Parliamentary Cocaine Trade Report - Good, bad and downright ugly

Today the Home Affairs Committee publishes a report on the Cocaine Trade - to which Transform made a written submission and was invited to give oral evidence. Whilst there is some limited useful content and recommendations, the report overall is desperately disappointing and unlikely to impress or please anyone. It is characterised by weak analysis and poor scholarship, leading to a set of mostly pointless recommendations. Occasionally the recommendations are actively obnoxious (see sentencing recommendations below) - the overwhelming impression being of an ill considered and rushed inquiry that has been badly chaired and poorly supported - and one that has a distinct pre-election feel to it (the evidence has been shaped around a pre-decided narrative).

This is particularly disappointing coming from the same committee that in 2002 produced one of the most important, thorough and influential drug policy reports of the modern era (especially given the fact that three of the committee members from 2001 are still members). Also disappointing is that the report lacks anything approaching the analytical rigor of the last major Select Committee drug report; the Science and Technology committee report on the classification system from 2006, with key analysis from that 2006 report (on, for example, drug harms or the deterrent effect) notably absent from this new HASC cocaine report. It really does seem like a massive step backwards - with few lessons learned, and others forgotten or actively abandoned.

Before chronicling some of the report's multiple failings, first we should acknowledge its strengths. Transform is pleased that the Committee has called for “a full and independent value–for–money assessment of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and related legislation and policy”. This was one of Transform's specific calls to the committee in both our written and oral evidence, and something we have campaigned for since 2002.

We hope that the Government will now reconsider our call to evaluate drug policy using established Impact Assessment tools in the light of this new HASC recommendation, as it was dismissed by the PM, following a private meeting with a Transform representative last year.

We were also pleased to see this recommendation being supported by discussion of the Home Office 'value for money' study that Transform secured publication of earlier this year. Given that the media will almnost certainly ignore this section of the report I think it is worth reproducing in full (note: i. Steve Rolles is from Transform, ii. David Nutt was still chair of the ACMD at this point):

20. Some witnesses suggested there was a need for a cost/benefit analysis of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, to assess the evidence of whether the Government’s drugs policy offered value for money. Steve Rolles called specifically for a value for money impact assessment of the 1971 legislation, and told us that the Act had “never been subject to that kind of scrutiny and it is time that it was”. Professor Nutt supported an impact assessment, saying “I think my Council would be quite comfortable if people wanted to review the Act”

21. On 21 January 2010 the Home Office published an evaluation completed in June 2007 by an academic at the University of York entitled Drugs Value for Money Review, which Transform had been campaigning for three years to have released under a Freedom of Information request. The review as published made two key conclusions. Firstly, that there was a real lack of data collected by Government to enable an assessment of how effective its drug policy had been, particularly on the supply side. It stated:

Policies to reduce the availability of drugs produced the greatest analytical challenge. The absence of robust and recognised measures of success, combined with a limited base of research evidence makes it particularly difficult to draw conclusions about supply-side policy.

Secondly, it concluded that Government spending on drugs had not been properly evaluated, making it hard to draw conclusions about whether resources were appropriately allocated:

There is no single, comprehensive, agreed overview of cross-government expenditure. Evaluations of effectiveness are patchy and incomplete, making it difficult to assess value for money and to decide how to best allocate resources in the future

There was a similar indictment in analysis carried out by the UK Drug Policy Commission—a grouping of expert drug treatment and medical practitioners—in April 2007, which concluded that it was “difficult to estimate government expenditure on drug policy, as it is not transparently reported” and that “the UK invests remarkably little in independent evaluation of the impact of drug policies, especially enforcement. This needs redressing if policy makers are to be able to identify and introduce effective measures in the future”

22. The Home Office review was intended to inform the Government’s new Drugs Strategy 2008–2018.32 However, the publication of the strategy in February 2008, only eight months after the review was completed, suggests it is extremely unlikely that the serious criticisms voiced in the review about the lack of an evidence base on which to assess the effectiveness of expenditure on drugs could have been addressed in time.

24. We were very interested to learn that a Government review completed in 2007—the publication of which the Home Office had fought for three years—concluded that the effectiveness and value for money of the Government’s drugs spending could not be evaluated. It is at best careless that the Government nevertheless pressed ahead and published its Drugs Strategy in February 2008 without publishing a proper value–for–money analysis of where resources would be most effectively targeted. We therefore support calls for an full and independent value–for–money assessment of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 and related legislation and policy. This assessment must also address the concerns about inadequate data collection raised in the 2007 review.

Beyond this section there is little positive to be said about the report, and much to criticize. Large swathes of it are essentially a workmanlike summary of evidence taken from various sources, prominently including the UNODC World Drugs Report, and various documents from the EMCDDA, NTA, SOCA, UKBA and others. There is nothing wrong with any of this of course, the researchers having done an adequate job of compiling some potentially useful supporting evidence. There are, however, some serious sins of omission. The problems come partly from the evidence that was missed or ignored, but perhaps more importantly, the weak policy analysis that flows from all the evidence presented as we will discuss.

The most notable omission from the evidence considered is the World Health Organisation' s cocaine report from 1995 (details and link to the full report here) the largest global study of cocaine use, risks and policy ever undertaken. This report was suppressed under pressure from the US (until it was leaked into the public domain years later) essentially because it did not fit with the prevailing prohibitionist political narrative. That the HASC has chosen to overlook it, despite it being flagged up in Transform's written submission (and sent separately to the committee secretariat) is a telling reflection on the committee's mindset.


The tone and overarching narrative of the report are framed in the press release that accompanies it, which contains some very dramatic language about the nature of cocaine, and from the outset makes the cardinal error of conflating prohibition policy harms with drug use harms:

"In a report published today, Wednesday 3 March, the Home Affairs Committee warns that a deadly, socially and environmentally destructive drug seems to be becoming more widely acceptable in the UK, and says more must be done to tackle the demand side in the UK alongside international efforts to disrupt smuggling."

This mistaken conflation of drug use and drug policy harms (something that, disappointingly, David Nutt's evidence also failed to challenge) was something Transform specifically warned against in its written submission;

"Any discussion of the cocaine trade in the UK, and what our response should be, requires that we separate the public health problems associated with cocaine use per se, from the secondary criminal justice harms associated with its prohibition."

The press release then produces a 'must try harder' admonition of supply side enforcement agencies' commitment to 'stemming the flow':

"The Committee praises SOCA’s and UKBA’s general approach, namely to actively disrupt the cocaine trade overseas and thereby prevent it reaching the UK..... The Committee was shocked to discover only 3.5 tonnes of the estimated 25–30 tonnes of cocaine which does enter the UK border was seized in the UK last year. The Committee says interception of 12–14% of cocaine reaching the UK is ‘woefully inadequate’, while UKBA’s target to seize 2.4 tonnes of cocaine this year is ‘deeply unambitious’ and lower than the amount it seized in both previous years"

Adding that :

"The Committee suggests UKBA’s low seizure target reflects a culture of complacency"

This summarizes the key failing of the report's analysis; the implied suggestion that the failings of supply side enforcement could somehow be solved with more resources or better organisation, or that the supply of cocaine could genuinely be prevented such that the cocaine problem would somehow diminish or even disappear. This all harks back to the denial-of-reality prohibitionist analysis that: drugs are bad, therefore we will ban them and make the problem go away. Once you have bought into this hopelessly naive premise, as the committee chair seems to have done, all other facts and analysis naturally have to be shaped around it. This is the process that we then have to endure for the majority of the report.

For no obvious or stated reason, the report spends an inordinate amount of time critiquing both UK cocaine seizure rates and the collection and presentation of seizure statistics, somehow managing to completely avoid grappling with the actual impact of seizures on levels of availability. It is important to bear in mind that seizure rates, even if you buy into the overarching prohibitionist analysis (see above), are a proxy measure (or process measure) for the efficacy of supply side enforcement - the actual outcome measures of which are levels of availability, and ultimately levels of use/misuse. At one point the report does note that:

The doubling in wholesale price of cocaine at the UK border between 1999 and 2009 does indicate that more effective supply-side enforcement may have squeezed the supply of the drug to the UK. However, we do not consider that the substantial fall in purity of cocaine at street level can be attributed to supply-side enforcement. The consistency of purity at the UK border but fluctuating levels found in street–level seizures within the UK—some with as little as 5% purity—suggest to us that the fall in purity is not so much driven by overall squeezing of the cocaine supply to the UK, but rather associated with the emergence of a ‘two-tier’ market in which there is demand for lower price, more heavily cut cocaine on the street, as well as higher end product by other consumers. The use of more sophisticated cutting agents which themselves mimic the analgesic effect of cocaine may mean that less pure cocaine has gone to some degree unnoticed. And the increase in the number of users may in itself have driven the available cocaine to be more thinly spread, thus reducing purity levels. (Paragraph 162)

This is the nearest we get to a discussion of the impact of seizures on actual availability but appears to suggest that the impact is marginal at best. The committee suggests that current seizure rates of around 10% are inadequate, but does not suggest what % would be good enough - or suggest how such improved seizure rates might be achieved, or explore possible knock on impacts even if it were (like, for example, displacement to other drugs). There are some rather random examples of enforcement best practice based on the committee's field trips, but it is far from clear if they are seriously suggesting that such models - if rolled out nationally/ internationally - would somehow deliver the desired outcome of actually reducing cocaine use/harms. Crucially they fail to engage with key elements of the analysis:

1. The unintended negative consequences of supply side enforcement - as spelt out in detail in the submissions of Transform and others, as well as being detailed by the UNODC. Some of these harms are mentioned - such as environmental destruction, but again these are blamed on cocaine users rather than the prohibitionist policy environment the committee is evidently supporting. The role of prohibition in creating opportunities for criminals is mentioned only once, in a Transform quote (below).
   
   
2. The' balloon effect' - that even seemingly 'successful' localised supply side enforcement will only achieve a displacement of illicit activity, not elminate it. Steve is quoted in the report saying that: 'History shows with crystal clarity that an enforcement response cannot get rid of the illicit drug trade…it is a fundamental reality of the economic dynamics of unregulated illegal markets where demand is huge; the opportunity is created and criminal entrepreneurs will always exploit that opportunity. Every dealer or trafficker you arrest, another one immediately fills the void.' Only for this analysis to translate into an ambiguous conclusion that 'Neither supply–side enforcement nor demand reduction can on its own successfully tackle cocaine use.'.
   
   
3. At no point do they get to the heart of the matter to highlight the futility and counter-productive nature of supply side enforcement as evidenced by 40+ years of increasingly expensive failure. No examples are given of countries that have delivered good overall drug policy outcomes (in terms of reduced drug use/harms) from more effective or well resourced supply side enforcement (for the simple reason that there aren't any).

As Transform made clear in our written submission:

10. Decades of supply-side enforcement experience at all scales, from international interdiction efforts to arresting dealers on street corners, demonstrate how its successes can only ever be marginal, temporary and localised. This failure results not from incompetence, flaws in execution, or under-resourcing, but because this approach ignores the economic forces of supply and demand in an unregulated illicit market controlled by criminal profiteers.

We also quoted the committee's previous drugs report:

12. Enforcement also has a Darwinian-style ‘survival of the fittest’ effect – it is the most efficient, ruthless, and violent criminal networks that prosper. So the more energetically prohibition is enforced, the worse the ‘cocaine problem’ becomes. In short, as the 2002 HASC drug inquiry report concluded:

“If there is any single lesson from the experience of the last 30 years, it is that policies based wholly or mainly on enforcement are destined to fail.”

Whilst the committee isn't bound to agree with any of this well established historical critique of supply side enforcement, they should at least have tackled it and made the case in support of the wider supply side enforcement paradigm. Nowhere in the report is there anything even approaching this sort of discussion. The Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit Drugs Report of 2003 demonstrated in detail how global prohibition creates much of the harm associated with the production, supply and use of cocaine and heroin. Like the SciTech classification report, and the 2002 HASC drugs inquiry report, it is not mentioned, nor its central findings engaged with.

The same analytical shortcomings and conceptual misunderstandings of supply side enforcement flow through the analysis of crop eradication in South America and the comments on localised UK police operations. Even where useful insights do occasionally appear in the report , in the form of quotes or references, these are never allowed to impinge on the unrelentingly poor analysis of the recommendations and conclusions. It is particularly noteworthy that nowhere in the report is the detailed submissions from the Transnational Institute (arguably the world's leading NGO authority on the international cocaine market and related policy) or the International Drug Policy Consortium quoted or referenced.

In large parts of the report there is evidence that either the inquiry's remit was far to broad, or (looked at another way) that the inquiry has dealt with a series important issues with a woeful lack of depth and detail. Key debates and areas of policy are dealt with in a few paragraphs - a couple of cursory quotes and facts (when far more substantive literature reviews are needed) followed by a rather limp and unconvincing recommendation. Without going into tedious detail on each of the many areas the report attempts to cover, consider for example:

• Prevention and media campaigns - much backslapping about the Government's FRANK campaign supported a single piece of Home Office polling research, but nothing on the wider literature critiquing such mass media campaigns (including that of the WHO 1995 cocaine report, which is not referenced despite its commentary on this point being flagged up in Transform's written submission), or any reference to the ACMD Pathways to Problems report which did consider such efforts in the sort of detail the HASC has conspicuously failed to.
  

• The role of celebrity drug users: Whilst the committee, you suspect rather dissapointedly, acknowledged that 'There is no evidence that celebrity use has made more people turn to cocaine, indeed our witnesses argued strongly against it,' they were, almost laughably, unable to stop themselves from continuing to makes such an assertion regardless, 'However, the seeming propensity of celebrity users to ‘get away with’ using cocaine does contribute to a general trend of glamorising use, as does the social acceptability and normalisation generated by ‘successful’ people who appear to function normally, often holding down high-flying careers, whilst using cocaine.' . This was another example of fitting the facts around a pre-determined narrative (see this appearance of HASC Chair Keith Vaz on channel four news 8 months before the report is published). Guess which part of the report was given most prominence in the press? To find out put cocaine into Google news search...
  
  
• Treatment - a very cursory analysis followed by a call for more residential rehab - but no comparisons of value for money related to treatment outcomes are provided, that would actually support such a call.

• Cocaine harms - The discussion of cocaine related health harms lacks any sophistication, seemly built around the preconceived requirement to make it clear that cocaine is not 'safe'. This seems like a classic straw man, as we are not aware that anyone has been saying that cocaine was 'safe' (no drug is), nor do the committee provide any examples of anyone doing so. The concept that there are a range of cocaine products and range of cocaine using behaviours associated with a spectrum of risks (from negligible to extreme) is largely jettisoned in favour of less-than-useful headline grabbing generalisations about 'lethal' cocaine. Public understanding of risk is not helped by this sort of language - its hard to see what it seeks to achieve, and it goes against much of the more nuanced analysis we have seen from the Sci-Tech committee in 2006,and the HASC in 2002. The discussion of cocaine deaths similarly lacks any breakdown, analysis, or caveats - rather defaulting again to the the 'lethal cocaine' narrative, or cocaine the 'dangerous and lethal drug' (presumably in that order) as HASC chair Vaz describes it in the press release.

There was a similarly limited engagement with the debate on legalisation and regulation. This was a marked contrast to the HASC 2002 drug inquiry which recognised the harms of current policy, and called on the UK Government to initiate a debate on alternatives to prohibition, “including the possibility of legalisation and regulation drugs – to solve the global drugs dilemma” (It is worthy of note that one of the members of the 2002 Committee who supported that recommendation was David Cameron). Steve's contribution is key to the section the Enquiry calls 'Decriminalisation':

Decriminalisation

Several witnesses argued that the supply of and demand for cocaine could not be effectively tackled whilst it remained an illegal drug, but one which for which there was demand. Steve Rolles of Transform Drug Policy told us that:

"When prohibition of something collides with huge demand for it you just create an economic opportunity and illegal criminal entrepreneurs will inevitably exploit the opportunity that it creates."

Lord Mancroft agreed:

"We have controlled drugs in this country but you only have to walk within a mile of this palace to realise that the controls do not work, because anywhere on the streets of London you can buy any of these drugs… The way forward is a range somewhere from the way we control alcohol or indeed the most dangerous object in our everyday lives, the motorcar. If you go outside in the street and step in front of a moving motorcar you will find out how dangerous it is, so what do we do? We do not prohibit it. We license the vehicle, we license the users, we made them pass a test, we make them have insurance so if they damage anybody they have to pay up, we tell them how fast they can use it, on which side of the road. That is control."

The response to this is the most cursory of engagements with the concept of deterrence associated with punitive enforcement, deploying two quotes, one from John Strang:

However, others told us that there was little evidence that decriminalisation would affect demand, and that in fact it would be likely to increase it. For instance, Professor Strang of the National Addiction Centre told us:

"There is no question that the illegality of a substance is a major deterrent to its use…one would have to presume that if legal constraints were taken away the level of use would almost certainly increase."

And one from David Nutt, then ACMD chair:

Professor Nutt also said he would be “surprised if making drugs legal would actually reduce use”. He argued that the, at least partial, success of controlling drugs could be seen in the rise in popularity of ‘legal highs’ being bought over the internet: "People are buying drugs over the Internet which are currently legal, presumably because there is a deterrent to getting illegal drugs…The law must influence people to some extent."

That is all we get - no evidence provided in support of the above Nutt and Strang comments, and no review of the literature on deterrence, no more discussion or analysis. Nothing. This section just ends, somewhat patronisingly, with the comment:

"There is no doubt that the arguments set out by Transform Drug Policy and Lord Mancroft will continue to be debated."

Finally we were deeply disturbed by the recommendation to increase sentences for users, purely on the basis that current sentences were not long enough for prisoners to finish there prison-based treatment programmes. Again - no evidence is given that such programmes are more cost effective than the various non-prison based cocaine treatment options (which have a pretty poor efficacy record anyway - albeit better than prison, and much cheaper).

Related, is the call for harsher penalties for supply, which reeks of populist posturing and is, once again, unsupported by evidence that it would deliver better outcomes. Both of these calls - which would incur significant expense and add to pressures on an already overstretched prison service - sit entirely at odds with the work taking place as we speak by the Sentencing Advisory Panel, (also mentioned in the Transform submission, but ignored in the report) which is seeking to reduce drug related penalties across the board.

We could go on picking holes in the report - but hopefully, if you have read this far, you will have got the point. This is a dreadful report; ill-conceived and poorly executed, a wasted opportunity and a publication for which the committee should be, quite frankly, embarrassed. It entirely fails to do what Select Committees should be doing; scrutinize a policy area shrouded deliberately in obfuscatory myth and taboo. Instead it keeps politicians protected by the glass bubble of pseudo-science and populist fear mongering. The real tragedy is that this process could have been used to expose a failing policy to useful scrutiny and instead has, in large part, wasted taxpayers' time and money on a report that serves primarily to entrench a hugely counterproductive status quo.

It will surely be ignored and quickly forgotten. Indeed our initial glee at finding our Impact Assessment recommendation had been adopted progressively turned to despair as we read through the rest of its shoddy analysis, which rather undermines the one thing about it worth celebrating.

thanks to Steve for help preparing this analysis

The WHO cocaine report the US didn't want you to see

Update 18.06.09: This blog post has resulted in mainstream media coverage of this story in the Guardian (by Ben Goldacre and George Monbiot) and an editorial in the Vancouver Sun: Suppressed report raises questions about drug policy. It also appeared on the front page of Reddit attracting 500+ comments and pulling in 60k hits in 24 hours


The largest ever study of cocaine use around the globe was carried out in the early 90's by the UN World Health Organisation (WHO) and funded by the UN Inter-regional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), but under pressure from the US its publication was suppressed when it became clear the report's findings were in direct conflict with the myths, stereotypes and propaganda that prop up the war on drugs (read the complete leaked report here).

In March 1995 WHO/UNICRI released a briefing kit summarising the key conclusions, as a curtain raiser to the report's imminent publication.

• "Health problem; from the use of legal substances, particularly alcohol and tobacco, are greater than health problems from cocaine use.
• Few experts describe cocaine as invariably harmful to health. Cocaine-related problems are widely perceived to be more common and more severe for intensive, high-dosage users and very rare and much less severe for occasional, low-dosage users." (pg. 1)

the coca plant

In a classic example of what happens when public health pragmatism collides with criminal justice dogma, just two months later, at the 48th World Health Assembly, the US representative to the WHO threatened to withdraw US funding for WHO research projects unless they 'would dissociate itself from the conclusions of the study' (read the relevant segment here). He said;

"The United States Government had been surprised to note that the package seemed to make a case for the positive uses of cocaine, claiming that use of the coca leaf did not lead to noticeable damage to mental or physical health, that the positive health effects of coca leaf chewing might be transferable from traditional settings to other countries and cultures, and that coca production provided financial benefits to peasants...


"... it [the US] took the view that the study on cocaine, evidence of WHO's support for harm-reduction programmes and previous WHO association with organizations that supported the legalization of drugs, indicated that its programme on substance abuse was heading in the wrong direction. The press package undermined the efforts of the international community to stamp out the illegal cultivation and production of coca, inter alia through international conventions.


"The United States Government considered that, if WHO activities relating to drugs failed to reinforce proven drug control approaches, funds for the relevant programmes should be curtailed. In view of the gravity of the matter, he asked the Director-General for an assurance that WHO would dissociate itself from the conclusions of the study and that, in substance abuse activities, an approach would not be adopted that could be used to justify the continued production of coca."

It's easy to see why the US would be so opposed to the study being published as it not only challenges a number of myths and stereotypes about cocaine use, but it is highly critical of a number of US-backed policies. The report specifically highlights the criticism that supply reduction and enforcement policies are not working and that alternatives needs to be explored;

"The largest future issue is whether international organisations, such as WHO and the United Nations Drug Control Programme, and national governments will continue to focus on supply reduction approaches such as crop destruction and substitution and law enforcement efforts in the face of mounting criticism and cynicism about the effectiveness of these approaches. Countries such as Australia, Bolivia, Canada and Colombia are now interested in examining a range of options to legalize and decriminalize the personal use and possession of cocaine and other related products. There needs to be more assessment of the adverse effects of current policies and strategies and development of innovative approaches." (pg. 30)


"The studies identified strict limitations to drug control policies which rely almost exclusively on repressive measures. Current national and local approaches which over-emphasize punitive drug control measures may actually contribute to the development of heath-related problems. An increase in the adoption of more humane, compassionate responses such as education, treatment and rehabilitation programmes is seen as a desirable counterbalance to the overreliance on law enforcement measures." (pg. 29)

The study also points out that 'anti-drug' campaigns are not necessarily effective, especially mass media campaigns based on scare tactics;

"Despite a broad range of educational and prevention approaches, most programmes do not prevent myths but perpetuate stereotypes and misinform the general public. Such programmes rely on sensationalized, exaggerated statements about cocaine which misinform about patterns of use, stigmatize users, and destroy the educator's credibility. This has given most education campaigns a naïve image and has reduced confidence in the quality and accuracy of these campaigns…" (pg. 23)

With regards to who uses cocaine, the study says,

"It is not possible to describe an "average cocaine user". An enormous variety was found in the types of people who use cocaine, the amount of drug used, the frequency of use, the duration and intensity of use, the reasons for using and any associated problems they experience.’"(pg. 1)

However it does usefully establish a continuum for use, noting that the majority of harms are accrued by the minority of users at the extreme of the continuum;

• experimental use
• occasional use
• situation-specific use
• intensive use
• compulsive/dysfunctional use

Experimental and occasional use are by far the most common types of use, and compulsive/dysfunctional is far less common." (pg. 28)

The study additionally notes - in direct conflict with the accepted drug war paradigm that all use equals abuse - that:

"occasional cocaine use does not typically lead to severe or even minor physical or social problems ... a minority of people start using cocaine or related products, use casually for a short or long period, and suffer little or no negative consequences, even after years of use. ... Use of coca leaves appears to have no negative health effects and has positive, therapeutic, sacred and social functions for indigenous Andean populations."

In addressing the rise in use, the report posits that key drivers are the drug's illicit status combined with both rising wealth (for cocaine powder) and increased poverty (for crack cocaine).

"The increasing attractiveness of cocaine in the past two decades may be related to:

• the "glamour" of illicit drug use in general;
• increased wealth allowing more people access to what they believe is the most glamorous of all illicit drugs;
• widespread poverty or social disadvantage in countries such as the USA at a time when cheap coca preparations like crack have become widely available." (pg. 14)
  

The report was never officially published and according to the WHO it does not exist, however some of the project advisors are now pushing for it to be formally published. It has only emerged into the public domain because the relevant documents were leaked and found their way into the hands of the Transnational Institute drugs and democracy programme.

The suppression of this detailed, authoritative and independent report is yet more evidence of how certain governments, most conspicuously the US, have willfully refused to develop rational drug policy based on science and evidence - and worse, when evidence emerges that challenges their political prerogatives and drug war ideologies they will resort to bullying, threats and censorship to ensure it is suppressed. This is anti-science drug war posturing of the worst kind, and can only lead to poor policy development with increased social and personal costs the inevitable result.

Transform has passed this report on to the forthcoming Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry on cocaine in the hope that it might usefully be used to inform policy discussions, albeit only at the UK level for now, and some 13 years late.

Also from Transform:

• From soft drink to hard drug; a snapshot of coca, cocaine and crack, By Mike Jay
  
  
• How cocaine markets have been hit by the financial crisis
  
  
• Transform publishes comparative cost benefit analysis of prohibition vs regulation of cocaine and heroin
  
  
• Shoveling water: War on drugs - War on people (film about coca eradication)
  
  
• It is not coca growing per se that fuels the conflict in Colombia, but the fact that cocaine is illegal

How cocaine markets have been hit by the financial crises

The following commentary on the recent SOCA report has been prepared for the Transform Blog by Axel Klein, Lecturer in the Study of Addictive Behaviour, Centre for Health Service Studies, University of Kent.

On May 12th a government agency reported that rising levels of dangerous adulterants including boric acid, an insecticide, and tetramisole hydrochloride used as worm powder are being added to cocaine sold in UK drug markets. This is alarming as the largest group of consumers in UK retail markets are 16-24 year olds. It seems extraordinary that the exposure of school children and students to toxic substances sold in an unregulated market, with minimal information about content or health risk is the direct result of government policy.

Whatever the unintended consequences, SOCA, the agency that is responsible for stopping the inflow of cocaine into the UK, is celebrating the success of its undercover work manifest in the ‘wholesale’ cocaine price rise. Retail prices have, alas, not changed, but SOCA points to decreases in purity which are attributed to rises in overall prices and concomitantly, a stipulated reduction in overall inflows. Both these trends are apparently a direct result of SOCA activity in the UK, and Europe wide operations, with or without SOCA. This follows from the reported increase in overall seizures and an even sharper rise in overall arrests related to drug trafficking.

So what are the consequences of this 'success'? One is already noted, the increasing adulteration of street cocaine – the substance that people snort up their noses or smoke in rocks of crack. Where these adulterants are toxic they increase the health harm to users whose continuation of use is not affected by the supply cuts up the supply chain. Retail markets remain unaffected and continue to respond to consumer demand. What is sold is a more dangerous, diluted product which will first cause health damages to some users, and may secondly well increase the incidence of use, as consumers compensate through stepping up episodes of consumption. Most affected will be the consumption of dependent users outside of effective treatment, who will increase their dosage to riskier levels in compensation of diminishing potency. The minority of intensive and chaotic users with no legitimate means of income to fund their habit will resort to illegal alternatives to meet rising costs. More crime will produce more arrests and a diversion of some perpetrators of acquisition crime into prison where treatment can be offered part of the new Integrated Drug Treatment System. Repressive drug policies thereby generate crime to produce an opportunity for arrest. If it works all the crime generators are taken out of the drug / crime cycle through rehabilitation, and a portion of overall crime eliminated. Casual cocaine users on the other hand will be driven away from cocaine, and reduce overall prevalence in the mid term. Whatever the calculation of law enforcement agencies in meeting their objectives of eliminating cocaine from the UK, the dynamic of the illicit market has to be factored in. According to the assumptions – search for profit, willingness to break the law, - it is also predictable.

The rise in ‘wholesale’ prices in cocaine markets is going to set an incentive for organised crime groups to redouble their efforts. Where profits are rising and other forms of enterprise are as affected by global downturn as the licit economy organisations will respond that have hitherto been outside the cocaine trade in the UK. In a situation of overall contraction across the economy cocaine importation, according to SOCA, makes for an attractive business proposition. The National Criminal Intelligence Service, predecessor of SOCA, was alarmed by criminal groups committing violent crime to collect start up capital for entering the drug trade as early as 2003.

If this phenomenon is known, then why is it sensible for a government crime prevention agency broadcast the opening of a criminal opportunity? Most potential perpetrators, it may be said, already know this and SOCA would not give away information unless it had been carefully assessed. Yet information on ‘wholesale’ prices was precisely what the Matrix analysis based on interviews of 222 drug traffickers found was difficult to come by (Matrix Knowledge Group, 2007, The illicit drug trade in the UK, Home Office Online Report 20/07). The cocaine business is extremely opaque, with no overall information on the movements of goods, leaving each trader to operate through networks. Prices are determined and assessed through personal information, and the weighing of risk and profit. An earlier Home Office study characterised the drugs market as fragmented (Pearson et al, 2001, Middle Market Drug Distribution, Home Office Research Study 227)

Cocaine transactions are cash based, and take place in marginal settings, outside the protective framework of the law. They are fuelled by fear of violence from partners or police and the loss of wealth or freedom. Prices are dictated by security as much as by market demand and exponential increases after importation. The number of people involved at buyer and seller level is far smaller than at the retail level.

At street market level research can establish overall prices as informants are easy to identify and liable to give truthful answers. Surveys can establish relatively easily what drug buyers buy as work of the Independent Drug Monitoring Unit has demonstrated. It has historic data on price trends collated from questionnaires distributed at festivals and web surveys. The police, by contrast, have been relying on undercover purchases. Over the years, the respective drug price information has been variance. Notwithstanding shortcomings, the police approximations of price levels have been methodologically far more robust at the simpler retail market than elsewhere. The claims to price trends in the secretive, opaque and volatile ‘wholesale’ market requires a ‘conceptual explanation of methods. All we have at the moment is a reported fall in purity for which there could be a multitude of causes.

We have learnt from the heroin drought in Australia in 2000, celebrated by law enforcement as a seizure breakthrough, that market changes are often the result of supply shifts. Serious organised crime groups can switch their exports to more lucrative markets, wherein currency ratios play a part. In the late 1990s Burma based drug trafficking groups redirected heroin flows from Australia to China while increasing the supply of methamphetamine (Bush, William, Marcus Roberts and Mike Trace, 2005 Upheavals in the Australian drug market: heroin drought, stimulant flood, Beckley Foundation, briefing paper 4). In the UK the stipulated fall in cocaine may be a function of sterling depreciation, or a corollary of overall drop in imports. Bitten by recession, UK consumers are spending less on imported luxuries, cocaine included. Among celebrities the new austerity chic may even trigger an abstinence trend.

In the streets though a different process, of cocaine normalisation may have been at play. The prevailing culture of psychoactive experimentation has seen a rapid widening of occasional to regular cocaine consumers. With this ‘social extensification’ cocaine has been transformed from luxury to chemical fix, and quality dropped to the standards of a mass market.

Low grade cocaine, ironically, is consequence of the same repressive drug supply policy that delivered high grade cannabis. In both cases changes in the product have not responded to consumer demand, but are market adaptations to the constraints of enforcement. Young people are left to celebrate the end of exams with 'killer skunk' and insecticide courtesy of the UK Drug Strategy.

There are increasing demands for closer scrutiny of the consequences of drug policy enforcement. Instead of explaining hard data on reducing cocaine availability, SOCA produces soft targets, hard to verify, and of indirect value. According Trevor Pearce,[1] project Kitley has netted some 15 tonnes of chemicals used to bulk up cocaine and led to 72 arrests. But how this impacts on the overall availability of cocaine and raises the levels of safety for cocaine users remains mysterious. It is best read as an activity report demonstrating that the agency has been active and successful, therefore justifying ongoing support. ‘We are on the right track, let us not give up fighting now’ is the motto.

What happens when we get there is not clear. But the concern is shared by senior officers at SOCA itself, one of whom lamented that:

“We may have to say at some stage that taking heavily adulterated cocaine is more physically harmful to the user than taking cocaine that’s less adulterated. That is not the case at the moment. But we’ve got to keep asking the question. I’m aware that the health equation could one day say: Stop trying to stop cocaine coming in.”

It leaves the drug policy watcher wondering what exactly the point is?

---

[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8044730.stm accessed 13/05/09

Book of the month: the Candy Machine

We'd like to recommend The Candy Machine: How Cocaine Took Over the World by Tom Feiling as our book of the month.



Here's a review by Transform volunteer David Hart below:

The author of this book makes plain in his introduction that he was less interested in the opinions of experts and celebrities than he was in hearing the viewpoint of the ordinary people involved in the cocaine trade, from peasant coca farmers through to urban crack smokers, in the interests of presenting as authentic a picture as possible of the impact of cocaine on society.

The book is divided into three sections. The first charts the history of the cocaine trade from the conquistadors to the present, as well as the increasing levels of repression the US government has employed against it.

The second analyses the cocaine trade's impact on those countries that produce it or through which it is trafficked, focussing on Jamaica, Mexico, and of course Colombia, asking why that country is the only one in the world to be a producer of cocaine, cannabis and heroin (apparently a combination of proximity to trade routes, a long tradition of lawlessness, economic inequality and chronic underinvestment in the rural economy). In all cases Feiling attempts to show how the economic circumstances of these producer/transit countries makes the cocaine trade so powerful that law enforcement efforts are doomed never to be able to do more than inconvenience it, let alone eradicate it. Indeed, the level to which Colombia's government, police and judiciary are complicit with the cocaine traffickers is truly spectacular.

A salutary warning of the likely consequences of continuation of current policies is the incipient transformation into narco-states that afflicts those countries in West Africa which have become transit hubs for cocaine entering Europe; Feiling notes that the cocaine trade offers prospects for economic development that international neo-liberal financial policies have failed to provide for these states with weak government and scant resources, and is therefore unlikely to be effectively opposed by the local population.

The third section concerns prospects for the future. There is detailed analysis of the demand for cocaine and why it is so persistent, as well as the health consequences for different forms of the drug, which concludes that problematic use, especially of crack, is usually a symptom of underlying emotional problems, sometimes but not exclusively associated with poverty and deprivation, noting that the 'career' of the average cocaine user is far shorter than that of typical heroin or alcohol users.

In the chapter analysing the arguments for legalisation and where they are coming from, we hear from Jack Cole of the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, and Sir Keith Morris [now a Transform supporter], whose experience as the UK's ambassador to Colombia has led him to come out against the war on drugs - both indicative of the fact that even those charged with defending prohibition can draw their own conclusions when exposed to the consequences.

Discussion of cocaine rarely makes much mention of coca leaf tea/chewing, but here we are told of the Colombian coca-leaf drink producers who had to fight a lawsuit to be allowed to use the word 'coca' in the name of their product, and of the WHO report (it was suppressed by the USA who threatened to withdraw funding) that found that chewing coca leaves had negligible health risks.

The book concludes that, while those in charge of drug policy are 'unwilling to admit their addiction to...the illusion of control', change is unlikely to come from above unless prohibition becomes financially unviable, but in the US there is already widespread change underway at state or city level, and that whatever drug policy is in place, the problems of compulsive use will not go away until 'nations produce responsible citizens with stakes in conventional society'.

That is not in itself a comforting thought, but hopefully this book will help spread the reform message a little further; certainly it's a well researched and informative work for those interested in the subject.

• The Candy Machine has also been reviewed by The Guardian and The Telegraph
  
  
• The Home Affairs Select Committee is looking into the cocaine trade at present. Transform has sent in a submission and is expected to be called to give evidence later this year.
  
  
• Transform is pleased to announce the launch of our Amazon Associate bookstore. We’ve now assembled a list of some of the best books available about drug policy and drug law reform, which can be found here.
  
  
• All books listed have a link to www.amazon.com where the book is available to purchase.
  
  
• Buy books through our site and you’ll even be helping Transform make some money as we receive a 10% donation of the cost of the book at no extra cost to you.
  
  
• Please send an email to info@tdpf.org.uk to recommend books, or if you’d like to review any of the books listed.

Please spread the word and happy reading.

Clutching at Straws - SOCA Claims it is Winning the War on Cocaine

In a report released today the Serious Organised Crime Agency, (SOCA) claims that it has increased the wholesale price of cocaine and that street purity has fallen.

As the evidence has shown over the long term, illegal drugs have become increasingly cheap and available. However, short term reversals in these trends are often proclaimed by prohibitionist governments and the enforcement agencies charged with fighting the war on drugs, and this is a prime case in point. Taken at face value, these reversals in fortune will be used to signal imminent victory in the wider war.

For those of us who have seen entire enforcement agencies come and go, this is more of the same in the propaganda war. Cherry picking statistics is bread and butter for those who have to show success in an ocean of failure. President Obama is on the record in 2005 describing the war on drugs as an "utter failure".

The global war on drugs has gifted a trade to organised criminals, valued at £4-6 billion a year in the UK alone and £160 billion globally. One has to ask who benefits from hiking the price and lowering the purity of cocaine - even if this can be achieved or is the result of enforcement efforts? The answer is twofold:

1. Governments and agencies who want to dupe the public into maintaining support for the futile and counterproductive war on drugs and,
2. Organised criminals who can take advantage of rising demand and absorb the price hike by making up weights by adding adulterants at retail level, sure in the knowledge that the illegal market will be theirs to exploit for years to come.

One of the more pertinent policy outcomes that SOCA have not been trumpeting is that cocaine use has more than doubled in the last ten years (and is still rising) and part of this phenomenon has been the disastrous emergence of widespread crack cocaine use over the same period. It is likely that this explosion in demand is driving any recent decrease in cocaine purity rather than supply side enforcement impacts. Clearly there is considerably more cocaine entering the country than their was when SOCA was set up. And this has nothing to do with how effectively SOCA do their duties; the economics of a totally unregulated multi-billion pound market (in which demand is high and rising) controlled by flexible, cunning and often violent criminal profiteers make SOCAs task one that is doomed from the outset.

If SOCA are so sure that this recent evidence is supportive of their work, I'm sure that they will back Transform's call for an independent impact assessment of the current regime of prohibition and a genuine exploration of alternatives, including the legal regulation of currently prohibited drugs. David Cameron supported a call as a backbencher, for the UK to initiate just such a debate at the UN in 2002.

So, what should we believe? Decades of history, or the agency that has to show that its work isn't futile and counterproductive? You decide...

Media coverage:

• Radio 4's Today programme: Danny Kushlick from Transform discusses the report
• BBC: Mark Easton's blog: Soca and Coca. (Danny quoted)
• Telegraph: Drug Busts force wholesale cocaine prices to record levels and Guardian (Danny quoted from Today programme - from press association news wire)
• Danny has also been interviewed on; BBC Radio 5 live drivetime with Nicky Campbell (2 hours 18 mins into the show), BBC Radio Scotland, and quotes used in a range of other BBC radio news pieces
• Steve Rolles has been interviewed by the Press Association for international syndication, and the BBC news channel.
• Scotsman: Cocaine prices hit record level due to drug seizures, says Britain's FBI (Danny quoted)
• The independent: We're winning the war against the cocaine industry police declare (Danny quoted)

See also previous Transform blog:

Playing SOCA with drugs policy (Jan 2007)

INCB annual report: even by their standards, this one's a shocker

Below is copied the press release from the Transnational Institute concerning the latest annual report from the International Narcotics Control Board, the quasi-judicial body that oversees state adherence to the UN drug conventions. The INCB has been on the receiving end of sustained NGO criticism for its secrecy, politicisation, and its overzealous approach to some policy areas outside of its remit (objections to established harm reduction initiatives), whilst ignoring key issues that are very much within its remit (notably adherence to human rights in drug enforcement). The TNI have taken issue with the INCB's latest extraordinary call for all coca leaf production to to be prohibited and its use, including indigenous and traditional, to be abolished.

The INCB's annual report is available from the INCB site here

A series of critical reports on the troubling machinations of this anomalous UN entity have been published recently (see below), and for further detailed information on the INCB, and the current UN drug strategy review process see the excellent new TNI website www.ungassondrugs.org

Abolishing Coca Leaf Consumption?

The INCB needs to perform a reality check

The Transnational Institute condemns the decision by the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) in their 2007 annual report released today, which calls on countries to ‘abolish or prohibit coca leaf chewing and the manufacture of coca tea’. (1)

According to Pien Metaal, researcher specialising in coca issues at the Transnational Institute:

“The Board is displaying both arrogance and blindness by demanding that countries impose criminal sanctions on distribution and possession for traditional uses of the coca leaf, which is a key feature of Andean-Amazon indigenous cultures. Isn’t it time for this UN treaty body to get in touch with reality and show some more cultural sensitivity?”

Coca chewing and drinking of coca tea is carried out daily by millions of people in the Andes as well as considered sacred within indigenous cultures. The INCB’s statement therefore clearly puts it at odds with the UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights approved last year, which promises to uphold and protect indigenous cultural practices.(2)

It also contradicts the 1988 UN drugs convention which recognized traditional uses (3) as well as statements within the current 2007 INCB report which talk about “respect for national sovereignty, for the various constitutional and other fundamental principles of domestic law – practice, judgments and procedures –and for the rich diversity of peoples, cultures, customs and values.” (4)

TNI also condemns the demand within the INCB report that countries should “establish as a criminal offence, when committed intentionally, the possession and purchase of coca leaf for personal consumption”,(5) which if it were implemented would mean the prosecution of several million people in the Andean-Amazon region. It targets not just consumers but also peasants who grow coca: “Governments should establish as criminal offences under its domestic law, when committed intentionally, the cultivation of coca bush for the purpose of the production of narcotic drugs contrary to the provisions of the 1961 Convention”(6), reflecting all uses of the coca leaf.

“Given that the Board in the same report talks about proportionality in sentencing, the Board’s position makes no sense. It would criminalise entire peoples for a popular tradition and custom that has no harm and is even beneficial,” says Pien Metaal.

Earlier reports by the INCB have pointed to the inconsistencies between traditional uses of the coca leaf and the 1961 Single Convention on drugs (which included the coca leaf as “narcotic drug”), but no state has made serious efforts to abolish a habit that has no risk to public health.(7) Moreover, beneficial uses of the plant have growing markets worldwide.

It is understood that the Board was responding to Bolivia’s political decision to give the coca leaf a status as a valuable natural resource, reflected in the new proposed Constitutional text and in its national policy that allows a limited number of farmers to grow a small plot of coca for this traditional use.

According to Martin Jelsma, coordinator of the TNI drugs programme:

“The inclusion of the coca leaf in Schedule I of narcotic drugs of the 1961 Convention was based on an ECOSOC study done back in 1950, inspired by colonial and racist sentiments rather than science. (8) It is time the Board asks the Commission on Narcotic Drugs and the World Health Organisation for guidance on this matter instead of casting its own narrow-minded judgment and retreating to the obsolete thinking of the 1961 Convention.”

Please contact:

Drugs & Democracy Programme (TNI) Tel +31-20-6626608
Pien Metaal +31640798808 pmetaal@tni.org or
Martin Jelsma +31655715893 mjelsma@tni.org
See also TNI’s website www.ungassondrugs.org launched to coincide with the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND)’s meeting in Vienna to review UN General Assembly Special Session on drugs for more background.

1 “The Board calls on the Governments of Bolivia and Peru to consider amending their national legislation so as to abolish or prohibit activities that are contrary to the 1961 Convention, such as coca leaf chewing and the manufacture of mate de coca (coca tea).” INCB annual report 2007, para 217

2 A/61/L.67, UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted by the General Assembly on September 13, 2007

3 1988 Convention, article 14, paragraph 2

4 Foreword, INCB report 2007

5 Idem, paragraph 219

6 Idem, paragraph 219

7 http://www.tni.org/docs/200703081409275046.pdf

8 The 1950 ECOSOC Commission of Enquiry on the Coca Leaf claimed that the habit of chewing could be held responsible for malnutrition and immoral behaviour of the ‘Andean man’, while reducing his productive capacity. Report of the findings of the Commission of Enquiry of the Coca Leaf, ECOSOC 1950, now available here

TNI blog commentary on the new INCB report from Martin Jelsma:

INCB & Coca

A colonial attitude unworthy for a UN agency

When the INCB Annual Report for 2007 –under embargo until March 5- started to circulate about a month ago, I was in complete shock after reading the worst ever paragraphs on coca written in UN history for several decades. The position taken by the Board now can be characterized by no more talk about the need to solve 'long-standing ambiguities in the conventions', not a shred of sympathy anymore for traditional customs or rights of indigenous peoples, no trace of cultural sensitivity at all, an all-out attack against coca chewing, drinking of coca tea or any other uses of coca in its natural form in the Andean region and the northern parts of Argentina and Chile. We were warned last year in their report already about this direction of INCB thinking, but still I am outraged by this year’s call to “the Governments of Bolivia and Peru to initiate action without delay with a view to eliminating uses of coca leaf, including coca leaf chewing” and that all countries “should establish as a criminal offence, when committed intentionally, the possession and purchase of coca leaf for personal consumption”.

In what world do these people live in, I wonder. True, the 1961 Single Convention did oblige countries to abolish coca leaf chewing within 25 years. That period has long past and formally all countries who signed that –including Bolivia- are still legally bound by that article. Bolivia and Peru tried to correct that when negotiating the 1988 Convention, which stipulates that drug control measures “should take due account of traditional licit use, where there is historic evidence of such use”. But unfortunately the US at the same negotiations ensured that another article said that the 1988 convention “should not derogate from any obligations under the previous drug control treaties”. Since then, impasse and contradiction.

The INCB has pointed out this contradiction several times (most clearly in its 1994 supplement to their Annual Report) and requested the CND to bring clarity and give policy guidance. Why then do they now take a high-ground position of judge, jury and executioner and arrogantly instruct the world to go back to the 1961 coca abolition dogma, which was based on a colonial and racist ‘study’ published in 1950? I’ve tried to follow dynamics within the Board over the past decade, not an easy task because it operates under a cloud of secrecy totally out-of-line with any accepted UN standards about transparency and accountability. But still, it leaves me puzzled.

Is this the influence of Camilo Uribe Granje, the new Colombian INCB member, previously known for his attempts –paid by the US embassy in Bogota- to deny any harmful impacts of the chemical spraying campaign against coca fields? Or is it due to INCB President Emafo’s influence, a true dinasaur of zero tolerance who also maintains that needle exchange or harm reduction is against the UN drug control conventions, on a moment UNAIDS and WHO declare such interventions to be the only effective answer to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Asia and Eastern Europe? Or is it an attempt by the Board to show to the US that they are still keeping a hard line on some issues to compensate for the softer line they take in this report on harm reduction and 'proportionality of criminal sanctions'? That could be a point, because there are several positive things to say about this year’s INCB report, positions that probably will not please the current Bush administration. However, even the US has stopped condemning traditional coca uses in the Andes and you can drink coca tea when visiting the US embassy in La Paz.

There must have been disagreement within the INCB on this issue, because not all the members are as ignorant and out-of-touch with reality to support such an extremist position. We may never know, because the Board’s policy is to not mention internal disagreements or minority positions. It is very worrying that the wording on coca in this year’s report apparently had a majority support within the Board and those members who agreed to it should feel ashamed, especially after the recent adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that acknowledges fully the right to the people concerned to continue to chew coca or drink coca tea. Including the WHO has found that coca consumed in its natural form is beneficial. What is the INCB thinking to achieve with this retreat to the obsolete thinking of the 1961 Convention? It merely underlines the need to reform the way the Board is operating. If a majority of the Board does not come to its senses and corrects this mistake, they will only further dig their own grave and confirm their unworthiness to be a UN agency.

Martin Jelsma, TNI

5 March 2008

Four critical reports on the INCB

1. The International Narcotics Control Board: Current Tensions and Options for Reform

IDPC Briefing Paper 7, February 2008

This briefing paper brings together material and analysis from a number of recent reports that raise questions about the role and functioning of the INCB. The IDPC analysis is that the Board mixes a rigid and overzealous approach to some aspects of its mandate, while showing a selective reticence in others. These inconsistencies do not arise automatically from the structure or role of the Board, but from the operational and policy decisions of its officers and members.

Summary:
Beginning with a discussion of its formal powers and self-proclaimed "unique" position in international relations, this IDPC report explores the tensions surrounding various aspects of the current operation of the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB or Board). These tensions are analysed in light of the INCB’s interpretation of the UN drug control conventions and its mandate as laid out within them. It is argued here that in a number of contexts the Board appears prepared to act beyond the limitations which the treaties place upon it and engage in what can be termed mission creep. The report also explores other contexts within which the INCB appears reluctant to meet its mandated obligations and displays what can be described as selective reticence. The report contends that the areas of concern surrounding these mandate issues are further reinforced and complicated by the INCB’s culture of secrecy and the lack of transparency which characterizes all its work. It concludes by outlining "A Way Forward" in reviewing the way the INCB operates: a vital and timely endeavour that should be undertaken during the UN-level process to assess the 1998 UNGASS on drugs and the subsequent period of global reflection leading up to a high-level meeting in 2009 where markers for future UN drug control efforts can be adopted.

Download the Briefing Paper (pdf)

-------



2. ‘Unique in International Relations’? A Comparison of the International Narcotics Control Board and the UN Human Rights Treaty Bodies, by Damon Barrett, International Harm Reduction Association, February 2008
Download the full report in PDF

a new report released in February 2008 by the International Harm Reduction Association (IHRA), the INCB comes in for some heavy criticism for being overly secretive, closed to external dialogue with civil society, and out of kilter with similar agencies in other UN programmes. IHRA also debunks the INCB’s defence that it is ‘unique in international relations’.
------

3. 'Closed to Reason: the International Narcotic Control Board and HIV / AIDS', by Joanne Csete and Daniel Wolfe, Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and International Harm Reduction Development Program (IHRD) of the Open Society Institute, February 2007

A report published in March 2007 by the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and the Open Society Institute Public Health Program, strongly criticises the INCB. It accuses the Board of becoming 'an obstacle to effective programs to prevent and treat HIV and chemical dependence'. “Nearly one in three HIV infections outside Africa is among people who inject drugs. The International Narcotics Control Board could and should be playing a key role in stopping this injection-driven HIV epidemic — but it’s not,” said Joanne Csete, Executive Director of the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network and co-author of the report.

Download the full report in Pdf

------

4. The INCB and the un-scheduling of the coca leaf
TNI Drug Policy Briefing No. 21, March 2007

The 2006 International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) report emitted a clear signal to the governments of Bolivia, Peru and Argentina that growing and using coca leaf is in conflict with international treaties, particularly the 1961 Single Convention. The INCB, rather than making harsh judgements based on a selective choice of outdated treaty articles, should use its mandate more constructively and help draw attention to the inherent contradictions in the current treaty system with regard to how plants, plant-based raw materials and traditional uses are treated.

Download the briefing paper (pdf)

Further reading on coca:

From Soft drink to Hard Drug; A Snapshop History of Coca, Cocaine and Crack
Transform briefing 2005

Coca Yes, Cocaine No? Legal Options for the Coca Leaf
TNI Drugs & Conflict Debate Paper 13 May 2006

For more see the TNI publications page here

The Phoney Argument For a New Drug War

This detailed critique of the Centre for Policy Studies report 'The Phoney War on Drugs' was prepared by Axel Klein, Lecturer in the Study of Addictive Behaviour, Centre for Health Service Studies, University of Kent.

For politicians, wavering between ‘honest debates’ and the need for ‘sending out messages’ the subject of ‘drugs’ is risky and unpredictable. Soon after coming into office and heading down another loop in the spiral of unpopularity, Gordon Brown and his hapless Home Secretary Jacqui Smith* decided on a show of strength by moving cannabis from Class C to class B. The decision was made in spite of falling rates of cannabis use and a drop in the number of young people becoming entangled with the law because of petty drug offences. There was some discussion about a possible correlation between cannabis use and psychosis, figures on THC content, but the main purpose lay in “sending out a signal that cannabis is not only illegal but it is unacceptable."  

Moving drugs from the contested arena of evidence based policy to the nebulous realm of morality entailed dangers that were not anticipated at the time. But as the Spanish historian on drugs Antonio Escohotado warned long ago, the politicisation of moral values lays politicians open to charges of hypocrisy and sectarianism.

Once framed in moral terms, governments are at further risk of being outflanked. New Labour came into office with a rational strategy focussing on the cycle of drug fuelled offending by providing treatment of problematic users and a greater degree of tolerance towards recreational use. It combined a hard-nosed recognition of the normalisation of illicit drug use with a gamble on the effectiveness of treatment. The approach was canny, leaving little room for the Tories to carve out a distinctive position. They could either expose themselves as being hopelessly out of touch with current realities, like Anne Widdecombe’s call for on the spot fines, or get bogged down on technical issues. In the Addictions Report of the Social Justice Policy Review for the Conservative Party, the social policy framework put together under the auspices of Ian Duncan Smith, government drug policy is critiqued for prioritizing harm reduction. While attacking the prevailing treatment model of maintenance, based on an extraordinary expansion of methadone at the expense of abstinence oriented treatment, the document subscribes to the primary importance of treatment. There is tacit agreement that drug problems are as much a public health as a criminal justice issue.

This consensus has unwittingly been destroyed by the downgrading of evidence based policy, opening a door for the return of ethical posturing and vested interests in this most emotive of issues. One of the authors of the Addictions Report, Kathy Gyngell, has just released a timely follow-up in an 80 page document lambasting the failure of the New Labour drug strategy. Presented in the guise a scientific paper with a scattering of references and copious use of statistical data, "The Phoney War on Drugs" seeks to shift the debate on drugs onto new ground. It sets out with a familiar theme that drugs policy has failed, by repeating the earlier critique on methadone maintenance, followed by several indices for rising drug use, their associated problems and an attack on ineffectual prevention methods. It combines the critique into a broad assault on the idea of harm reduction, as a “new direction for drug policy” under the Labour government. Here history is effortlessly being rewritten with cavalier disregard for inconvenient fact, to blot out the origin of needle exchanges and the very concept of harm reduction during the Thatcher era.

The report then moves to the key theme adumbrated in the title. Britain’s drug problems are caused not by the criminalisation of a number of popular behaviour forms, but by the lack of enforcement of the laws. The ground is laid out in the summary with the claim that “the UK has one of the most liberal drug policies in Europe.” All problems, it is then argued, flow from there hence the need for a radical tilt towards a more punitive approach. But how liberality is measured and how this claim is supported is unclear. Unlike Germany, Switzerland, or the Netherlands the UK does not have any drug consumption rooms. It has not decriminalised the possession of small quantities of drugs like the above plus Belgium, Portugal, Italy and Spain. The sentences meted out for drug offences are among the longest and have contributed to the highest prison population per 100,000 in Western Europe. Standing at 15.5% in England and Wales the proportion of drug offenders as the total of the prison population is lower than in Luxembourg and Malta but higher than France or Russia. There are 21 countries with a lower percentage of drug offenders among the prison population and 13 with more. The report skates over the question why in spite of a tough stance on drugs and hefty penalties drug use has continued to rise in the UK, and moves on to claim that the country faces a “widening crises”

This has apparently been allowed to happen by, inter alia, cannabis being “declassified”, and the chronic underfunding of enforcement. There are obvious methodological and epistemological weaknesses in this assertion. The cited drug seizures statistics are at best a proxy for drug imports. Gyngell is confident, however, that the falling tonnage of drug seizures has resulted in wider availability. She stipulates further that drugs, once available, will be used. There is no recognition of cultures of consumption, of questions of social acceptability or of the normalisation of drug consumption among wide swathes of the population. Market economic principles about demand producing the supply, are swept aside with the simplistic argument that drugs once available will be used. These assumptions are not made explicit nor alternative explanations discussed. Would it not be possible that the fall in seizures mirrors a drop in demand or currency fluctuations?

What the paper recommends, therefore, is to reallocate resources towards supply reduction. No evidence is presented why this is effective, nor do the costs of enforcement find a mention. There is a blasé indifference to the impact of mass criminalisation on individuals, their families and communities, where prison induced stigmatisation locks cohorts of young people into criminality. The ineffectiveness of draconian penalties in shutting down supply routes is skipped over, and the reader looks in vain for a costing of criminal justice process, incarceration and subsequent reintegration. Carefully calibrated assessments of costs and benefits, as by the Sentencing Advisory Panel are dismissed as defeatist. The efficacy of tough penalties is asserted with adamantine rectitude that scorns the need for explanation. We are taken back to the claim by an earlier Home Secretary that “prison works.” This report continues the ignoble task of identifying scapegoats for policy failure and broken community. It is quite accurate that the extensive problems outlined in the report – broken families, young people doing drugs and crime, poor education, neighbourhood blight – have no parallel in Sweden or the Netherlands. But by attributing these differences to the more vigorous enforcement of drug control in two famously comprehensive welfare states, Gyngell misrepresents social policy to comical effect. The fact that the UK does score low on all manner of social indicators, is the downside of its market economy and the untrammelled discrepancy in living standards. The relatively high rates of drug related problems can be marshalled as another index of deprivation and social exclusion, not their cause.

The report then moves to suggest its own remedy for healing the cracks in breakdown Britain – increasing the penalties for drug offences and widening the net of enforcement. Once again, the author plays fast and loose with the facts, claiming that Dutch and Swedish policies demonstrate that harsh penalties are effective deterrents. What the Dutch experience could alternatively be said to demonstrate is that it is not the sentences that deter but comprehensive controls. Up until two years ago drug traffickers carrying less than 3 kilograms of cocaine from Aruba, Suriname and the Netherlands Antilles were held for up to a week and deported. It was realised that it was the certainty of arrest and seizure of the drugs that was the deterrent not the penalty for the courier.

What is extraordinary about a report calling for an intensification of the war on drugs is its timing. It appeared in the same week that the man appointed to take on the Office on National Drug Policy in the US, the country with the greatest stock of experience in a robust approach to drugs, has called for a ceasefire. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal Mr. Kerlikowske made clear that the government did not want to wage a war on its own people. Not only is the social cost colossal, with over 500,000 people in US prisons for drug offences, but the results as released by the Institute of Defence Analysis are disappointing: cocaine’s annual average US retail price per pure gram in 2007 was 22% lower than in 1999.

Yet it is precisely for failing to wage the war for real that Gyngell takes the government to task. If we only shifted the priorities within the drug control budget and allocated more than the current £380 million or 28% of the total to law enforcement the war could be won.

As a policy document the report is reminiscent of the anti-drug propaganda put out by civil society organisations in the US during the 1990s and early 2000s. They succeeded in diverting much government funding for notoriously ineffective ‘prevention’ activities like the notorious Drug Abuse Resistance Education, drug testing in schools and the systematic exclusion of convicted drug users from social benefits. Given the costs in terms of social costs and the tax burden imposed by the vast American prison and security system it seems extraordinary that this call is now made in a cash strapped UK. The report, unusually in the UK discussion on drugs, refers to ‘abusers’, makes no attempt to understand the massive popularity of illicit drugs in spite of the risks involved, and ridicules the definition of addiction as a relapsing condition as a conspiracy by the treatment sector. It makes ill found assertions about the causal relationship between drugs, crime and anti social behaviour, and misinterprets policies in Sweden and the Netherlands.

What is missing, interestingly for a CPS report, is any material from the US. But then Ethan Nadelmann the President of the US Drug Policy Alliance has warned us, that looking to the US for inspiration on drug policy is like taking advice on race relations from Apartheid South Africa. What the American war on drugs has alerted us to however, is how particular policies are interwoven with vested interests. Gyngell’s report follows on the heels of claims by the Serious and Organised Crime Agency to have driven up the price of cocaine with its interceptions. Precisely the kind of activity Gyngell would like to see extended. There is a strong likelihood that in anticipation of a new government forming within the year, interest groups like the Prison and Addictions Forum are now jockeying for office and influence in the new drug control establishment. The prize is mentioned in the fourth line of the document, the annual Government spend on drug policy. Interestingly for a report published by what was once the hothouse of Neo-liberalism, it is not the very disposal of resources appropriated from the tax payer for this purpose that the report puts into question, but its distribution. Gyngell would like to shift it from front line services work to pay for naval vessels and x ray machines at airports. With a bit more effort the war on drugs can be won and the unintended consequences discussed later.

The conceptual weaknesses of the report are compounded by factual errors. Lower prevalence rates of drug use and overdose in the Netherlands are attributed to hard enforcement, when the demonized practice of ‘harm reduction’ remains cornerstone of Dutch policy, with drug consumption rooms, pill testing and the depenalization of cannabis retail in coffee-shops. Nothing shows more clearly how effective a liberal approach has been in reducing drug related harm. Contrary to the report, cannabis was never ‘declassified’ but reclassified into class C, and the powers of arrest retained. Public funds spent on routine policing, court costs and incarceration are factored out from the equation. It is clear from the challenge to Christine Godfrey’s estimate of the costs of illicit drug use that the author has a sophisticated understanding of the complexity of estimating costs and impact, but such uncertainties are never conceded in the presentation of data to support the argument.

Supported by dubious argument and the eclectic use of figures, Gyngell calls for a radical shift in drug policy. Treatment is not working, the National Treatment Agency is an ineffective quango, and we should pour more money into punishment. Before the reclassification of cannabis a descent of discussion to this level would have been hard to imagine. One can only hope that Conservative drug policy has other sources of inspiration to draw on.

Axel Klein, May 2009

*update: former home secretary