On Friday 13th May, Professor David Nutt and Danny Kushlick will take part in a discussion on drug policy at Cotham School, Bristol. Join us from 6.30pm.
Transform's colleagues in the harm reduction field have asked us to circulate this press release on their behalf.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
More then forty major civil society organizations working in the field of HIV and drugs in Russia and internationally, have sent an open letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations calling to advocate for human rights oriented and scientifically based drug treatment and HIV prevention in Russia. Ban Ki-Moon is arriving to Moscow on April 21, 2011 and has scheduled several meetings with high level Russian officials, including the President Dmitry Medvedev.
Currently, the number of new cases of HIV in the country continues to grow and has long passed a critical point. According to the UN documents Russia remains among a few countries worldwide where HIV epidemics are on the rise. This epidemic is driven by sharing contaminated injection equipment for drug use. At the same time the government denies its drug dependent citizens access to life-saving evidence-based prevention and treatment interventions such as opioid substitution treatment with methadone or buprenorphine and needle and syringe HIV prevention programs, recommended by the UN.
“Neglecting the rights of people who use drugs, especially at the concentrated stage of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, will inevitably lead to serious health and social consequences for the society as a whole”, the letter says. It goes on by pointing out that the Russian government has “failed to ensure universal access to HIV prevention and treatment when millions of people who inject drugs are deprived of medical and social services support because the Government’s rejects the UN-recommended comprehensive package which includes substitution treatment and needle and syringe programs”.
Currently the use substitution treatment is legally banned in Russia which many experts believe is contrary to the letter and spirit of the UN Drug Conventions. Needle and syringe programs are considered by the Government as a threat to the national anti-drug strategy. Public debates on these issues are officially stifled and since recently, officially subjected to a legal ban.
The letter emphasises that efforts of civil society and international organizations are counterbalanced by the Government’s ideology-driven position of “zero tolerance” toward drug use. Numerous violations of human rights stemming from Russia's repressive and ineffective policy toward people using drugs have been documented and submitted to the UN Human Rights bodies”.
The civil society organizations called upon the UN Secretary General to urge the Russian Government to officially recognize the UN-recommended interventions as essential in combating HIV among drug users. According to the UN official documents, needle and syringe programs and substitution treatment are among the nine core interventions to prevent HIV among injecting drug users. Methadone and buprenorphine are included on the WHO Model Essential Medicines List.
It is noteworthy that during his visit to Cambodia at the end of 2010, the UN Secretary General met with patients of a methadone clinic and some of them received methadone from his hands and hands of his wife.
For contacts – Andrey Rylkov Foundation for Health and Social Justice:
I met the US Drug Tsar Gil Kerlikowske recently. It was at a reception at the US Ambassador's residence in Vienna during the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs. This is an annual event, and a welcome opportunity for the NGOs attending the CND in an official capacity (Transform has ECOSOC special consultative status) to meet various US figures and ONDCP staff.
I asked how the potential tensions between state, federal and international law might play out if one of the US State ballot initiatives to legalise and regulate cannabis/marijuana was passed by voters. Kerlikowske's answer was to list a number of arguments against legalisation - all familiar to those who followed the debate around Prop 19 in California last year.
The Drugs Tsar, Gil Kerlikowske at the US Amassador's reception in Vienna,
with Anita Krug and Aram Barra from YouthRise/Espolea*
I responded by saying that I understood the arguments for and against, but was specifically interested in what would happen in terms of the conflicts between state, federal and international law, given the the likelyhood that one of the various proposed state ballot initiatives would pass in 2012 (the California initiative is set to rerun, as well as initiatives in Colorado, and other states). This time Kerlikowske pointed out that 56% of voters in California had been sufficiently concerned about Marijuana abuse and drug driving to oppose the 2011 prop 19 initiative.
So I essentially repeated the question; quite aside from the debate and public opinion, what is the Federal response or sequence of events, should such an intiative actually succeed? - noting that this was a reasonable question given how close the Californian vote had been and the likelyhood, probable certainty that one of the other initiatives would succeed in the near future. This time Kerlikowske responded that he didn't 'deal in hypotheticals' - a response familiar to Prop 19 debate watchers.
So, pointing out that those in policy making naturally had to deal with hypotheticals as a matter of routine, I asked a slightly rephrasesd question; had the ONDCP done any scenario planning to explore this particular hypothetical, given its likely imminent move to non-hypothetical status. Kerlikowske replied that he 'couldn't comment'.
This was one of those unenlightening conversations that NGOs have with politically appointed civil servants on an almost daily basis - so largely unexpected. But a curious fact about the ONDCP director's role, that puts these sorts of conversations into some perspective, is that his position on legalisation is specifically mandated:
Responsibilities. –The Director– [...] (12) shall ensure that no Federal funds appropriated to the Office of National Drug Control Policy shall be expended for any study or contract relating to the legalization (for a medical use or any other use) of a substance listed in schedule I of section 202 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 812) and take such actions as necessary to oppose any attempt to legalize the use of a substance (in any form) that–
is listed in schedule I of section 202 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 812); and
has not been approved for use for medical purposes by the Food and Drug Administration;
Whatever Kerlikowske's views, and whatever evidence he is presented with (as he is not allowed to let the ONDCP gather any) he is duty bound to proffer a blanket opposition to any form of move to legally regulated markets, for any reason. There is something fundamentally obnoxious and anti-science about this wording, contained as it is in an Act of Congress, especially given the fact that Kerlikowske's statements on legalisation are often superficially factual (as indeed is the risible DEA guide 'Speaking Out Against Legalisation'). How balanced can we expect this analysis to be if all research on non-drug war options is forbidden and all comments subject to Congressional diktat?
More concerning were recent comments from Kerlikowske in an interview with Foriegn Policy in which legalisation cropped up again;
Foriegn Policy:You've madeyour views on legalization very clear in the past. How do you respond to the growing number of former Latin American leaders --former Mexican President Vicente Fox, most recently -- who have come out in favor of legalization or at least a radical overhaul of the current policy?
Gil Kerlikowske: Isn't if funny how people who no longer have responsibility for anyone's safety or security suddenly see the light?I think it's not a lot different from what we've heard in recent years in the United States, which is: We've had a war on drugs for 40 years and we don't see success. If we have a kid in high school, they can still get drugs or there's drugs on the street corner. So legalization must be an answer.
What we in government fail to do is to show that there really are quite successful, cost-effective programs we can use, so we don't have to go from the "war on drugs has failed" to "let's legalize."
By the way, I've never seen any of the legalization arguments that say, here's how it will work and here's how we'll regulate it. Heaven knows, we're not very successful with alcohol. We don't collect much in tax money to cover the costs. We certainly can't keep it out of the hands of teenagers or people who get behind the wheel. Why in heavens name do we think that if we legalize marijuana, we'd have a system where we could collect enough tax revenue to cover the increased health-care costs? I haven't seen that grand plan.
The first comment from Kerlikowske here is, I would suggest, an entirely misplaced and innappropriate ad hominem aimed at Fox and other former public servants who differ with Kerlikowske's (legally imposed) prohibitionist perspective. More importantly, from Transform's perspective, is the comment about never having seen 'any of the legalization arguments that say, here's how it will work and here's how we'll regulate it.' As Transform's widely distributed and cited 2009 publication 'After the War on Drugs; Blueprint for Regulation' addresses precisely this question in some detail (50,000 words, 215 pages), I found this statement a little surprising.
What's more Transform's efforts on this front have been built on previous work including ‘A Public Health Approach to Drug Control’ (2005) by the British Colombia Health Officers Council, and Effective Drug Control: Toward A New Legal Framework' (2005) by the King County Bar Association. The latter is based in Seattle, and produced the document whilst Kerlikowske was Seattle police chief.
We have sent Kerlikowske a letter drawing attention to this work, and a copy of Blueprint, which he is presumably allowed to read - even if he must do so in his own time and never mention it in public.
A key cost of the war on drugs is the the lack of access to to harm reduction (including needle exchange and opiate substitution treatment) and treatment, and the still high prevalence of HIV/AIDS amongst injecting drug users, that results where such access remains inadequate. Drug war politics continue to prioritise punitive enforcement over proven public health interventions, even when these have been clearly and unequivocally advocated in widely adopted declarations by UN health agencies. Worse still, it is invariably the the most vulnerable groups in society who carry the greatest burden of these costs - in terms of their health and wellbeing, freedoms and human rights.
Transform is pleased to support this year's IHRA conference declaration (sign here , download the pdf here) copied below, that highlights many of these issues and calls upon Governments to meet their commitments to address them. We encourage all interested parties to do the same.
IHRA is a partner organisation in the new Count the Costs project, launched this March at the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna. They are part of the grouping of organisations helping to gather and present more resources over the coming year, highlighting the health and human rights costs of the continued political commitment to a global war on users, suppliers and producers and the communities in which they live.
The Official Declaration of the 2011 International Harm Reduction Conference
Of the 33.3 million people living with HIV globally, an estimated three million are people who inject drugs.12 3They account for 30% of HIV infections outside of sub-Saharan Africa, and up to 80% of infections in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
The 2001 UNGASS Declaration of Commitment and the 2006 Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS established time-bound targets to be met and reported on by countries worldwide. The commitments aimed to address the needs of people who inject drugs, their families and the communities in which they live through an “urgent, coordinated and sustained response.” 4 5 These commitments remain unfulfilled. People who inject drugs are increasing as a percentage of global HIV infections with devastating consequences for individuals and communities.
The mobilisation of an “intensified, much more urgent and comprehensive response”5 to HIV for people who inject drugs requires strong global leadership, concrete national policies and adequate funds to implement and scale up evidence-based services. The targets and commitments set in the 2006 Political Declaration must be met to address the needs of, and to fulfill the human rights of people who inject drugs living with and at risk of HIV. World leaders gathering at the June 2011 UN General Assembly High Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS must ensure that these commitments are met as a matter of urgency.
At the 2011 United Nations High Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS, we, the undersigned, call for:
Acknowledgement that people who use drugs, as a key population group affected by HIV and AIDS, have not reached universal access to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support;
Renewed commitment and action toward the goal of universal access to comprehensive HIV prevention, treatment, care and support for people who inject drugs through the financing, implementation and scale-up of evidence-based harm reduction interventions; and
Commitment to removing legal and policy barriers to achieving the aims above, particularly a reorientation of punitive drug policies toward evidence- and human rights-based approaches.
It is time for action on HIV-related harm reduction. It is time for accountability for the rights of people who inject drugs.
A number of commitments made in the 2006 Political Declaration to address the international response to HIV remain unmet for people who inject drugs. Among them:
Commitment:“Ensure that a wide range of prevention programmes...including sterile injecting equipment and harm-reduction efforts related to drug use...is available in all countries, particularly the most affected countries” [paragraph 22]
Of the 158 countries and territories with reported injecting drug use globally, almost half lack essential harm reduction services.6 In most countries where needle and syringe programmes and opioid substitution therapy are available, coverage is still poor, reaching far below the numbers needed to have an impact on the epidemic.7 8 The situation for people held in places of detention is dire. Thirty-nine countries currently provide opioid substitution therapy in prisons, while only ten provide needle and syringe exchange, often reaching small numbers in few institutions.9
Action required:Evidence-based programmes targeting people who inject drugs need to be implemented and scaled up urgently across all settings in order to effectively prevent the further spread of HIV.
Commitment:“Reduce the global HIV/AIDS resource gap”[paragraph 39]
Less than 10% of the estimated need for harm reduction funding globally is presently being met. Current expenditure works out to less than three US cents per day per person injecting drugs.1011 12
Approximately US$160 million was spent on HIV-related harm reduction in low and middle income countries in 2007, falling far short of the US$2.13 billion that UNAIDS estimates was needed in 2009, and the $3.2 billion in 2010.
Action required:National and international resources for HIV-related harm reduction must be scaled up as a matter of urgency.
Commitment:“Eliminate gender inequalities, gender-based abuse and violence; increase the capacity of women and adolescent girls to protect themselves from the risk of HIV infection, principally through the provision of health care and services” [paragraph 30]
Women and girls who inject drugs are more vulnerable to drug-related harms, including HIV infection, than are men who inject drugs.13 In a number of regions globally, injecting drug use is often perceived to conflict with the “socially derived roles of women as mothers, partners and caretakers”, exposing them to greater stigma and human rights violations than men who inject drugs.13 14 15 Most women do not have access to services that meet their sexual and reproductive health needs and increase their capacity to protect themselves from HIV infection.16 Incarcerated women who inject drugs face elevated health risks, including HIV infection, than do non-incarcerated women, yet have little or no access to legal frameworks and services that address their particular needs.17 18 19
Action required:Gender-specific services and policies that facilitate their implementation are urgently required to ensure that women who inject drugs can effectively protect themselves from HIV infection.
Commitment:“Address the rising rates of HIV infection among young people to ensure an HIV-free future generation through the implementation of comprehensive, evidence-based prevention strategies” [paragraph 26]
Young people are increasingly affected by HIV and other harms associated with drug injecting.20 21 While we know that early intervention is necessary across age groups, legal barriers often prevent their implementation.22 23 In accordance with recent recommendations by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, there remains a need to provide “specialised and youth friendly...harm reduction services for young people” and to “amend laws that criminalise children for possession or use of drugs” in countries where such policies continue to be enforced.22
Action required:In order to effectively address drug injecting among young people, legal age restrictions for accessing sterile equipment and opioid substitution therapy must be lifted. Services integrating harm reduction, HIV testing and prevention, and sexual and reproductive health for young people must be made widely accessible.
Commitment:“Overcome legal, regulatory or other barriers that block access to effective HIV prevention, treatment, care and support” [paragraph 15]
There is clear evidence that criminalisation of people who use drugs and law enforcement have not only failed to reduce the prevalence of drug use, but have created harms that fuel the HIV epidemic.23 24 25 26 Many countries continue to prohibit the provision of sterile injecting equipment and opioid substitution therapy and criminalise drug possession and paraphernalia.2728 29 30
Such measures can drive people who inject drugs away from prevention and care services and increase the risk of HIV infection. People who inject drugs face further discrimination in terms of access to effective HIV treatment.
Action required:Ineffective and punitive drug policies, particularly criminalisation of drug possession, must be reformed to ensure the realisation of human rights, and to support the implementation of evidence-based interventions for people who inject drugs, as outlined in the Vienna Declaration.31
Commitment:“Eliminate all forms of discrimination against and ensure the full enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by people living with HIV and members of vulnerable groups” [paragraph 29]
People who inject drugs, particularly women, continue to experience multiple layers of stigma and discrimination that effectively undermine HIV prevention, treatment and support efforts.3233 34 35 36 Record incarceration figures due to drug law enforcement have led to overcrowding and poor conditions in prisons.37 38
Severe human rights violations against people who use drugs, such as cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, arbitrary arrest and detention, and extortion and police violence have been documented widely in a number of countries.
Action required:Punitive and discriminatory measures must be discontinued, and adequate resources dedicated to promoting health and human rights-based responses to drug use and HIV.
References
1 UNAIDS (2010) Global Report on the AIDS Epidemic. View report Geneva: The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS. 2 Mathers B et al (2008). The global epidemiology of injecting drug use and HIV among people who inject drugs: A systematic review. Lancet, 372 (9651), 1733-1745. 3 Mathers B et al (2010). HIV prevention, treatment, and care services for people who inject drugs: A systematic review of global, regional, and national coverage. Lancet, 375, DOI:10.1016/S0140-6736(10)60232-2. 4 2001 Declaration of Commitment on HIV/AIDS, UN GA Special Session on HIV/AIDS, 25-27 June 2001, paragraph 7. 5 Political Declaration on HIV/AIDS UN GA Res 60/262, 2 June 2006, paragraph 14. 6 Cook C. (2010) The Global State of Harm Reduction: Key Issues for Broadening the Response. London: International Harm Reduction Association. 7 Mathers, B. Degenhardt, L. Ali, H. Wiessing, L. Hickman, M. Mattick, R. P. Myers, B. Ambekar, A. Strathdee, S. A. HIV prevention, treatment, and care services for people who inject drugs: a systematic review of global, regional, and national coverage. The Lancet. 2010 Mar. 20: 375(9719):1014-28. 8 WHO, UNODC, UNAIDS (2009) Technical Guide for Countries to Set Targets for Universal Access to HIV Prevention, Treatment and Care for Injecting Drug Users. Geneva: World Health Organisation. 9 Jurgens R. (2010) ‘Out of sight, out of mind: Harm reduction in prisons and other places of detention.’ In The Global State of Harm Reduction: Key Issues for Broadening the Response. London: International Harm Reduction Association. 10 Stimson G., Cook C., Bridge J., Rio-Navarro J., Lines R., Barrett D. (2010) Three Cents a Day Is Not Enough: Resourcing Harm Reduction on a Global Basis. London: International Harm Reduction Association. 11 Stimson G., Cook C., Bridge J., Rio-Navarro J., Lines R., Barrett D. (2010) Three Centre a Day Is Not Enough: Resourcing Harm Reduction on a Global Basis. London: International Harm Reduction Association. 12 UNAIDS (2007) Financial Resources Required to Achieve Universal Access to HIV Prevention, Treatment, Care and Support. UNAIDS Inter-agency Task Team on Young People. World Health Organisation: Geneva. 13 Roberts A., Mathers B. and Degenhardt L. (2010) Women who inject drugs: A review of their risks, experiences and needs. Secretariat of the Reference Group to the UN on HIV and Injecting Drug Use. National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC), University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. 14 Sherman, S.G., Women and drugs across the globe: A call to action. International Journal of Drug Policy, 2008. 19(2): p. 97‐98. 15 Olszewski, D., Giraudon, I., Hedrich, D., Montanari, L., Women's Voices: Experiences and perceptions of women who face drug‐related problems in Europe. 2009. European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction. 16 Roberts A., Mathers B. and Degenhardt L. (2010) Women who inject drugs: A review of their risks, experiences and needs. Secretariat of the Reference Group to the UN on HIV and Injecting Drug Use. National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC), University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. 17 Ashdown J. and James M. (2010) Women in Detention. International Review of the Red Cross. Volume 92: 877. 18 Ashdown J. and James M. (2010) Women in Detention. International Review of the Red Cross. Volume 92: 877. 19 WHO, UNODC (2009) Women’s health in prison: correcting gender inequity in prison health. Download PDF. Copenhagen, Denmark. 20 EHRN (2009) Young people and injecting drug use in selected countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Eds. Jean-Paul Grund and Simona Merkinaite. Eurasian Harm Reduction Network View PDF. 21 WHO (2006) Preventing HIV/AIDS in Young People: A systematic review of the evidence from developing countries. Eds. David A. Ross, Bruce Dick and Jane Ferguson. UNAIDS Inter-agency Task Team on Young People. World Health Organisation: Geneva. 22 Committee on the Rights of the Child (2011) Fifty-sixth session: Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties Under Article 44 of the Convention. 23 Degenhardt L, Chiu W-T, Sampson N, et al. (2008) Toward a global view of alcohol, tobacco, cannabis, and cocaine use: Findings from the WHO World Mental Health Surveys. PLOS Medicine. 5:1053-67. 24 Jurgens R, Ball A, Verster A. (2009) Interventions to reduce HIV transmission related to injecting drug use in prison. Lancet Infectious Disease. 9:57-66. 25 The National Centre on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University (2009). Shoveling up II: The impact of substance abuse on State budgets. New York: Columbia University. 26 Reuter P. (2009) Ten years after the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS): assessing drug problems, policies and reform proposals. Addiction 2009;104:510-7. 27 Reuter P. (2009) Ten years after the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS): assessing drug problems, policies and reform proposals. Addiction. 104:510-7. 28 Lert F. and Kazatchkine M.D. (2007) Antiretroviral HIV treatment and care for injecting drug users: an evidence-based overview. International Journal of Drug Policy. 18:4. 29 IHRD (2008). Harm Reduction Developments 2008: Countries with Injection Driven HIV Epidemics. New York: International Harm Reduction Development Program (IHRD) of the Open Society Institute. 30 Wolfe D., Carrieri P. and Shepard D. (2010) Treatment and care for injecting drug users with HIV infection: a review of barriers and ways forward. Lancet. 376: 9738, 355-366. 31 The Vienna Declaration (2010) View declaration. 32 Ahern J, Stuber J, Galea S. (2007) Stigma, discrimination and the health of illicit drug users. Drug and Alcohol Dependence. 88:188. 33 Gallahue P. and Lines R. (2010) The Death Penalty for Drug Offences: Global Overview 2010. The International Harm Reduction Association. London: International Harm Reduction Association (IHRA). 34 Open Society Foundations (2010) Human Rights and Drug Policy Briefings for the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs “Briefing 2: Human Rights and Drug Policy: Drugs, Criminal Laws and Policing Practices.” Download PDF. December 2010. 35 Human Rights Watch (2010) Where Darkness Knows No Limits: Incarceration, Ill-treatment and Forced Labour as Drug Rehabilitation in China. Ed. Joseph Amon. New York: Human Rights Watch. 36 IHRD (2009) Human Rights Abuses in the Name of Drug Treatment: Reports from the Field. New York: International Harm Reduction Development Program (IHRD) of the Open Society Institute. 37 United Nations General Assembly. A/65/255 Report of the Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. Paragraph 68. 38 C. Hughes and A. Stevens (2007) The Effects of Decriminalization of Drug Use in Portugal. The Beckley Foundation Drug Policy Programme. Briefing Paper 14.
Such a call should be relatively uncontroversial at a UN gathering - the General Assembly has called for a moratorium on all use of the death penalty, and the UNODC has recently (it should be noted - following concerted NGO pressure) made a clear statement opposing the use of the death penalty. In a 2010 paper by the previous Executive Director of the UNODC, Antonio Maria Costa, titled 'Drug control, crime prevention and criminal justice: a human rights perspective - Note by the Executive Director' (para 25/26) the UNODC position was laid out (bold emphasis added):
"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.
The plenary statement (endorsed by Transform) as read:
Date: 24 March 2011
Agenda Item No. 7: World Situation with Regard to Drug Trafficking
"Thank you, Mr Chairman. This statement is made on behalf of:
The International Harm Reduction Association
The International Network of People Who Use Drugs
Penal Reform International
Human Rights Watch
The International Drug Policy Consortium
The German Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty
The Open Society Foundations Drug Policy Programme
Reprieve
Transform Drug Policy Foundation
The Quaker Council for European Affairs
and 20 other non-governmental organisations
We are grateful for the opportunity to speak on this important agenda item.
We heard yesterday from UNODC of the seizures of illicit substances made in many parts of the world. While looking at the statistics on tonnes and kilos, we must also recognise the human face of such seizures.
We must consider the penalties that will be applied to those who are arrested and prosecuted. This is not to excuse criminality – but nor can we excuse the taking of human life for any crime.
The death penalty for drug offences is a violation of international law. This is clear. Yet 32 jurisdictions retain this excessive and cruel punishment. The International Harm Reduction Association has identified hundreds of executions annually for drug-related offences but believes that as many as one thousand people may be executed for drug offences each year when states that keep their death penalty statistics a secret are counted.
The justification for this is usually deterrence. This is a faulty argument that has been presented many times over, and for a range of crimes.
While nobody should be executed for any offence, the vast majority of those known to be sentenced to die for drugs are not kingpins or major traffickers. They are carriers. Very often involvement in this aspect of the drug trade is driven by poverty, drug dependence and a lack of options. To kill these people is cruel in the extreme.
Our call is brief. All States must cease the application of the death penalty for drug offences, and, indeed, for all offences, and immediately institute a moratorium to spare the lives of those on death row."
Fifty Years of the War on Drugs: Time to Count the Costs and Explore the Alternatives The War on Drugs - Count the Costs global campaign will be launched by NGOs from around the world at a side-event at the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in Vienna:
When: Wednesday 23 March, 13.15 – 14.45
Where: Mozart Room, Vienna International Conference Centre, Vienna
Speakers will outline the many costs of the war on drugs, and the aims of the campaign, to an audience of international policy makers, NGO representatives, and media. See the new project website here: www.countthecosts.org for more details
The War on Drugs: Count the Costs campaign will bring together interested parties from around the world, including NGOs, policy makers and others whose work is negatively impacted by international drug enforcement. Together they will call on governments and international agencies to meaningfully evaluate the unintended consequences of the war on drugs and explore evidence-based alternatives. The results of this campaign will be presented to the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs in 2012. Here is the full text of the call:
The War on Drugs - Count the Costs and Explore the Alternatives
"The global 'war on drugs' has been fought for 50 years, without preventing the long-term trend of increasing drug supply and use. Beyond this failure, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime has also identified the many serious ‘unintended negative consequences’ of the drug war. These costs result not from drug use itself, but from choosing a punitive enforcement-led approach that, by its nature, places control of the trade in the hands of organised crime, and criminalises many users. In the process this:
1. Undermines international development and security, and fuels conflict
2. Threatens public health, spreads disease and causes death
3. Undermines human rights
4. Promotes stigma and discrimination
5. Creates crime and enriches criminals
6. Causes deforestation and pollution
7. Wastes billions on ineffective law enforcement
The 'war on drugs' is a policy choice. There are other options that, at the very least, should be debated and explored using the best possible evidence and analysis.
We all share the same goals – a safer, healthier and more just world.
Therefore, we the undersigned, call upon world leaders and UN agencies to quantify the unintended negative consequences of the current approach to drugs, and assess the potential costs and benefits of alternative approaches."
Martin Powell, Co-ordinator of the Count the Costs campaign said:
“In 1961 UN member states gathered to sign the Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the legal cornerstone of the enforcement-led approach that has become known as the global war on drugs. Fifty years later, with literally trillions of dollars spent, illegal drugs are one of the largest commodity trades on earth. Even the UN Office on Drugs and Crime that oversees the global drug control system, concedes that drug enforcement efforts have fuelled the creation of a vast criminal market with disastrous negative unintended consequences.
Yet no government or UN body has ever quantified these negative costs, or meaningfully explored alternatives to the war on drugs. After half a century this is long overdue. Only by looking at the evidence of what has worked and what has not can we hope to move towards a global drug control system that is, as the UNODC has suggested ‘fit for purpose’.”
The Count the Costs call mirrors numerous comments made by world leaders, concerning the need to evaluate the costs and benefits of various policy regimes including President Santos of Colombia, Washington Post, Dec 2010:
“There are some fundamental structural contradictions in this war on drugs . . . We in Colombia have been successful, but our success is hurting the whole of Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean, Africa, and eventually it will backfire on us again. So are we pursuing the correct long-term policy? I don't object to discussing any alternatives but if we are going to discuss alternatives, let's discuss every alternative… what is the cost, what is the benefit of each alternative?”
The War on Drugs: Count the Costs campaign launch is backed by: International Drug Policy Consortium; International Harm Reduction Association; Eurasian Harm Reduction Network; Drug Policy Alliance (US); Espolea (Mexico); Release (UK); Transform Drug Policy Foundation (UK); Hungarian Civil Liberties Union; CuPIHD (Mexico); Transnational Institute (Netherlands); International Centre for Science in Drug Policy (Canada); New Zealand Drug Policy Foundation; Washington Office on Latin America.
ENDS
Contact:
Martin Powell, Count the Costs Project Coordinator +44 (0)7875 679301 martin@tdpf.org.uk
Steve Rolles, Senior Policy Analyst, Transform Drug Policy Foundation +44 (0)7980 213943 steve@tdpf.org.uk
Where: Mozart Room, Vienna International Conference Centre, Vienna When: Wednesday 23 March, 13.15 – 14.45 Speakers:
Simona Merkinaite: Policy and Advocacy Program Officer, Eurasian Harm Reduction Network (Lithuania) - The health and human rights impacts of drug law enforcement in the Eurasian regions
Aram Barra: Drug Policy Programme Director, Espolea (Mexico) - Counting the costs of Mexico’s 'war on drugs'
Damon Barrett: Senior Human Rights Analyst, International Harm Reduction Association (UK) - Drugs and human rights: is drug law enforcement proportionate? The case for Impact Assessment
Chair: Martin Powell: Count the Costs Project Coordinator, Transform Drug Policy Foundation (UK)
The unintended consequences of the war on drugs were outlined by then Executive Director of UN Office on Drugs and Crime Antonio Maria Costa in "Making drug control 'fit for purpose': Building on the UNGASS decade" UNODC, 2008, p10:
“The first unintended consequence is a huge criminal black market that thrives in order to get prohibited substances from producers to consumers…
The second unintended consequence is what one might call policy displacement. The expanding criminal black market obviously demanded a commensurate law enforcement response, and more resources. The consequence was that public health was displaced into the background, more honoured in lip service and rhetoric, but less in actual practice… The third unintended consequence is geographical displacement. It is often called the balloon effect because squeezing (by tighter controls) one place produces a swelling (namely, an increase) in another place… The fourth unintended consequence is what one might call substance displacement. If the use of one drug was controlled, by reducing either supply or demand, suppliers and users moved on to another drug with similar psychoactive effects. The fifth unintended consequence is the way we perceive and deal with the users of illicit drugs. A system appears to have been created in which those who fall into the web of addiction find themselves excluded and marginalized from the social mainstream, tainted with a moral stigma, and often unable to find treatment even when they may be motivated to want it.”
A new report from the US based Council on Foreign Relations titled 'The Drug War in Mexico: Confronting a Shared Threat' makes a powerful critique of the ongoing enforcement-led US response, before calling for a more pragmatic approach built more around development and public health interventions. The report specifically calls for a Government inquiry into the potential costs and benefits drug legalisation, and for the Federal government to allow state level experimentation with the legalisation, taxation and regulation of cannabis/marijuana.
The analysis that leads to these recommendations is not new, but is clearly stated (for full text with references - see pdf) highlighting the need to look at the potential costs and benefits of current policy against those of policy alternatives (a DTO is a Drug Trafficking Organisation):
Rethinking U.S. Drug Policy
Mexico’s security crisis illustrates the limitations of current anti-drug strategies and offers an opportunity to shift the paradigm to a more sensible approach. Over the last four decades, the war on drugs has lacked clear, consistent, or achievable objectives; has had little effect on aggregate demand; and has imposed an enormous social and economic cost. A state-driven, supply-side, and penalty based approach has failed to curb market production, distribution, and consumption of drugs. The assumption that punishing suppliers and users can effectively combat a large market for illicit drugs has proven to be utterly false. Rather, prohibition bestows enormous profits on traffickers, criminalizes otherwise law-abiding users and addicts, and imposes enormous costs on society. Meanwhile, there has been no real effect on the availability of drugs or their consumption, and three quarters of U.S. citizens believe that the war on drugs has failed.
One flaw of current U.S.-Mexico strategy is the false presumption that international trafficking of drugs, guns, and cash can be effectively addressed through interdiction, particularly along the nearly two-thousand-mile U.S.-Mexican border. After a three-decade effort to beef up security, the U.S.Mexico border is more heavily fortified than at any point since the U.S.-Mexico war of 1846–48. The United States has deployed more than twenty thousand border patrol agents and built hundreds of miles of fencing equipped with high-tech surveillance equipment, all at an annual cost of billions of dollars—with $3 billion per year spent on border control alone. While this massive security build-up at the border has achieved maximum attainable levels of operational control, the damage to Mexico’s drug cartels caused by border interdiction has been inconsequential. Meanwhile, there have been several unintended consequences of heightened interdiction at the border, including added hassles and delays that obstruct billions of dollars in legitimate commerce each year, the expansion and increased sophistication of cross-border smuggling operations, and greater U.S. vulnerability to attacks and even infiltration by traffickers. Further efforts to beef up the border through more patrolling and fencing will have diminishing returns, and will likely cause more economic harm than gains in security for the struggling communities of the border region.
Given the limits of U.S. drug policy, there is a need for more information and analysis to weigh the costs and benefits of current efforts against alternative policy options. For example, one recent study suggests that legalizing marijuana would cause as much as $1 to 2 billion in losses for Mexican drug traffickers, since competition from legally registered producers would drive them out of the business. Since these DTOs would continue to smuggle other profitable illicit drugs, the main benefit of marijuana legalization would be to allow U.S. border security and law enforcement to focus their resources on other problems. Of course, while support for this idea is growing, the potential hazards and limitations of drug legalization are substantial. Legalization would almost certainly cause drug traffickers to move into other illicit activities to maintain profitability, so U.S. and Mexican authorities would still need to develop better measures to combat kidnapping, robbery, extortion, and other forms of organized crime. Meanwhile, as with other controlled substances, like tobacco and alcohol, increased recreational drug use would likely result in widespread use and significant social harms in both countries, including traffic fatalities, fatal overdoses, addiction, and chronic health problems.
Any effort to legalize drugs would need to proceed with careful study, ample deliberation, and due caution. Yet, with or without legalization, authorities should work with greater urgency and focus to develop public health and law enforcement measures to prevent, treat, and reduce the harms associated with drug consumption. In the end, treating drug consumption and organized crime as separate problems will make it possible to address both more effectively. To make this possible—and before other countries or even some U.S. states venture further down the road toward drug legalization—the U.S. federal government should move quickly to examine the current approach and chart a course toward a more effective drug policy.
The author seems to make somewhat sweeping, non evidence-based assumptions about reform and increasing use (although it is ambiguous - is he merely warning or the dangers of increased use if the process is ill managed?) and fails to make a distinction between use and misuse, or prevalence and harm (See Blueprint for Regulation, p. 40)
It is, however, worth reading the whole 56 page report. The key drug law reform recommendations are:
Reevaluate U.S. Drug Policy
The U.S. Congress should commission an independent advisory group to examine the fiscal and social impacts of drug legalization as well as other alternative approaches to the war on drugs. The commission should be provided adequate funding---at least $2 million---to provide a comprehensive review of existing policies and develop realistic, clearly defined, and achievable policy recommendations for reducing the harms
caused by drug consumption and abuse.
Shift U.S. Counter-Drug Priorities to Focus on Major Sources of Illicit Income
To allow policy experimentation, the federal government should permit states to legalize the production, sale, taxation, and consumption of marijuana. While testing this policy shift, authorities should redirect scarce law enforcement resources to focus on the more damaging and socially unacceptable drugs (like heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine) from which Mexican DTOs derive more than 70 percent of their drug proceeds.
The first of these calls is in line with Transform's call for current drug policy and alternatives to be subject to meaningful scrutiny in the form of an Impact Assessment.
We would question the wisdom of directing resources towards more risky drugs proposed in the second (no more likely to succeed, and just as likely to lead to unintended negative consequences as any prohibition where demand is already established) but the call for an experiment in legalisation and regulation of cannabis is still an important one for an influential body such as the CFR to be endorsing.
Most people would assume that professional pollsters understand the importance of how their questions are worded. If you want to obtain valid results from your poll, you need to make sure that your questions represent both sides of an issue fairly, without any latent bias in their wording.
For example, if you want to know people’s views on taxation, you should recognise that there is likely to be a vast difference in responses between the following questions:
(1)Do you favour an increase in the level of tax you pay on your income?
(2)Do you favour greater investment in public services such as healthcare, education and policing?
Obviously the two questions are different sides of the same coin, but if you only ask the first, you’re likely to get an overwhelming ‘no’, and if you only ask the second, you’re likely to get an overwhelming ‘yes’. Predictably, therefore, how a question is phrased, or the context in which it is asked, affects the answer you will get to it (as ‘Yes, Prime Minister’ brilliantly satirises in the scene below).
Pollsters appear to understand this concept when it comes to most issues – but rarely with drug policy reform.
If you look at the findings of an Angus Reid public opinion poll conducted last year, then you may feel disheartened at the lack of public support for a more progressive UK drug policy. In that poll, participants were shown a list of banned substances, including cannabis, along with the question ‘Do you support or oppose the legalisation of each of the following drugs?’.
Unsurprisingly, when formulated bluntly like this, the question yielded only a 35% level of support for the 'legalisation' of cannabis; and support for the legalisation of other drugs (generally seen as riskier) was lower still, with approximately one in five respondents approving of such a move. (It should be noted, however, than even this seemingly low level of support is relatively encouraging, as several years ago some polls claimed that only one in ten were in favour of legalising the most risky drugs.)
Part of the problem relates to the visceral aversion, embedded in the public consciousness, to the word ‘legalisation’. This aversion is largely based on confusion about what the term means when used in the drugs debate. The confusion is not surprising; it stems from the fact that legalisation is merely a process (broadly of making something illegal, legal), rather than a policy end point. A straight ‘Legalisation: yes/no?’ question gives no indication of how the legal regulatory regime being advocated as the final outcome of the process might actually work.
In the absence of such policy context just saying ‘legalisation’ on its own can reasonably be taken to suggest the removal of all controls – moving to the sort of commercial free market that Transform and most drug law reform advocates are specifically not calling for.
The legalisation question without any policy or regulatory context can also be confused with a question about personal or moral approval of drugs or drug use (in effect, ‘Do you approve of/condone the use of “drug x”’), as opposed to the real question, which is about what one thinks is the best policy response to dealing with a particular drug or drugs in society. We may, for example, disapprove of unhealthy food or overeating without suggesting blanket prohibitions on pork scratchings, or criminal punishments for people who eat too many of them.
If we want to know whether people morally approve of certain drug-using behaviours then it would be fine to ask a question about that. If we want to know what form of legal regulation people think would be appropriate for certain drugs or drug-using behaviours then we need a better question than ‘Legalisation: yes/no?’.
As a starting point, instead of using only the word ‘legalisation’ in opinion polls on drug policy reform, it might be more appropriate and accurate to ask people whether they support or oppose‘legal regulation of drug production supply and use’, or ‘legalisation and regulation’, which would be better, if still imperfect. What is really needed, however, is a more specific and detailed description of the policy options people are being asked to chose from.
This semantic minefield of drug policy terminology is made all the more perilous by misunderstandings of the word ‘decriminalisation’. Instead of conflating the meanings of ‘decriminalisation’ and ‘legalisation’, as so often happens in media debate, pollsters should be aware of and clearly clarify the distinction between the two terms. The term ‘decriminalisation’ is usually understood to refer to the removal of only criminal penalties for certain activities (most commonly possession and personal use of drugs), but not of other, non-criminal sanctions, such as fines. 'Legalisation', by contrast, refers to a transition from prohibited to legally regulated production, supply and availability, with decriminalisation of use implicit in this process.
Neither term, unfortunately, has a strict legal definition, so they are subject to frequent confusion, often being used interchangeably. The only solution to this misunderstanding is to refrain from using the words in isolation and, again, contextualise them with some clear and concise explanatory text, eg: ‘Decriminalisation – moving from criminal to civil/administrative sanctions such as fines, for personal possession and use’.
When you look at polls which are more aware of the nuances of drug policy language, the results are strikingly different and give reason to be considerably more optimistic about the prospects for reform.
A recent poll of 2,000 people, commissioned by the Liberal Democrats for Drug Policy Reform, asked participants to select the most tolerable of three regulatory options for a range of drugs, along with a clearer description of what each option actually entails. They were:
Light regulation (drugs sold like tobacco and alcohol are now)
Strict government control and regulation (an example of how government could heavily regulate a legal market in an attempt to minimise harm)
Prohibition (the current status of illegal drugs)
Now without claiming this formulation is methodologically bulletproof, it does demonstrate that when given a clearer overview of the features of each option, it seems that, contrary to the findings of the less comprehensive Angus Reid poll, respondents are increasingly receptive to the idea of moving from absolute prohibitions to some method of legally regulating drug markets and availability.
The results of the LDDPR poll were that 70% of participants favoured some form of legal regulation of cannabis, with one in three of those polled favouring a regulatory system similar to that for tobacco and alcohol.
It also emerged that, when compared to the results of the Angus Reid poll, a far greater number of people would like to see the legally regulated availability of ecstasy (39% vs. 19%), cocaine (36% vs. 16%) and heroin (30% vs. 18%).
Perhaps emphasising just how much of a difference good polling can make, the LDDPR survey also made the somewhat unexpected finding that Daily Mail and Daily Express readers constituted the demographic most in favour of the strict control and regulation of drugs. Total support for at least some system of legal regulation was 66% among these readers, and 67% among Conservative voters.
Clearly more work in this area is needed (perhaps with some independently agreed formulation for the questions), but Ewan Hoyle, the founder of LDDPR, has highlighted the importance of asking the right questions when trying to establish the public’s views on drug policy reform.
Interestingly, his conclusion – that ‘…when asked to choose between various regulatory options, the British people are comfortable with strict control and regulation as a solution to our drugs problem’ – also seems to apply to the American people, too.
An Economist-YouGov poll carried out last month asked respondents to agree or disagree with the statement ‘Marijuana should be legalised, taxed and regulated’. In every age group polled – even over-65s – more people favoured than opposed legalisation. Although it is hard to say definitively, it seems reasonable to suggest that this is due to the mention of the more public-friendly measures of taxation and regulation – measures which, although they go hand in hand with legalisation, are so often omitted in opinion polls on drug policy reform.
It certainly seems to be the case that this question, which spells out a little more clearly what is actually being advocated, delivers more positive results than the more traditional ‘Legalisation of marijuana: yes/no?’ – although even when this latter question is asked we can observe a long-term trend of growing support for change in the US:
The above graph, compiled by polling guru Nate Silver, amalgamates all the data he could find on the issue of the legalisation of cannabis/marijuana – including the results of several Gallup polls and the General Social Survey – and shows that there has been an upward trend in favour of such a move since 1990.
Consequently, while especially encouraging findings emerge from polls that provide a more comprehensive overview of what drug law reform might actually entail, even the findings of polls that do not give a sufficient account of the options for reform show a sustained, long-term increase in support for more progressive drug control measures.
The story with regard to cannabis was roughly similar in the UK until the mid-2000s, since when support has dropped from between 40-50% (up from 15% in the 1980s), to between 30-40% today. Speculating as to why this has happened is for another blog, although it probably reflects the shifts in the nature of the UK cannabis market towards stronger varieties and the associated health concerns raised, or arguably hyped, by the media and politicians during the interminable cannabis re-re-classification saga. It may also reflect the fall in use noted by the British Crime Survey over the same period.
Hopefully the growing support more broadly – in the UK and elsewhere – will reassure policymakers and politicians that the legal regulation of currently illegal drugs is not only practical but politically possible. Remember that the steady change in public opinion has happened despite, until very recently, near universal political and media hostility. If any major political forces got behind reform it seems likely that things would change much more quickly – it's a question of who wants to pick up the baton and claim the plaudits.
Transform's senior policy analyst, Steve Rolles, will be amongst the speakers at the second event in the 'Ceasefire in the war on drugs?' debate series organised by the University of Bedfordshire, joining former chief constable Tom lloyd, and the UK's Colombian Ambassador Mauricio Rodriguez Munera. Titled 'How the world's view of the drugs 'war' is changing', the event is at Kings College London at 6pm on the 6th of April. The event is are free and open to all (but space is limited).
For more details, including speakers at both events, please see the flyer below (click to see full size).
Those who have followed the drugs debate will be only too aware of the way that politicians play on the fears of their citizens in order to maintain the war on drugs, despite the fact that it is their citizens who bear the brunt of its counterproductive effect. The International Relations theory of securitisation describes, better than any framework I’ve seen, how the threat-based process works. Moving to a non-securitised approach is essential to ending the war on drugs.
Securitisation is described as “the move that takes politics beyond the established rules of the game and frames the issue either as a special kind of politics or as above politics” (Buzan et al. 1998: 23). By declaring something a security issue, the speaker entitles himself to enforce and legitimise unusual and extreme measures to fight this threat. Referenced from here.
“The main argument of securitisation theory is that security is a speech act, that alone by uttering ‘security’ something is being done. “It is by labelling something a security issue that it becomes one.”(Wæver 2004a,) A securitising actor, by stating that a particular referent object is threatened in its existence, claims a right to extraordinary measures to ensure the referent objects survival. The issue is then moved out of the sphere of normal politics into the realm of emergency politics, where it can be dealt with swiftly and without the normal (democratic) rules and regulations of policy making. For the content of security this means that it has no longer any given meaning but that it can be anything a securitising actor says it is. Security - understood in this way - is a social construction, with the meaning of security dependent on what is done with it.”
This table illustrates how the process of securitisation applies to drug policy:
In March 2009 Senator John McCain described President Calderon's struggle with the cartels as "an existential threat to the very fabric of the government of Mexico," a statement Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said she agreed with.
In April that year Hillary Clinton told a House committee that the government in Islamabad is ceding territory and "basically abdicating to the Taliban and the extremists" in signing a deal that limits the government's involvement in the war-torn Swat Valley. Adding: "I think we cannot underscore [enough] the seriousness of the existential threat posed to the state of Pakistan by the continuing advances," said Clinton, adding that the nuclear-armed nation could also pose a "mortal threat" to the United States and other countries.
The following is from former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and appeared in the International Information Program electronic journal "U.S. National Security Strategy: A New Era", issued in December 2002.
“Perhaps most fundamentally, 9/11 crystallized our vulnerability. It also threw into sharp relief the nature of the threats we face today. Today's threats come less from massing armies than from small, shadowy bands of terrorists -- less from strong states than from weak or failed states. And after 9/11, there is no longer any doubt that today America faces an existential threat to our security -- a threat as great as any we faced during the Civil War, the so-called "Good War," or the Cold War.”
The use of the phrase ‘existential threat’ is highly revealing if you are aware that its source is the Copenhagen School, and appears in ‘Security: a new framework for analysis’ Buzan et al 1998. In a significant theoretical departure from classical security studies, Buzan, Waever and De Wilde came up with a new framework they called ‘securitisation’.
So, an existential threat is constructed as a threat to the very existence of the referent object. It is an academic version of “We’re all going to die!” It is generally understood that a speech act is made by a political leader and that the intended audience is the public. In the war on drugs the audiences who need to buy into the speech act are in fact other governments.
Securitisation 1 Fifty years ago the international community, through the UN, (and under considerable pressure from the US), agreed that addiction to and abuse of “narcotic drugs” constituted a threat to mankind. Describing it as a “serious evil for the individual” and “fraught with social and economic danger to mankind” and “Conscious of their duty to prevent and combat this evil” they agreed to put in place “effective measures against abuse of narcotic drugs” stating that this would “require co-ordinated and universal action”. These words from the 1961 UN Single Convention formed the basis of what has come to be known as the War on Drugs.
The “universal action” was to treat coca, cannabis and opium based drugs, destined for non-medical use, as a threat to the very existence of civilization as we know it. It is this threat-based approach, (in contrast to our predominantly trade and public health-based approach to alcohol and tobacco) that gave rise first to a global regime of prohibition and, somewhat predictably, to a globally profitable market exploited by organized criminals.
Securitisation 2 Over a period of decades these criminal cartels became a significant economic global force and, in combination with non-state actors, are perceived as a threat to nation states, and indeed entire regions of the globe. The 1988 UN Convention on drugs reads:“Recognizing the links between illicit traffic and other related organized criminal activities which undermine the legitimate economies and threaten the stability, security and sovereignty of States”. The recognition of this secondary threat from organized crime, the global community, again under pressure from the US (and in denial that it was the primary prohibition that had created the opportunity for organized criminals in the first place), embarked upon an increasingly militarized drug war to neutralize the ‘threat’ to nation states.
The collective amnesia, that it was the initial prohibition that created the opportunity for organised criminals, means that many politicians deliberately or unconsciously conflate the two securitisations and contend that ‘drugs’ or ‘addiction’ are the threats, when in fact the far greater threats arise from the ‘unintended consequences’ of the ‘extraordinary measure’ – prohibition.
It could be worse however. We might have had a thrid securitisation. In March 2010, during an expanded session of the Russia-NATO Council in Brussels, Viktor Ivanov, the head of Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service (FSKN), presented Moscow’s seven-point plan on fighting drug production in Afghanistan and suggested creating a joint group with NATO to tackle Afghan poppy production.
Among other ideas, the plan included “an upgrade of the status of the Afghan drug production problem in the UN Security Council to the level of a threat to world peace and security."
The inherent nature of a securitisation is anti-democratic, in so far as it is “the move that takes politics beyond the established rules of the game and frames the issue either as a special kind of politics or as above politics”. That is why evidence is anathema and why the political rhetoric around drug policy is so irrational and populist in tone. Once an issue has been securitised, a system of propaganda must be maintained to hold it within that framework.
Which leads me to one last point. When a securitisation has been in place for as long as the one relating to the non-medical use of drugs, progressive reform in itself becomes a ‘threat’ – a ‘threat’ to a long standing mission and some very well resourced agencies, charged with fighting the drug war. Now we see that what is actually under threat is an inflexible world order. A world order, whose long standing international relations, and indeed, national domestic social policies are predicated on fighting a futile war on drugs, are fundamentally threatened by a reform process that undoes its foundations.
Since the recent economic meltdown, it has been suggested that the global financial institutions are “too big to fail”. In many ways this is the case with macro-securitisations, like those of terror and drugs. There is so much political and economic capital tied up in the securitisation of drugs, it is difficult for those in power to envisage its demise. Tragically, what is bringing criticism of the securitisation to the fore, are the events in Mexico, Colombia and West Africa (very few care about Afghanistan). The collateral damage of the 1961 convention is taking a very heavy toll and the threat based narrative is sounding tired and paranoid.
When the US objected to Bolivia’s recent attempt to end the ban on coca chewing, they cited their main reason as maintaining the “integrity” of the UN Conventions. It isn’t the integrity of the Conventions that they are interested in maintaining, it is the maintenance of a world order, so much of which is based upon two major securitisations.
It is time that those pursuing a threat-based approach engaged in genuine debate regarding the outcomes of the extraordinary measure of prohibition and explored whether legally regulating drugs could deliver the kind of security outcomes that meet the needs of ordinary citizens in Colombia, Afghanistan, Mexico and West Africa.
Acknowledgement
I am indebted to my colleague Emily Crick for introducing me to the concept of securitisation, its application to international drug policy, and for numerous conversations that were essential to the develpment of this analysis.
Further reading:
Robert Mackey says the only real existential threat to the US is the Russian nuclear arsenal.
Jan Freeman on whether US citizens will believe the threat propaganda.
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