban settings controlled by criminal groups. This problem will worsen in the mega-cities of the future, if governance does not keep pace with urbanization.

Yet, arresting individuals and seizing drugs for their personal use is like pulling weeds – it needs to be done again the next day. The problem can only be solved by addressing the problem of slums and dereliction in our cities, through renewal of infrastructures and investment in people – especially by assisting the youth, who are vulnerable to drugs and crime, with education, jobs and sport. Ghettos do not create junkies and the jobless: it is often the other way around. And in the process mafias thrive.

Third, and this is the most important point, governments must make use, individually and collectively, of the international agreements against uncivil society. This means to ratify and apply the UN Conventions against Organized Crime (TOC) and against Corruption (CAC), and related protocols against the trafficking of people, arms and migrants. So far, the international community has not taken these international obligations seriously. While slum dwellers suffer, Africa is under attack, drug cartels threaten Latin America, and mafias penetrate bankrupt financial institutions, junior negotiators at these Conventions’ Conferences of the Parties have been arguing about bureaucratic processes and arcane notions of inclusiveness, ownership, comprehensiveness, and non-ranking. There are large gaps in the implementation of the Palermo and the Merida Conventions, years after their entry into force, to the point that a number of countries now face a crime situation largely caused by their own choice. This is bad enough.

Worse is the fact that, quite often vulnerable neighbors pay an even greater price. There is much more our countries can do to face the brutal force of organized crime: the context within which mafias operate must also be addressed.

•• Money-laundering is rampant and practically unopposed, at a time when interbank-lending has dried up.

The recommendations devised to prevent the use of financial institutions to launder criminal money, today are honored mostly in the breach. At a time of major bank failures, money doesn’t smell, bankers seem to believe. Honest citizens, struggling in a time of economic hardship, wonder why the proceeds of crime – turned into ostentatious real estate, cars, boats and planes – are not seized.

•• Another context deserving attention concerns one of humanity’s biggest assets, the internet. It has changed our life, especially the way we conduct business, communication, research and entertainment. But the web has also been turned into a weapon of mass destruction by criminals (and terrorists). Surprisingly, and despite the current crime wave, calls for new international arrangements against money-laundering and cyber-crime remain un-answered. In the process, drug policy gets the blame and is subverted.

C. A double “NO”

To conclude, transnational organized crime will never be stopped by drug legalization. Mafias coffers are equally nourished by the trafficking of arms, people and their organs, by counterfeiting and smuggling, racketeering and loan-sharking, kidnapping and piracy, and by violence against the environment (illegal logging, dumping of toxic waste, etc). The drug/crime trade-off argument, debated above, is no other than the pursuit of the old drug legalization agenda, persistently advocated by the pro-drug-lobby (Note that the partisans of this argument would not extend it to guns whose control – they say – should actually be enforced and extended: namely, no to guns, yes to drugs).

So far the drug legalization agenda has been opposed fiercely, and successfully, by the majority of our society. Yet, anti-crime policy must change. It is no longer sufficient to say: no to drugs. We have to state an equally vehement: no to crime.

There is no alternative to improving both security and health. The termination of drug control would be an epic mistake. Equally catastrophic is the current disregard of the security threat posed by organized crime.

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

Updates and further info:

25.06.09

17.00
Transform quoted in the Guardian coverage: UN report shows fall in opium and cocaine production

18.30
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition have issued a press statement and
have launched a letter writing campaign in response to the UNODC arguments.

UN Office on Drugs and Crime admits it is at war with itself

News release

24th June 2009

The World Drug Report 2009, the flagship annual publication of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), will be launched in Washington DC on 24 June. Launched in the run up to World Drug Day on 26th June, the report provides detailed descriptions of trends in world drug markets. The report is likely to repeat the fact that the drug control system creates huge unintended consequences.

Transform, an NGO with special consultative status with the UN, argues that it is the regime of global prohibition that has created and compounded what is generally thought of as the ‘drug problem’, and that the UNODC is in agreement about the problem, if not the solution. Transform argues that the war on drugs must be ended to enable legally regulated drug markets to be established .

Even the UNODC website admits:

“Global drug control efforts have had a dramatic unintended consequence: a criminal black market of staggering proportions. Organized crime is a threat to security. Criminal organizations have the power to destabilize society and Governments. The illicit drug business is worth billions of dollars a year, part of which is used to corrupt government officials and to poison economies.

Drug cartels are spreading violence in Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean. West Africa is under attack from narco-trafficking. Collusion between insurgents and criminal groups threatens the stability of West Asia, the Andes and parts of Africa, fuelling the trade in smuggled weapons, the plunder of natural resources and piracy.”

The World Drug Report has long been criticised as attempting to dress up the long-term systemic failure of the international drug control system as success, and for ignoring some of the system’s most catastrophic failings. Despite the ongoing attempts to put a positive spin on the data there is no hiding from the reality that the era of global drug prohibition, enshrined in the three UN drug conventions (1961, 1971 and 1988), has witnessed a consistent escalation in harms associated with illicit drug production, supply and use.

Not only has the international drug control infrastructure – by its own measures – consistently delivered the opposite of its stated aims (the creation of ‘a drug free world’ being further away than ever) but, as Antonio Costa (UNODC executive director) has repeatedly stated, it has created a series of disastrous ‘unintended consequences’. Costa describes how the drug control system that his office oversees has created the ‘huge criminal black market’ that turns over in excess of £160 billion a year that has devastated producer and transit countries, has displaced policy ‘from public health to enforcement’ and caused the ‘balloon effect’ in which the problem is not eliminated but merely moved from one region to another.

Indeed the UN drug agencies are increasingly isolated from the UN family and at odds with the principles and practices of other UN agencies, whose work is built upon the pillars of human security, human development and human rights. Illustrating the point, a World Health Organisation report stated only last week that:

“The first two [drug] conventions predate the HIV/AIDS epidemic, while the third one predates the explosive global growth of injection drug use. Hence, while they benefit from considerable international support, these conventions my need to be revised today because some of their provisions affect the control of the HIV epidemic.”

Danny Kushlick, Head of Policy at Transform said:

“UNODC is officially at war with itself. The Executive Director has admitted repeatedly that the UNODC oversees the very system that gifts the vast illegal drug market to violent criminal profiteers, with disastrous consequences. The UNODC is effectively creating the problem it is claiming to eliminate. Mr Costa has identified five major ‘unintended consequences’ of the drug control system. Is there a time limit on how long a consequence remains ‘unintended’? Aren’t they now just ‘consequences’?”

“On the supply side fragile states like Afghanistan, Colombia and Guinea Bissau are drawn deeper into the illegal market where their profound underlying social and economic problems are compounded. Whilst for the rich consumer countries, like the US and UK, the illicit nature of trade is a catalyst for drug dealing and turf war violence, with the collateral damage inflicted on their more vulnerable neighbours, such as Mexico.”

He concluded:

“Only by ending our politically driven war on drugs can we hope to address the underlying sickness of producer, transit and consumer countries alike. In the short term, the UN and its member states should be obliged to conduct transparent impact assessments of their continued commitment to the Conventions with a view to acting on the evidence that they garner. In the longer term, the conventions need to be adapted, specifically allowing the flexibility for states, should they democratically decide, to explore legal regulation of drug production and supply. Until then the conventions will continue to undermine development, security and human rights.”

ENDS

Contact:

• Danny Kushlick, Head of Policy and Communications 07970 174747
• Steve Rolles, Head of Research 07980 213943

Notes for Editors:

• Transform is an NGO with UN ECOSOC special consultative status
• The WHO report quoted above is the 2009 Asia Pacific Report: ’Assessment of compulsory treatment of people who use drugs in Cambodia, China, Malaysia and Viet Nam: An application of selected human rights principles’
• The Costa quotes about unintended consequences come from the UNODC report "Making drug control 'fit for purpose': Building on the UNGASS decade

Updates 25.06.09:

17.00
Transform quoted in the Guardian coverage: UN report shows fall in opium and cocaine production

UNODC mugged by reality

Sanho Tree, writing below for the Transform blog, responds to the Guardian report last week that 'UN wants 'flood of drugs' in Afghanistan to devalue opium':

United Nations officials in Afghanistan are attempting to create a "flood of drugs" in the country intended to destroy the value of opium and force poppy farmers to switch to legal crops such as wheat.

After the failure to destroy fields of the scarlet flowers in Afghanistan's volatile south, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says the answer is to stop the drugs from leaving the country in the first place.

"Manual eradication is incompetent and inefficient," UNODC chief Antonio Maria Costa said during a visit to the western Afghan province of Herat. "So we want to see more efforts to stop the flow of drugs across Afghanistan's borders and the hitting of high-value targets to create a market disruption.

"We want to create a flood of drugs within Afghanistan. There will be so much opium inside Afghanistan unable to go out that the price will go down."

It looks like Costa has finally been mugged by reality.

When the Taliban allowed anyone to grow poppies in the late 1990s, the price of a kilo of opium fell to $30 on the streets of Kandahar because of the resulting glut. When Mullah Omar decreed it was no longer consistent with Islamic values to grow poppies in 2000, the prohibitionist price of opium shot up to $740/kilo just before the Sept. 11 attacks.

For the first time that I can recall, a prominent drug warrior has allowed the inconvenient truth of prohibition economics to intrude on his crusade.

Alas, Costa still clings to the idea that opium can still be stopped from leaking across the borders of Afghanistan. Still, the idea of allowing the natural devaluing of illicit crops by stopping eradication is more than a baby step -- it's a sea change in drug war thinking and it stops the counterproductive and inhuman "war" against peasant farmers. Now that he has admitted the futility of shoveling water, we can only hope he will abandon the idea of building a metaphorical wall around the country.

While I truly applaud Costa's belated arrival to the real world, it is still a fairly simplistic solution he has outlined. Since the days of the Silk Road Afghanistan has been been famous for trading by merchants, plundering by bandits, and smuggling by tax evaders. The latter two groups know the terrain better than any Westerner or Google map and I doubt NATO can seal the borders from these people any more than they can keep the Taliban from walking back and forth
to Pakistan. It's also one of the most corrupt countries in the world so a little cash can facilitate a lot of smuggling.

While the addiction rates in Afghanistan are still relatively low and rising, the neighboring countries have a huge addiction and HIV problem as a result of cheap Afghan heroin. The situation is dire and demands real solutions.

Still, I think his policy switch is important for five main reasons:

1) It's the first time a top drug warrior has allowed the law of supply and demand to rear its inconvenient head into policymaking. Will wonders never cease? Once they have acknowledged
this, it's hard to go back and pretend they can still make illicit crops disappear by making them astronomically more valuable in a world where HALF of the human race "subsists" on less than $2/day.

2) It's hard to eradicate in a region where illicit crops have taken root and the trade networks have been established. It's a lot easier to prevent a region from converting to illicit crops in the first place. If farmers transition back to legal crops, those networks could recede and then they might have a chance of preventing their return if there is sufficient aid for infrastructure and credit.

3) Adam Smith's "invisible hand" will be the culprit that motivates farmers to switch crops on their own. It doesn't make NATO forces and the UN into the hated "bad guys" who eradicated the fields of peasant farmers and drove them into the arms of the Taliban. The Taliban's fatal mistake in 2000 was in imposing total prohibition of poppy cultivation. While it made some Taliban commanders fabulously wealthy because they had cornered the market on warehoused opium at pre-prohibition prices, it turned farmers against them because they starved and suffered as a result so they were happy to help NATO forces.

4) When the opium prices fall, the Taliban will have a harder time funding their war and fewer lives should be lost. This could hasten the withdrawal of combat troops and the decreased violence should allow for more effective development assistance -- assuming Congress doesn't repeat the mistakes of the last Afghan war against the Soviets. To recall, we wiped our asses and left as soon as the Soviets retreated thus leaving a perfect vacuum for civil war and eventual Taliban victory.

5) They can now stop punishing the weakest of the weak and the poorest of the poor. Forced eradication without providing viable alternative livelihoods is not only counterproductive, but it is also monstrously cruel.

See previous blogs:

• Afghan Opium and the Empor0r's New Clothes

• Unintended consequences - side effects and contra indications of Global prohibition
  
  

UNODC remains shy about publishing report on Dutch Coffee Shop system

Dr Frederick Polak and others have been trying to get the UNODC to publish their discussion document on the Dutch coffee shop system for some time now. Here's the latest attempt to get some answers about the report.



Last May at the international harm reduction conference in Barcelona, Mr. Costa had promised to publish the report “very soon” - it still hasn't been released. You can see Dr Polak's previous attempts to get Costa to respond to his questions about the paper here.

This time, Mr. Costa did admit that there are some discussion papers produced by his agency that “were eventually quashed” and “remained an internal document never published”. However he claimed that he had given a detailed answer regarding the document on his website.

In fact there was a 'leaked' report written by Costa following his visit to the Netherlands, that was published (and scrutinised) on this very blog, before being rather begrudgingly published on Costa's own site (not really a 'blog' in the traditional sense as it does not accept even moderated comments). This report, however, was clearly his personal views and was a long way from an objective piece of policy analysis, being, as it was, entirely reference free and replete with subjective opinion and unevidenced assumptions and inference. Introducing this report he not only refers again to the 'pro-drug lobby' but notes that:

According to economic science, the greater the availability of a commodity on the market, the more likely its consumption (via the price effect, but also thanks to psychological factors). Does this only apply to normal markets? My Office has examined whether there is a statistical relationship between availability of drugs and their use, and reached the same conclusion.

This is important work, that should be informing important decisions (not least around the now completed 10 year review and political declaration), but has similarly never been published and made available for public scrutiny, even to member state Governments. 'Scientists' actually publish work, so that their statistics, methodologies and conclusions can be discussed, scrutinised and learnt from. This is the very essence of scientific and social policy discourse, something Costa parades the trappings of whilst simultaneously ignoring its most basic principles.

Hopefully someone at the UNODC will see fit to release both the Netherlands study and statistical analysis on drug availability into the public domain so we can see what it reveals reveals and why the UNODC have chosen to go against there own promises and scientific (and indeed UN) principles of free debate, by suppressing the work. Hopefully member states - particularly the UNODC funders (prominently including the UK and the Netherlands) who of course fund such work in the first place - will demand that the reports are published so they can be subject to public scrutiny and contribute to public debate. This is what the rational policy development within UN forums should be all about.

UNintended Consequences - side effects and contra indications of global prohibition

They may be the UNintended consequences of the drug ‘control’ system, but they show that the entire prohibitionist apparatus should come with an explicit health warning.

The UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs completes its marathon session on evaluating the ‘success’ of the drug control system tomorrow, and the ‘coalition of the willing (and not so willing)’ march out of the building, not quite in lock step, but maintaining de facto support for the global war on drugs. It is timely to examine whether these ‘unintended’ consequences, can still be seen as 'unanticipated'.


In March 2008 Antonio Maria Costa, Director of UNODC published ‘Making drug control ‘fit for purpose’: Building on the UNGASS decade’

It was a groundbreaking document. Whilst the conclusion still calls for prohibition to be implemented better, some of its critical analysis is spot on:

“The drug control system has succeeded in containing the drugs problem to less than 5% of the adult population (aged 15-64) of the world. This refers to annual prevalence: those who have used drugs at least once in the year prior to the survey. Problem drug users are limited to less than one tenth of this already low percentage” p.3

Which means that he concedes that 90% use non-problematically.

“The ways in which the drug control system has been implemented have had several unintended consequences: the criminal black market, policy displacement, geographical displacement, substance displacement and the marginalization of users.” P.20

It also identifies the enforcement of prohibition as responsible for:

• A criminal market worth $320 billion that is destabilizing entire nation states and filling prisons the world over


• Public health is marginalized in favour of enforcement, to the extent that 1 in 3 of those (outside Africa) who are infected with HIV/AIDS, contracted it through needle sharing


• The balloon effect – meaning that where the Golden Triangle once supplied the opium trade, it is now Afghanistan and where the Caribbean once carried much of the transit of cocaine, now West Africa suffers from its corrupting effect


• The discrimination that users suffer throughout the world because their drugs are prohibited and therefore they are demonised

This first dig at the reform movement doesn't appear until page 14!

“Vacillation is also prescribed by more than one tract on drug policy reform, exhorting the world to renounce ‘prohibition’ and espouse ‘legalization.’ The temptation to find a simple solution, the proverbial ‘silver bullet’ is timeless, but ultimately chimerical. Improving the performance of the control system is however both necessary and possible.” p.14

Amazingly, despite his realistic analysis, he still repeats the drug free world nonsense again.

“We need, first and foremost, to ‘finish the job’ on heroin and cocaine: a job we began a century ago and reiterated at UNGASS. The Political Declaration adopted at UNGASS, committed States Members [to]:

“…to developing strategies with a view to eliminating or reducing significantly the illicit cultivation of the coca bush, the cannabis plant and the opium poppy by the year 2008.” P.15

He also notes that:

“Unless we make strategic choices, prioritizing those areas where we have real competency and comparative advantage, and where we can leverage resources and expand partnerships, we risk wasting public money and delivering ineffective programmes.” P.16

and..

“It [the paper] ends with an appeal to the States Members of the United Nations, and through them, to those who are enshrined in the first words of the Charter, “the peoples of the United Nations”: we must work together to solve the world’s drug problem, not by losing ourselves in pointless debates from extreme positions, but by occupying the centre– the proverbial ‘middle ground’ – which is wide enough to accommodate all of us and solid enough to bear our weight as we step forward into the next decade.” P.20

Oh dear, a pointless debate… maybe he should take a look at our extensive archive of those calling for change in our voices for reform.

In March 2009, in advance of the High Level Meeting in Vienna, Costa published ‘Organized Crime and its Threat to Security – Tackling a disturbing consequence of drug control’. This paper is a much more focused document on opportunities for organised crime that arise from the implementation of the drug “control” system. But it also comes with a much more pointed smear of those who differ from the UNODC line on enforcement. This is the first sentence of the summary:

“crime and corruption associated with the drug trade are providing strong evidence to a vocal minority of pro-drug lobbyists to argue that the cure is worse than the disease, and that drug legalization is the solution.” P. i

Clearly the aim is to inure the UNODC against charges of complacency by recognising that there are negative consequences of global prohibition, and absolving themselves of responsibility by labelling them as ‘unintended’. At the same time, it attempts to undermine claims by Transform and others in the reform movement (we are as pro-drug, as UNODC is pro-mafia) that these consequences call into question the entire apparatus of global prohibition.

The identification of harms caused by global prohibition is nothing new. A devastating critique was published by the UK Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit in 2003 (eventually leaked in full to the media in 2005). However, the March 2008 paper was the first real admission from the UN that there were huge unintended consequences.

The use of the term 'unintended consequences' is very similar to the phrase ‘collateral damage’, used in military situations as a euphemism for dead and injured civilians. What we are talking about here are drug war casualties.

It is unquestionable that these consequences are both undesirable and unintended by UNODC. No UN bodies want to enrich the Mafia, for example. However, should they have been unanticipated, given what we knew about alcohol Prohibition?

It is also interesting to compare this with the way that doctors describe ‘Side Effects’ of drugs – effects from treatments that are unwanted, and have a negative effect on patients’ health. The issue of side effects from medical treatments is dealt with in a very different way than Mr Costa deals with the unintended consequences he identifies. Side effects are a significant issue of discussion between patient and doctor as part of a comprehensive exploration of a treatment package. What takes place is effectively a cost-benefit analysis of a particular intervention or series of interventions.

As result of the knowledge of side effects, all treatments carry a health warning. I don’t remember seeing one of those on the UN Conventions.

WARNING – Enforcing the Drug Control System causes more harm than drugs

In the UK we operate the Yellow Card system whereby doctors, and importantly patients and carers, can report negative effects to a body of oversight. Genuine civil society involvement in global drug policy development, anyone? How about reporting unintended consequences as part of the feedback of member states to the annual UN World Drug Report?

Last, but by no means least, orthodox medical interventions are also accompanied by a list of situations in which the treatment is contra-indicated. One can only wonder at the extensive list of places where global drug prohibition would be contra-indicated:-

• Fragile states – Afghanistan, Colombia, Guinea Bissau
  


• Governments of transit countries with a propensity for knee jerk military enforcement responses – Mexico
  


• Industrialised countries with high levels of inequality, disenfranchised non-white populations, and draconian criminal justice systems – US and UK
  


• Anywhere with established organised criminal gangs and high levels of demand for drugs that fall under the prohibition – Too many to mention

What doctor would prescribe a one-size fits-all treatment for so many countries for whom prohibition is contra-indicated – Dr Costa of course and his prohibition-friendly group of world leaders.

What are the indications that the regime’s side effects are outweighing the benefits?

• The existence of ‘narco states’ involved in production and supply


• Cocaine and heroin cost more than their weight in gold (but use still rising)


• Large prison populations made up of significant proportion of drug related offenders


• Black people and other marginalised groups over-represented in prison populations


• Reactive enforcement costs that outweigh proactive ones


• A blanket refusal from senior politicians to debate the issue


• Challenges to status quo coming from across the political spectrum


• Policy makers who call for reform when they leave office (Mo Mowlam, Julian Critchley etc)

One of the key issues here is that of critical self-evaluation. In order to move beyond the current impasse in drug prohibition, key UN member states (E.g. G20 countries) and the UN bodies that oversee prohibition, must make the entire edifice subject to normative examination, including a full and frank articulation of the costs as well as benefits of the regime.

As a scientifically based primer that explores why we find it so difficult to self evaluate critically, I strongly recommend: ‘Mistakes were made (but not by me)’ Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts

If the UN drug agencies cannot collectively admit that a war on drugs is a singularly inappropriate treatment regime for us all, then we will need to find another forum to develop global drug policy that is effective, just and humane.

For more on Transform's take on the Vienna process, see:

• UN Bodies Betray Principles of Peace
  
  


• Fear Prevails at the UN

Thanks to Ben Goldacre for advice on side effects and the Yellow Card System
Thanks to wordle for the word montage

Fear prevails at the UN as voices for drug law reform are smeared

Today Ministers from around the world are in Vienna for the High Level Meeting of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs to set a new ten-year UN drug strategy. Whilst fear and inertia has generally prevailed amongst our political leaders, we have also heard a huge range of serious voices calling for a debate on replacing drugs prohibition with legal regulation and control. At the same time a concerted effort has been made by Antonio Maria Costa the executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), to smear those calling for reform as “pro-drug”.

The effect has been to stifle critics of the status quo, and make a rational and mature exploration of alternative approaches into a political no-go area, by inaccurately and offensively portraying advocates of change as ‘pro-drug’.

In a recent paper the head of the UNODC admitted that the drug control system had a "dramatic unintended consequence: a criminal market of staggering proportions". Costa added: "The crime and corruption associated with the drug trade are providing strong evidence to a vocal minority of pro-drug lobbyists to argue that the cure is worse than the disease, and that drug legalisation is the solution."

This was the latest in a series of similar public comments over several years seemingly based on the absurd false binary that since Costa views his position as ‘anti-drug’ then anyone who disagrees with him must be ‘pro-drug’. However, despite his attempts to malign those calling for debate, many have had the courage to call for reform.

So who should be included under Costa’s ‘pro-drug’ banner?

In the run up to the last UN 10 year drug strategy meeting of this kind in 1998, Rowan Williams (now Arch-Bishop of Canterbury) and Prof. Colin Blakemore, former chief executive of the Medical Research Council, were amongst over 500 prominent academics, scientists, political and religious leaders, including a number of Nobel laureates and former presidents, who signed a letter (1) stating that:

"Persisting in our current policies will only result in more drug abuse, more empowerment of drug markets and criminals, and more disease and suffering. Too often those who call for open debate, rigorous analysis of current policies, and serious consideration of alternatives are accused of "surrendering”. But the true surrender is when fear and inertia combine to shut off debate, suppress critical analysis, and dismiss all alternatives to current policies.”

Adair Turner, Peer and Chairman of the UK Financial Services Authority has said (2):

"And if we want to help sustainable economic development in the drug-ridden states such as Colombia and Afghanistan, we should almost certainly liberalise drugs use in our societies, combating abuse via education, not prohibition, rather than launching unwinnable 'wars on drugs' which simply criminalise whole societies."

David Cameron MP (now leader of the Opposition), Tom Watson MP (now a Cabinet Office Minister), Bridget Prentice MP (now a minister in the Ministry of Justice) when on the Home Affairs Select Committee in 2003, signed up to a report (3) saying:

“We recommend that the Government initiates a discussion within the Commission on Narcotic Drugs of alternative ways—including the possibility of legalisation and regulation—to tackle the global drugs dilemma.”

David Cameron MP also said at that time (3):

“[I]n Holland you can walk into a café and buy cannabis quite openly…I wonder why we should have such a concern if a country like Holland or elsewhere in the world wanted to go a bit further. It is virtually legal in Holland, but if they wanted to go a bit further, why should we be so concerned? We might learn something from a country taking a different and radical approach, and we could see whether it worked or whether it was a disaster.”

“I do not know whether it would be an unfair summary, but … the Government position on the two UN bodies seems to be that they are pretty hopeless talking shops that set very odd targets, that use extraordinary statistics, but we have to take part, we have to be there and try and have an input.”

This week a cross-party group of 26 peers including David Puttnam and Molly Meacher wrote (4):

“What is now needed is an admission that most existing policies have failed and an open debate on what alternative policies should be adopted for the future…To this end we suggest that the UN should now establish an intergovernmental panel charged with the task of examining all possible alternative policies for the control of the drugs trade.”

Recently, because of his concerns about drugs prohibition bankrolling paramilitary gangs (including the Real IRA) in Ireland Denis Bradley (former vice-chair of the police board for the Police Service of Northern Ireland, and Co-Chair of the Consultative Group on the Past) said (5):

“It might be time to legalise drugs. It might be time to create outlets licensed and under government control, to supply drugs to those who are already addicted and to those who wish to dabble. It might be time to cut the gangs off at the knees by making them economically redundant.”

Danny Kushlick of Transform said:

“The last ten years has seen fear and inertia prevail amongst our political leaders, but it has also seen a huge range of serious voices calling for a debate on replacing drugs prohibition with legal regulation and control. All of these calls have been ignored, sidelined or suppressed, and Ministers look set to rubber-stamp another ten-year strategy indistinguishable from the last, with political posturing again winning out.”

“A significant block to debate has been a very active campaign by the executive director of the UNODC to smear and caricature those calling for an exploration of alternatives to global prohibition as being “pro-drug”, in a way that is inaccurate and offensive to a large body of respected thinkers and commentators. Is Mr Costa labeling UK Ministers and the likes of Lord Adair Turner, David Cameron and Rowan Williams as pro-drug?”

"We can bring peace and stability to producer and transit countries, and end much of the harm in consumer countries only by ending the war on drugs and replacing it with an effective, just and humane system of regulation and control. For that to happen, world leaders must stop using the UN to shut down any real debate on alternatives to war, and listen to the voices from across the political spectrum calling for change."

Editors Notes:

1. The full letter to Kofi Annan and signatories

2. Lord Turner quote from speech to the World WWF

3.Home Affairs Select Committee drugs inquiry quotes

• Recommendation 24, paragraph 267
• Cameron quote: Minutes of Evidence Home Affairs Committee 20 March 2003

4. For the 26 peers who signed, and the full text of the letter to the Guardian 09/03/09

5. Denis Bradley quote

For many more significant voices calling for drug law reform see :

http://www.tdpf.org.uk/MediaNews_Reform_supporters.htm

Afghan Opium and the Emperor’s New Clothes

Last week the UNODC launched its latest report on opium production in Afghanistan. Steve Rolles and I attended the presentation of the report at Chatham House by Antonio Maria Costa Executive Director UNODC and Bill Rammell, Minister of State Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

• UNODC's press release
  
  
• Rammell's comments
  
  
• Costa's comments

Their headline was the 20% reduction in opium cultivation which they welcomed (albeit cautiously) as evidence of new found success of their respective interventions in the region. Opium production, by the way is only down 6% (as yields per acre cultivated have risen).

The statistical annex on world drug prices and purity from the World Drug Report 2008, shows precisely how badly they are really doing - even by their own standards. It is now eight years after the Allied troops overthrew the Taleban and effectively took control of the country with one of the key aims being the eradication of the opium crop, and things really aren't going well given the billions thrown at the sprawling military-led anti-opium enterprise since 2001.



As they each informed the audience of the positive story coming out of Afghanistan, I was reminded of the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes. Explaining how opium production had declined in the north of the country, I began to feel like the boy in the fairytale who, not having any investment in admiring the Emperor’s new clothes, points out to the assembled crowd that he is in fact naked. The 'we're turning the corner' fantasy they present ignores the brutal realities of supply and demand economics: not only are they palpably not winning the war on opium in Afghanistan, but crop eradication, interdiction, and enforcement more generally are actually the prime cause of much of Afghanistan’s ‘drug problem’.

Prohibition is what makes an intrinsically low value commodity like opium more profitable than any other agricultural option for Afghanistan's mostly impoverished farmers. It is economic alchemy, whereby plants are transmuted into commodities worth literally more than their weight in gold. Even if supply side interdiction was more effective (and you try and eradicate 1500+ square kilometers of poppy fields scattered over an area the size of Western Europe, every year, forever) the effect would be be to push up the price, that in turn inevitably incentivises new entrants to the market, and new cultivation. It is an economist's dream; the completely unregulated interplay of supply and demand, and whilst the demand driven economic imperative exists (and there's no sign of significant change on that front) the best that can be achieved is temporary, marginal and localised supply side 'success'. The problem may move around a bit - but it doesn't go away.

An image of opium and wheat cultivation from the UNODC report

It is the war on drugs that makes Afghanistan’s more fundamental problems intractable; a point made very clearly by none other than Lord Adair Turner, head of the Financial Services Authority.

As you would expect, anyone who asked a challenging question, received a response, not a reply, with the ‘successes’ merely repeated. When I suggested to Rammell that a responsible government would expose the costs of the policy to a more thoroughgoing analysis (along the lines of the PM’s Strategy Unit Report 2003), he informed me that he did not agree with the critique (failing to say why) and, in time honoured sound bite fashion, that legalisation was a “counsel of despair”. When I interjected that I had not suggested legalisation and that I had merely called for them to include a scrutiny of the costs, he used the 101 Media Training line: “if you’ll let me finish…” with that studied pained look that media trainers the world over have taught to politicians to enable them to persist in not answering difficult questions. Steve similarly asked a question along the lines of the economic analysis above. Aren't supply interventions futile in the current context, especially given the long history of interdiction failure in the region and elsewhere? Again the answer was more of the same; repeating cherry picked successes, process achievements (that evidently have no bearing on 'outcomes'), and more 'turning the corner' type rhetoric. To quote Paul Flynn MP, we have now turned the corner so many times we have gone around the block several times - but not actually got anywhere.

Other stand out analysis from the presentation included:

• The fact that the report showed that production in the longstanding poppy growing area of Helmand, had actually increased slightly and that Afghan production still significantly exceeds demand.
  

• Costa admitted that insurgents (The Taleban) were stockpiling opium. His reasoning was that it must be insurgents, (because traffickers would not stockpile opium when the price was dropping). Why insurgents would wait until the price rose but traffickers would not, was not made clear…

At this point the economic analyst (something Costa has some claim to being, given his background) might look at the over-production of the last few years (global demand is only around 4000 tonnes Costa informed us, and we have no reason to doubt this estimate) and how it coincides with falling prices and conclude that stockpiling was a rational economic response for almost anyone in the Afghan supply chain. It is not only an insurance policy against poor harvests or any eradication and interdiction efforts they might fall foul of, but also, crucially, by restricting supply stockpiling will help boost the price again. Look at the graph below. This is exactly what happened in 2001. The Telaban banning production had nothing to do with religion. It was, in retrospect, a rather effective ploy to boost prices; they rose tenfold, and stockpiles from the bumper harvests of the two previous years meant that supply to the West was largely uninterrupted.


Again, this is raw economics writ large. Interdiction can only make the problem worse; even when it succeeds, it fails. Opium prices are still well above pre-2001 levels and the new report notably also estimated that the Taleban are now making $500 million a year from the trade.

• Part of the plan detailed at the presentation was to stop opium getting out of Afghanistan in order to keep prices low and thus dissuade production. As well as being similarly in denial of economic realities, this plan appears to ignore the fact that controls are all-but non existent on the lengthy border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, some of the worlds remotest and poorly policed territories. This is just next season's emperor's new clothes range.
  

• One final point made is worth flagging up. The switch in demand patterns from heroin to cocaine might be good for Afghanistan. Not only an extraordinary take on the balloon effect but also begging the question of how well this scenario works for Colombia.

The next time Rammell and Costa turn up for a double act to spin the latest 'successes' I expect more of the audience to point out the messengers' nakedness.

See also:

• The BBC's Mark Easton on the 'Missing Opium'
  
  
• Lord Malloch-Brown's comments on the report
  
  
• Costa being given a light grilling by Zaena Badawi on BBC's Hard Talk
  
  
• Exec Summary of the Report

• Medical use of Afghanistan's opium wont solve the problem
  

Keeping the Promise: Human Rights and AIDS

Below are two comments from high ranking UN figures, made on UN world AIDS day. The general tenet of the comments is positive and welcome, particularly the evident change in tone from the UNODC compared to some previous comments. That said, it is hoped that this discourse will develop in the coming years to acknowledge and discuss the role of the punitive prohibitions (enshrined in the UN drug conventions) in undermining human rights, and in creating or exacerbating many drug related harms, not least the context for the spread of HIV/AIDS though illicit drug injecting.

Statement by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay
on the occasion of World AIDS Day

1 December 2008.

This year, we mark both the 20th World AIDS Day and the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is fitting that during these landmark anniversaries we consider how far we have come in the global effort to combat AIDS.

In 2006, UN Member States made a commitment to achieve universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support by 2010. Today, fewer people are becoming infected with HIV, and fewer are dying of AIDS-related illnesses. At the end of 2007, three million people in low- and middle- income countries were taking anti-retroviral treatment. But much remains to be done.

Twenty-seven years after AIDS was first identified, stigma against people living with HIV is as strong as it ever was. One third of countries still do not have laws to protect people living with HIV. In most countries, discrimination remains against women, men who have sex with men, sex workers, drug users, and ethnic minorities.

The continued existence of punitive laws on disclosure of HIV status, the criminalization of the transmission of HIV and travel bans for people living with HIV, inadequate protection of women and girls from sexual violence, the marginalization of and hostility against sexual minorities, sex workers, injecting drug users, prisoners and other vulnerable groups all combine to drive them underground and away from HIV services. Like all people, these groups are entitled to the right to health and the full enjoyment of their human rights even though they may engage in activities that are criminalized in some countries.

AIDS thrives on injustice and inequality. A human rights-based response is critical to preventing new HIV infections and mitigating the epidemic's impact – whoever people are, and wherever they live.

In this 60th anniversary year of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, it is unacceptable that accident of birthplace or residence should determine our HIV survival prospects.

On World AIDS Day 2008, let the promise of human dignity enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provide the vision and impetus for reinvigorated efforts to achieve universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support.

Statement from UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa
on World AIDS Day

"Let us invest in our young people"

Today, we mark the 20th anniversary of the World AIDS Day. Long ago, we pledged to "keep the promise" but we have not. AIDS is still with us. Among the estimated 16 million people injecting drugs worldwide, one in five will likely contract HIV.

Is "AIDS fatigue" setting in as other global problems compete for attention? United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has declared that the challenge is to sustain leadership in this fight. Without strong and committed leadership, we will fail.

It is scandalous that less than 10% of injecting drug users have access to evidence-based HIV prevention and care services. It is time to bring health back to the mainstream of drug policy. The goals are within reach. New analyses could better guide national HIV prevention programmes and treatment programmes are expanding.

As we prepare to mark the 60th anniversary year of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we should remember that the human rights of vulnerable groups, including drug users and prisoners, are violated everyday. Instead of showing compassion we stigmatize drug users and cast them out as pariahs. No wonder many shun life-saving HIV prevention, treatment and care.

Drug-related HIV particularly afflicts young people, cutting down tomorrow's leaders in their prime. Young people aged between 15 and 24 account for an estimated 45 per cent of new HIV infections. .

Sharing contaminated needles is almost a sure-fire route way to HIV infection. Yet many young people still lack accurate information about how to avoid exposure to the virus.

Let us empower the youth with information. We must start showing leadership now.

Stopping the spread of AIDS is not only a Millennium Development Goal; it is an investment in the next generation.

That is why UNODC's campaign tells young people "Think before you start. Before you shoot. Before you share".

See also:

• UN special rapporteur documents systematic torture of drug suspects in Indonesia
  
  
• UN Secretary General calls for decriminalisation of injecting drug users
  
  
• UNAIDS and NGO statements shake CND out of its stupor
  
  
• The IHRA HR2 blog