With every passing year the drug problem seems to get worse. The U.S. government responds by pumping billions more dollars into the war on drugs. Federal spending for this “war without end” is more than twenty times what it was in 1980 and still the drug traffickers appear to be winning. Despite more than six billion dollars spent on “Plan Colombia” alone, cocaine production has actually increased in that country. Now the Bush Administration is asking for $1.4 billion more to aid the Mexican government’s drug crackdown through the “Merida Initiative.”
Although it may seem counterintuitive, the “law and order” response by our politicians only intensifies the problem. Instead, they might turn to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution to glean insight as to why these “common sense” reactionary solutions often are counterproductive. As illegal drugs become easier to obtain and more potent, politicians respond in a knee-jerk manner by ramping up law enforcement. After all, drugs are bad so why not escalate the war against drugs? Politicians get to look tough in front of voters, the drug war bureaucracy is delighted with ever expanding budgets, and lots of low-level bad guys get locked up. Everyone wins – including, unfortunately, the major drug traffickers.
As politicians intensified the drug war decade after decade, an unintended consequence began to appear. These “get tough” policies have caused the drug economy to evolve under Darwinian principles (i.e., survival of the fittest). Indeed, the drug war has stimulated this economy to grow and innovate at a frightening pace.
By escalating the drug war, the kinds of people the police typically capture are the ones who are dumb enough to get caught. These criminal networks are occasionally taken down when people within the organization get careless. Thus, law enforcement tends to apprehend the most inept and least efficient traffickers. The common street expression puts it best: “the dealer who uses, loses.” Conversely, the kinds of people law enforcement tends to miss are the most cunning, innovative and efficient traffickers.
It’s as though we have had a decades-long unintended policy of artificial selection. Just as public health professionals warn against the overuse of antibiotics because it can lead to drug resistant strains of bacteria, our overuse of law enforcement has thinned out the trafficking herd so that the weak and inefficient traffickers get captured or killed and only the most proficient dealers survive and prosper. Indeed, U.S. drug war policies have selectively bred “super-traffickers.”
Charles Darwin
Politicians cannot hope to win a war on drugs when their policies ensure that only the most efficient trafficking networks survive. Not only do they survive, but they thrive because law enforcement has destroyed the competition for them by picking off the unfit traffickers and letting the most evolved ones take over the lucrative trafficking space. The destruction of the Medellin and Cali cartels, for instance, only created a vacuum for hundreds of smaller (and more efficient) operations. Now the police cannot even count the number of smaller cartels that have taken over – much less try to infiltrate and disrupt them.
Moreover, the police have constricted the supply of drugs on the street while the demand remains constant thus driving up prices and profits for the remaining dealers. Increasing drug interdiction creates an unintended price support for drug dealers which, in turn, lures more participants into the drug economy. Of all the laws that Congress can pass or repeal, the law of supply and demand is apparently not one of them.
A public health approach to dealing with illicit drugs should take precedence over “law and order” approaches. Treatment and prevention must take priority over interdiction and eradication because drugs are a demand-driven problem. Politicians, however, continue to devote most drug funding toward cutting the supply. The proposed aid package for the notoriously corrupt Mexican drug war establishment would be better spent on providing treatment for addicts in the United States. Over reliance on politically expedient “get tough” policies will only continue an endless spiral of drug trafficking evolution.
reproduced with permission
--
Sanho Tree is a Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC and directs its Drug Policy Project. The Institute for Policy Studies is the only multi-issue progressive think tank in Washington, D.C. Through books, articles, films, conferences, and activist education IPS offers resources for progressive social change locally, nationally, and globally.
Sanho Tree, a drug policy analyst from the Washington based Institute for Policy Studies, has contributed a chapter on drug policy reform to a new book titled Mandate for Change, published this month and presented to the White House last week. In the chapter he explores a series of familiar approaches for positively reforming drug policy, as well as suggesting a novel approach - using secret ballots of legislators - to help move beyond the deadlock created by political fear of engaging with 'third rail' issues*.
Since President Richard Nixon first declared a “war on drugs” in 1971, the goal of a drug-free America is as remote as ever. Users who seek illicit drugs have little problem obtaining them cheaply, quickly and with ease. Indeed, the government’s own major indicators of success (measuring the price, purity and availability of drugs) show dismal trends. In 1969, the Nixon Administration spent $65 million on the drug war at the federal level; in 1982, the Reagan Administration spent $1.65 billion; in 2000, the Clinton Administration spent more than $17 billion; and the Bush Administration is currently spending well over $20 billion per year. We have had ever-harsher sentencing, and more people are employed to wage the drug war than ever before. The problem is not that we are under-spending or not being tough enough, but that drug war politics constantly gets in the way of sound, evidence-based policy. Not only can some drugs have very harmful results on physical and mental health, but the drug war itself is now causing as much (if not more) harm than the drugs themselves. This is not an acceptable substitute for an effective drug control policy.
Tree's outline plan for reform is summarised thus:
Reduce the potential harms caused by drug abuse.
Make prevention a priority.
Fully fund treatment on request.
Promote evidence-based harm reduction strategies.
Reduce the harms caused by the “War on Drugs.”
Promote alternatives to incarceration for low-level nonviolent drug offenders.
End major source country eradication programs.
End over-reliance on counter-productive crackdown policies such as the Merida initiative.
Stop searching for easy answers.
And he details the straw poll idea:
So how can politicians who care about getting re-elected make fundamental reforms without being electrocuted by the third rail? Just as the much-needed reforms of U.S. drug policy are counter-intuitive (where being tough is often the opposite of being effective), so too is the way out of this political stalemate. In order to get a more responsible legislature, it may be better to have less accountability—at least temporarily.
By utilizing a non-binding, anonymous straw poll, elected officials can express their true leanings without feeling the political backlash from myriad sources. While such a measure would have to be used as a “non-binding procedural aid” (the Constitution requires a recorded vote if one-fifth of the quorum requests it), an anonymous straw poll can produce surprising results and offer political cover during the debate over a binding recorded vote. Additionally, this temporary “veil of conscience” allows members of Congress to express their sentiments without crossing their party leadership, political donors, lobbyists and even their own electorate....
...An anonymous straw poll can create a temporary firewall separating sound public policy from partisan politics—or what Scott McClellan, Bush’s former White House press secretary, calls the permanent campaign. Indeed, this may be the only viable way to undo the polarizing legacy of Karl Rove. With so many crises to address and such powerful interests opposing reforms, Washington cannot afford to play partisan games and conduct business as usual. Those who were elected based on a pledge of a “different kind of politics” in a year of “change” should consider this method of cutting the Gordian Knot and breaking the logjam in Washington.
*The term 'Third Rail' issue, not really familiar in the UK, is described by Tree as follows:
The expression comes from the high-voltage third rail in a subway system and is used to refer to controversial issues that are thought to be political suicide for elected officials to engage. Other examples of third rail issues include U.S. aid to Israel, immigration reform, funding for law enforcement, gay marriage, military base closures, national health care, raising taxes, etc.
**Chapter reproduced with permission of the author
Please take a few minutes to watch this excellent short film produced by Witness for Peace, that considers the human and environmental costs of the disastrous ongoing efforts to eradicate coca production in Colombia using aerial fumigation. The film features occasional Transform blogger Sanho Tree, a drug policy analyst from the Washington based Institute for Policy Studies.
The film producers provide the following description;
"Journey to the heart of coca country where United States tax dollars have financed the aerial fumigation of 2.6 million acres of land in Colombia – the world's second most biodiverse country.
See cropdusters target coca plants, the main ingredient of cocaine, with concentrated herbicide as part of the U.S. war on drugs.
Listen to people on the ground, hear about the impacts, and learn new ideas about how to solve this deadly problem."
A new ad for the Obama 08 campaign has recently appeared on US TV that mocks some of the glossy anti-drug ads from the 80s and 90s, notably the much derided 1987 'this is your brain on drugs' fried egg Public Service Announcement (PSA).
It is worth noting that this ad is produced and funded by the grass roots MoveOn organisation, and not by the Obama campaign itself, but none the less it surely represents the first time a mainstream presidential campaign has mocked the silliness of the drug war in order to bolster credibility. This is not of course suggesting that drugs prevention / education is a bad thing per se (or that it is incompatible with a progressive drug law reform position) , rather that some of the ill-considered but iconic campaigns of the 'just say no' era have now become the staple of mainstream satire.
Tipping points are notoriously difficult to predict, but in hindsight often seem obvious and inevitable (e.g., the fall of the Berlin Wall). I saw the ad on Comedy Central late last night (reaching what the Daily Show calls the 'stoner demographic'), but if it continues to be aired on other channels/times (MTV is up next) and resonates with voters, we could be witnessing a watershed moment. Now that's change I can believe in! Thanks to Sanho Tree
Transform is pleased to support the upcoming release of new feature documentary 'Cocaine Unwrapped' directed by Rachel Seifert.Below is the film trailer, and a description of the film - followed by details of the upcoming preview screenings in Liverpool (Nov 1st)and London (Nov 10th), and the public premiere on Nov 29th. We have also included a video of a recent episode of Cinepolitics in which Steve Rolles from Transform discusses the film.
"This film is the story of cocaine – from production to consumption, as it journeys from the USA to the countries of Latin America. Between scenes we hear from the Western consumers who are unaware of the reality of the trade which their consumption supports. Major Neill Franklin was a police officer for 33 years on the streets of Baltimore. As he drives around the now devastated, boarded up and frequently deserted streets of his community he explains how the decline of industry pushed many heads of households into illegal drug dealing. Incredibly, as he describes how a drugs deal is done on the streets, we see one played out in front of our eyes. Streets where once it was fun to live are not now safe – even in the daytime. Drawing on his experience as a law enforcement officer, Franklin is certain that the USA’s drug policies need to change.
In Columbia 140,000 members of the police are fighting the war on drugs – one of them, Lieutenant Jose Castro takes us on an operation to manually eradicate a coca plantation which, as the country’s vice president explains, is a key part of the war against drugs, which in his country is tied up with paramilitary and criminal gangs. But for Maria, a small farmer in the Tumaco region, the indiscriminate aerial spraying kills not just her coca but her chocolate, banana and yucca plants. As local community leaders explain, the programme causes ill health, economic stagnation and massive displacement of the population. Cesar Gavira, president of Columbia from 1990-94, believes that the social damage caused by the war against
drugs is “terrible….it destroys the lives of people who are not criminals and who are just trying to survive.”
Bolivia is taking a different approach. As president Evo Morales explains, coca leaf in its natural state is not cocaine – it is just a leaf. But for twenty years, until 2005, with the support of the USA the Bolivian government waged a war against coca growers, causing death and destruction. This all changed when Morales was elected president and allowed farmers to grow limited amounts of coca, as we hear from Lucio, a local farmer. At the meeting of the Chapare Coca Growers Union the local co-ordinator Tomas Rejas urges his members to support the government policy of reducing overall production, switching to other crops. And at the Windsor tea factory we see how coca tea is made for the consumer market – but a market which Bolivia cannot exploit because the UN Vienna Convention limits its export. Bolivia not, however, a cocaine free country, as we see when we join the Bolivian anti-drug police as they discover – and destroy – a cocaine factory in the jungle.
As Bolivia abandoned the war against drugs, Mexico stepped it up. We arrive in Cuidad Juarez as the police discover the body of yet another victim of the internecine battle between the drugs gangs. A local journalist, Luis, explains how the level of violence has escalated in recent years, showing the rows of graves already dug to bury the victims. We hear of violence and intimidation from both former gang members and lawyers. As Sanho Tree, of the Institute for Policy Studies explains, the government intervention destabilised the illegal trade, sparking the escalating war in which, as opposition senator Carlos Navarette claims, has led to the corruption of the police and state. Attorney General Medina Mora is convinced that the government is doing the right thing to create peace and security but points out that there would be no problem is there was no demand.
In Ecuador another South American president is taking a different tack than in the past. Rafael Correa, whose father spent three years in an American prison for drugs trafficking, has pardoned and released over 2000 women drugs mules. People like Theresa, who points out that it is not enough just to be let out of prison – there need to projects to help people earn a legal living. Visiting the women in prison we learn how many became mules out of necessity – widowed, with children but without education, this was the only route out of poverty.
Finally we return to the streets of Mexico and Baltimore. In Mexico we see children as young as 10 who have been drawn into a cycle of street living, drug taking and begging. People like Dr Huber Brocca are running a shelter to help get them off drugs but his hope is that the war on drug is replaced by a war on poverty. And in Baltimore we meet prisoner Erik Thompson, a street dealer imprisoned for 25 years – more than some murderers, more than some paedophiles. As Neill Franklin concludes – incarceration is not solving the problem, it is destroying communities. Gil Kerlikowske – President Obama’s drugs “czar” says that in future there will be a more balanced strategy, combining treatment and prevention as well as enforcement. But as the concluding contributions from many of the film’s contributors say: this is a problem of the West – we are the consumers who create the demand."
After a little over two years, four hundred and fifty three blog posts and over 225,000 page views (10,000 unique visitors a month and a regular spot in the Wikio top 100 UK political blogs really isn't bad for a non-commercial super-niche policy blog like this one) we thought it was time to assemble a Transform blog best-of list. And here it is.
There is obviously an enormous amount more material that has not been included; much of it press releases, published articles and straight news reporting - so it's definitely worth going for a browse through the archive menu down there on the right.
I've gamely tried to divide the list up into various categories but there is inevitably a lot of cross over so don't pay them too much attention. If the bad science, bad politics and bad journalism headings all seem a bit negative, that's partly because the good news blogs tend to be 'this is good *point*' and as such just aren't as interesting, and partly because at this stage of the campaign, there's sadly still a lot more bad stuff to critique than there is good stuff to celebrate. There's other categories: cannabis gets its own one, as does alcohol and tobacco, international news, a small one for scoops, and finally a miscellaneous category for all the best-of blogs that didn't easily slot in elsewhere.
A big thanks to our bloggers, readers, and all those who have posted comments (even the trolls).
CANNABIS
In many ways a distraction from more pressing drug policy issues but, particularly with the whole sorry reclassification saga unfolding over the last few years, it has obsessed the media and correspondingly provided a rich vein of bad reporting, bad science and political idiocy that is hard for a critical drug policy blog to ignore.The Daily Mail and Independent on Sunday in particular have distinguished themselves, but they have been far from alone.
Daily Mail, Bad Science Drugs Deaths and Reclassification Aug 06. The first blog to really critique bad science and misreporting of drug statistics. On this occasion linking cannabis reclassification with a rise in opiate deaths (that took place before cannabis was reclassified - Doh!). More Daily Mail silliness here and here.
Brown on cannabis - it gets worse Sept 07. The cannabis reclassification saga comes to a head, the new PM makes a fool of himself, and any vague pretense of evidence based policy making goes out the window once and for all
More Independent on Sunday reefer madness exposed Oct 07. A case of grotesquely misrepresented research and shock headline-mongering. The authors of the research question thanked us for this one, the IOS have failed to apologize or print a correction (also belongs under bad science)
There's been lots going on around the world - from crazy drug war excesses to inspiring reform news, with the US often at the center of the vortex. But increasingly it is the UN drug control agency’s struggle to come to terms with half a century of failure and a legal infrastructure no longer even remotely relevant to the challenges of the modern world in particular that has made for a particular brand of hard to ignore bureaucratic drama.
What Darwin Teaches Us About the Drug War Dec 07. Brilliant analysis from guest blogger Sanho Tree, on how enforcement acts as natural selection in the illicit drug trade, making the criminals ever more sophisticated and violent.
There's plenty out there with old-school prohibition clearly requiring a monumental propaganda effort of it to keep itself propped up in the face of overwhelming failure, and sustained critique. A number of these blogs ended up featuring, occasionally starring in the Guardian’s regular bad science column (as did some of the cannabis stuff above).
Watching the Government attempt to argue its way past sustained parliamentary critique of the classification system has been a bizarre and depressing spectacle - warranting its own bad science sub-category. It's an issue that shows no sign of let up with the upcoming miserable show down over ecstasy.
Classification and Deterrence - where's the evidence? Oct 06. A detailed deconstruction of the Governement’s preposterous response to the Sci-Tech select committees suggestion that the deterrent effect of classification is un-evidenced.
The Lancet and drug harms: missing the bigger picture Mar 07. Nutt et al spell out their methodology for assessing drug harms – a step forward,but key conceptual errors mean they have missed the point: drug use harms and drug prohibition harms are not the same.
Playing SOCA with drug policy? Jan 07. Discussion of why the Government’s new serious crime agencies drug brief is doomed from the outset, and the politics of why it was set up in the first
Home Office refuses to release strategy evaluation research Sept 07. An ongoing disgrace as the Home Office, in the spirit of informed debate, refuses to release independent analysis that might make it look bad. The FOI appeals on this are still rumbling on.
For some reason illegal drugs are like a magnet for bad journalism. Beyond the reefer madness silliness above there has been no shortage daft drug panics, shoddy reporting or utterly pointless make-up-a-story-from-nothing journalism.
The anatomy of a drug panic April 07. Even the Guardian are not immune from a good drug panic story. This time its BZP.
His analysis is concise and useful - although specifically focused on economics. He notes that:
"The “war” on narcotics continues to be waged with little to show for it other than occasional successful skirmishes (like Mexico’s recent drug seizure) at great cost in self-destruction and deep damage to other countries."
and,
"Limiting drug usage after decriminalization would cost many billions of dollars a year for education and treatment, but markedly less than the costs of current policy."
The concluding paragraph:
"Decriminalization of drug use is a controversial recommendation. My reaction over the years was to reject the idea when it was proposed by others. What has turned me around is the reality that the current policy of criminalizing drug use is not working—and cannot be successful. If one drug shipment is interdicted, other shipments and substitute drugs are available. Burglaries and muggings by young offenders are motivated by the need for money to buy a fix. The rents to drug dealers are so high that there are no practical limits on their ability to bribe officials; and those who refuse to be bribed are often killed. In developing countries like Mexico and Colombia, the dealers can buy their own armies and outgun government enforcement personnel. My conclusion is that in a democracy—where drug offenders are not summarily put to death by the authorities—the only feasible approach is to eliminate the rents and treat and educate the addicts. This is no cure-all, but is preferable to efforts at prohibition of narcotics, something we learned years ago in the case of alcohol."
There are hundreds, if not thousands of think tanks in Washington and I don't know a great deal about the CSIS, but Sanho Tree (a colleague who is director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, also DC based) describes CSIS as 'a center-right think tank' that is 'in many ways the voice of the Establishment'. CSIS certainly lists awho's who of political and corporate heavy hitters amongst its trustees (including, I noticed, Henry Kissenger). So whilst CSIS specifically notes that:
"CSIS does not take specific policy positions. Accordingly, all views, positions, and conclusions expressed in this publication should be understood to be solely those of the author"
it remains significant that they published this paper and is indicative of a new level of mainstream institutional engagement in the the broader critique of prohibition from across the political spectrum.
Below is a video of a recent talk about the Mexican drug war at the Conference on World Affairs at the University of Colorado given by Sanho Tree, a drug policy analyst from the Washington based Institute for Policy Studies (and occasional Transform blogger). Incisive and informative analysis of the appalling unfolding crisis in Mexico.
"When you have these types of turf battles, its very counter-intuitive, but in terms of violence reduction, as long as we have high demand in places like the United States and as long as we have the war on drugs, drug prohibition, then the state getting in between a turf battle is possibly one of the worst thing you can do, which is a very difficult reality for politicians to face because they want to do something. Daniel Webster once said - 'the strong notion that something must be done is the parent of many a bad measure...especially if it happens in an election year."
See also this news piece from abc in the US, showing how collateral damage from the drug war is coming home to roost. Turf war related kidnappings are now commonplace in Phoenix, Arizona: Phoenix - Kidnapping Capital of the U.S.A.
Research carried out by the Criminal Policy Research Unit at Southbank University indicates that whilst police offensives against crack dealers netted a large number of arrests, it did little to hinder crime associated with the crack-cocaine market. ‘Mounted in two phases of two and six weeks in the winter of 2000/2001, Operation Crackdown netted over 1600 arrests from concentrated ‘sting’ or ‘test’ purchases and during raids on scores of crack houses and dozens of street drug markets...
A priority was to reduce street crime. Reported robberies and burglaries near the operation sites yielded no indication that this had occurred. Local police agreed, with the exception of areas where street robberies were strongly linked to adult users of crack houses. Where juveniles were the main offenders some police felt that the diversion of officers to Crackdown had allowed an increase in street robberies.’
The study goes on to note that crack users, police and community service staff agreed that the operation did not make buying drugs harder, or increase the prices. There is also evidence that crack houses merely moved to different areas.
Research into a separate crackdown in London’s Kings Cross backs this argument up. Evidence suggests that the impacts of the crackdown were transitory and dealing merely moved to near-by streets. Further studies in Manchester and the US found that drug dealers tend to be some of the most desperate and deprived people, therefore threats of harsh prison sentences have little impact.
The Operation Crackdown study also found that police were concerned that ‘Police said the centrally timetabled crackdown had distorted normal anti-drug enforcement and could only be mounted by drafting in less experienced staff, reducing effectiveness. They also agreed that Crackdown had diverted attention from potentially more effective ways of tackling drug markets. A major limitation in the operation’s ability to dent crack dealing was that most crack purchases are arranged over mobile phones rather than in street markets or crack houses.’
The researchers interviewed a large number of heroin and crack users after Operation Crackdown ended. Almost 1 in 5 said they felt that crack had actually become easier to buy since the start of the operation.
Not explored in the research is that more than just being ineffective (or having marginal/short term impacts), enforcement initiatives can actually make matters worse. New turf wars can be precipitated, and new dealers or gangs that appear to fill a void left from a major crackdown can impose themselves with increased levels of violence to establish their territory. They may well be unknown to user populations and police causing additional difficulties and tensions. Sanho Tree of the Washington-based think tank Institute for Policy Studies has also argued on this blog that enforcement can create a Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’ effect, where only the most ruthless, cunning or violent within the criminal market will prosper.
In the UK Government’s recently launched Drugs Strategy much is made of the claim that over 1,000 crack houses have been closed since 2003. However, if as the above mentioned research suggests, those houses have merely moved somewhere else then there's little point bragging about numbers; it is just more of the familiar Home Office misdirection. The fact remains that crack was not a major problem in 1997, and it is now - despite the enourmous policing resources put into attempts to eliminate it.
United Nations officials in Afghanistan are attempting to create a "flood of drugs" in the country intended to destroy the value of opium and force poppy farmers to switch to legal crops such as wheat.
After the failure to destroy fields of the scarlet flowers in Afghanistan's volatile south, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says the answer is to stop the drugs from leaving the country in the first place.
"Manual eradication is incompetent and inefficient," UNODC chief Antonio Maria Costa said during a visit to the western Afghan province of Herat. "So we want to see more efforts to stop the flow of drugs across Afghanistan's borders and the hitting of high-value targets to create a market disruption.
"We want to create a flood of drugs within Afghanistan. There will be so much opium inside Afghanistan unable to go out that the price will go down."
It looks like Costa has finally been mugged by reality.
When the Taliban allowed anyone to grow poppies in the late 1990s, the price of a kilo of opium fell to $30 on the streets of Kandahar because of the resulting glut.When Mullah Omar decreed it was no longer consistent with Islamic values to grow poppies in 2000, the prohibitionist price of opium shot up to $740/kilo just before the Sept. 11 attacks.
For the first time that I can recall, a prominent drug warrior has allowed the inconvenient truth of prohibition economics to intrude on his crusade.
Alas, Costa still clings to the idea that opium can still be stopped from leaking across the borders of Afghanistan.Still, the idea of allowing the natural devaluing of illicit crops by stopping eradication is more than a baby step -- it's a sea change in drug war thinking and it stops the counterproductive and inhuman "war" against peasant farmers.Now that he has admitted the futility of shoveling water, we can only hope he will abandon the idea of building a metaphorical wall around the country.
While I truly applaud Costa's belated arrival to the real world, it is still a fairly simplistic solution he has outlined. Since the days of the Silk Road Afghanistan has been been famous for trading by merchants, plundering by bandits, and smuggling by tax evaders. The latter two groups know the terrain better than any Westerner or Google map and I doubt NATO can seal the borders from these people any more than they can keep the Taliban from walking back and forth to Pakistan. It's also one of the most corrupt countries in the world so a little cash can facilitate a lot of smuggling.
While the addiction rates in Afghanistan are still relatively low and rising, the neighboring countries have a huge addiction and HIV problem as a result of cheap Afghan heroin. The situation is dire and demands real solutions.
Still, I think his policy switch is important for five main reasons:
1) It's the first time a top drug warrior has allowed the law of supply and demand to rear its inconvenient head into policymaking. Will wonders never cease? Once they have acknowledged this, it's hard to go back and pretend they can still make illicit crops disappear by making them astronomically more valuable in a world where HALF of the human race "subsists" on less than $2/day.
2) It's hard to eradicate in a region where illicit crops have taken root and the trade networks have been established. It's a lot easier to prevent a region from converting to illicit crops in the first place. If farmers transition back to legal crops, those networks could recede and then they might have a chance of preventing their return if there is sufficient aid for infrastructure and credit.
3) Adam Smith's "invisible hand" will be the culprit that motivates farmers to switch crops on their own. It doesn't make NATO forces and the UN into the hated "bad guys" who eradicated the fields of peasant farmers and drove them into the arms of the Taliban. The Taliban's fatal mistake in 2000 was in imposing total prohibition of poppy cultivation. While it made some Taliban commanders fabulously wealthy because they had cornered the market on warehoused opium at pre-prohibition prices, it turned farmers against them because they starved and suffered as a result so they were happy to help NATO forces.
4) When the opium prices fall, the Taliban will have a harder time funding their war and fewer lives should be lost. This could hasten the withdrawal of combat troops and the decreased violence should allow for more effective development assistance -- assuming Congress doesn't repeat the mistakes of the last Afghan war against the Soviets. To recall, we wiped our asses and left as soon as the Soviets retreated thus leaving a perfect vacuum for civil war and eventual Taliban victory.
5) They can now stop punishing the weakest of the weak and the poorest of the poor. Forced eradication without providing viable alternative livelihoods is not only counterproductive, but it is also monstrously cruel.
There can be no question that global security is fundamentally compromised by the world’s commitment to the war on drugs. Could this fact be instrumental in bringing an end to the global prohibition?
As has been demonstrated by the recently launched Count the Costs campaign, the war on drugs detrimentally impacts on numerous policy areas – Crime, Development, Security, Health, Expenditure, Stigma and Discrimination, Human Rights and the Environment. Some of these policy paths have been well-trodden by reformers; others have witnessed almost no footfall. Whilst all of them have the potential to engage policy makers, the question we have been asking is, which of them has the potential for the most engagement and concern? We have come to the conclusion that demonstrating the negative impacts of the war on drugs on security, and bringing security and intelligence agencies into the debate, has substantial untapped potential tomove the debate forward. When current and former military and intelligence personnel critique the war on drugs or indeed, explicitly call for reform to the status quo, formerly uninterested policy makers are likely to pay attention.
Up until relatively recently it had been received wisdom that drugs, crime and insecurity were inextricably linked. As the reform agenda gains traction, it is increasingly understood that the drugs/crime nexus is created, not by primarily by drug use/misuse, but in substantially part by the the prohibtionist policy environment; the war on drugs itself.
In 2008 even the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime conceeded in a discussion paper that prohibition had created a series unintended negative consequences, including 'vast' criminal market. However, there is relatively little engagement in the public debate with the fact that, along with the vast criminal market there are whole regions of the world whose national security is fundamentally compromised by the war on drugs.
There have been lone voices – for example David Passage (former director of Andean Affairs at the US State Dept), Eliza Manningham Buller (former Director General of MI5), and there is some literature. Notable amongst them is Chasing Dragons. But now the security issue is emerging, blinking into the sunlight. In October 2010, (entirely by coincidence) NOREF, the Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) both ran workshops exploring the connection between drug trafficking and security.
Papers from NOREF are available here, here and here.
Transform took part in the IISS project, which consisted of two workshops and will culminate in an IISS Adelphi publication. The first workshop involved an exploration of the security issues for key geographical regions involved in production and trafficking. As a contribution to the discussion, Transform (and PhD student Emily Crick) produced a paper exploring drugs and security using the International Relations theory of Securitisation. This theory helps demonstrate that there are in fact two drug wars being fought – one ostensibly fighting against ‘drugs’ and ‘drug abuse’ because of their ‘threat’ to mankind; the other, fighting against organised crime (whose power is based on the opportunities created by the primary securitisation) because of the ‘threat’ they present to nation states (see previous blog on securitisation)
A wide ranging discussion explored the scope of the drugs and security connection, including contributions from Dr. Mohammed Zafar Khan, Former Deputy Minister, Afghan Ministry of Counter Narcotics, Sanho Tree from the Institute for Policy Studies, the Colombian Ambassador to the UK, and others. The discussion effectively took place on two levels with some engaging wholeheartedly with the question of the impact of prohibition upon security and others remaining in their comfort zone by effectively giving country reports of security impacts.
The second workshop was intended to provide participants with the opportunity both to critique the status quo and to engage in some blue skies thinking around the impact of ending the overwhelmingly security oriented approach. To help facilitate dialogue Emily Crick presented a critique of the securitised approach and Danny Kushlick of Transform demonstrated the various policy options that are made available under a de-securitised regime of legal regulation and control. (The Transform/Crick papers on securitisation and de-securitisation are being disseminated to intelligence agencies, security/strategic think tanks and the military both in the UK and beyond)
It attracted participants from a wide range of countries, organisations and agencies, including representatives from the UK (Serious and Organised Crime Agency, FCO), Russia, China, and Mexico. Many participants found the blue skies element challenging (as you would expect from officials who spend their lives working within the prevailing paradigm of prohibition).
Despite being invited the Americans were notably absent from the workshops – a glaring gap, given the US’s deep and abiding commitment to maintaining the status quo.
There are many potentially fruitful policy veins that remain untapped. For example the development world has been reluctant to involve itself in the reform agenda. But members of the security field appear only too willing to get stuck in and are to be congratulated for doing so.
There are those who have expressed concern that engaging in the security agenda has significant risks, not least of which is that it could further solidify the security-oriented regime and discourse. We are not naïve enough to forget that some significant security and intelligence fiefdoms are predicated on and resourced by the commitment to a global war on drugs. Indeed for some it is their very lifeblood. However, our experience thus far is that some in the security and intelligence world are willing to play their part in exposing the tragic irony of the overwhelmingly negative impact of the war on drugs on national, international and human security.
. The idea of 'legalising' Afghanistan's opium crop for medical use was back in the news this weekend. According to the Independent on Sunday, Tony Blair is now 'considering' the plan that has been rejected by the US and also by the Foreign Office. Even though the IOS has hardly covered itself in glory for its recent drugs coverage, this story apparently comes from a prime ministerial spokesperson so there's no reason think its not true. Another report in Pakistan's Daily Times say that apparently NATO are also 'considering' the plan.
Its not surprising they are at least considering it. Afghanistan is as chaotic and war torn as ever: current efforts to deal with the illegal opium trade are clearly failing in dramatic style. Add to this the fact that everyone knows the eradication plans being floated are hopelessly impractical and have zero chance of success, and there may indeed be potential window for more radical solutions to be reviewed. Unfortunately 'consider' is not 'do'. When they do 'consider' it they will find that in its current form the plan is a non-starter. Below is an article which appeared (with a couple of very small edits) in this month's Druglink magazine in which I explain why.
Fields of Dreams
The Senlis Council proposal to license Afghan opium production for medical use has been garnering much publicity and high level support, most recently from the BMA. Could this plan be a 'silver bullet', simultaneously helping to heal Afghanistan and solving the 'global pain crisis'? Sadly not, argues Steve Rolles from the Transform Drug Policy Foundation.
Superficially at least the idea has great appeal. Currently more than half of global opium production is legal and licensed for the medical market (morphine, diamorphine, codeine). This product is not profiting criminals, fueling conflict, or being sold to addicts on street corners. Could we not help Afghanistan on its road to economic and political stability and fill the apparent shortfall in medical opiates for pain control? Unfortunately no – this apparent 'silver bullet' solution faces a raft of practical and political obstacles that render it almost completely unfeasible.
Firstly, the medical opium 'shortage' is an illusory one. Licit opium production currently takes place primarily in Tasmania, Turkey, and India, strictly licensed by the UN drug agencies. The problem is evidently not a lack of opium but rather the under use of current production. The INCB estimated annual global demand for licit opiates (in morphine equivalents) was 400 metric tonnes and that over production since 2000 has led to stocks 'that could cover global demand for two years'. Afghanistan's annual production is 610 tonnes of morphine equivalent (and rising). Flooding an already over-saturated market would potentially cause precisely the supply/demand imbalance the UN control system was designed to prevent. Any first steps would, therefore, have to address under-usage of existing production and the related political, bureaucratic, and licensing issues before any realistic role for licit Afghan production could seriously be entertained.
The second problem is a purely practical one with Afgahanistan's status as a failed state and war zone presenting insurmountable obstacles. Although such an illicit-to-licit transition has been achieved in Turkey and India, this required a high level of infrastructural investment, state intervention and security apparatus, something Afghanistan is entirely lacking in its current chaotic and lawless state. Afghan production would also struggle to compete on the international market, with its unit costs estimated by David Mansfield (1) at almost ten times higher than the highly industrialised output from Australia.
Finally there is the fact that demand for non-medical opiates will not disappear, even if Afghan opium production hypothetically could. A lucrative illicit profit opportunity would remain - a vacuum into which other illicit production would inevitably move - whether in Central Asia or elsewhere. More likely, the demand would be met by increased Afghan production under the same farmers, warlords and profiteers, potentially making the situation worse. The plan has no more hope of getting rid of illicit non-medical production than the decades of failed alternative development and eradication have. The brutal realities of supply and demand economics in a completely unregulated and illegal marketplace will see to that.
There may well be a place for smaller scale licensing of Afghan opium at some point in the future, certainly for their domestic medical needs and perhaps as part of an amnesty plan or transition program for farmers moving into alternative crops. But the Senlis plan as currently envisaged is a non-starter - 'silver bullet fantasies' as the TransNational Institute describes it (2). Sanho Tree (Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC) described the plan as "a mirror image of prohibition – well-intentioned but ill-conceived, just from the opposite end of the policy spectrum". Whilst undoubtedly useful in stimulating debate on licensing opium production, the proposal is now casting a shadow over more thoughtful and cautious policy work being undertaken by other drug policy NGOs. For organisations like Transform there is a danger that an over hyped but ultimately doomed 'legalisation' plan is potentially undermining a reform movement struggling to promote a more nuanced exploration of realistic models for regulated drug production and supply.
Transform has organised a major session at the upcoming International Harm Reduction Conference in Bangkok next week, titled Can Harm Reduction End the Drug War, the session abstracts for which are copied below.
The broad principles of harm reduction have been widely adopted in much of the world but remain controversial for some political groupings in the prohibitionist camp. Some view harm reduction’s non-judgemental position and tolerance of continued use as tacitly condoning drug use, even encouraging or facilitating it, whilst for others the movement is portrayed as little more than a sinister ‘trojan horse for drug legalisation’. Yet for most working in the harm reduction field it is more simply a pragmatic set of principles and strategies aimed at, first and foremost, saving lives, and such debates are an irrelevance and distraction from the harsh day to day realities they have to deal with.
Whilst there is substantial support for moves towards legally regulated supply for some or all drugs within the movement – most obviously regards a medical model for prescribing of opiates - an anti-prohibtion / pro law-reform position does not yet feature specifically in the definitions or lists of harm reduction principles. Part of the reason for this is that it is far from the consensus view (particularly regards the wider debate around non-medical use), but there are also frequently aired practical concerns that vital harm reduction work might be jeopardised in some areas where it is most needed if more contentious elements of the drug law reform debate become too prominent. There is also an element of institutionalisation with the harm reduction movement – a reluctance to ‘bite the hand that feeds’ as it were and jeopardise funding (often from the state) through vocal dissent, a phenomenon that has similarly ensured a troubling degree of silence on drug law reform from the treatment sector (for more discussion see 'In pusuit of truth', by Danny Kushlick here - p.12).
Thus in contrast the claims of ‘Trojan-horse’ conspiracists, the drug law reform movement has in fact struggled to activate the wider harm reduction field, whose concerns are often far more immediate than the longer term goals of system wide legal reform. That said, a significant difference between the harm reduction movement and many of its most vocal opponents remains; it is at least genuinely open to honest intellectual engagement with the prohibition / regulation debate, which is now a regular fixture in harm reduction journals and conferences.
“Harm reduction approaches also seek to identify and advocate for changes in laws, regulations and policies that increase harms, or which hinder the introduction of harm reduction interventions.”
The International Harm Reduction Association
Acknowledging the spectrum of views around what ‘harm reduction’ means, the important thing in the context of this discussion is to highlight the underlying principles of the paradigm, without necessarily endorsing everything done under its banner. From Transform's perspective Harm Reduction as currently described is somewhat limited in scope – a defensive position against the harms largely created by prohibition. It needs to evolve not only to more fully engage with the harms created by prohibition, as opposed to drug use harms, but also to evolve into a more creative and positive position that looks at wellbeing maximisation, not just mitigating harm.
Session abstract:
Can Harm Reduction End the Drug War?
For many in the drugs field, the harms caused by drugs are conflated by harms caused by the war on drugs – which makes harm reduction vastly more complex than it needs to be. This Major Session will explore the relationship between advocacy for harm reduction and advocacy to end the global war on drugs and replace it with an effective system of regulation and control.
The presentations will analyse which harms are created by the war on drugs and which are created by the use of drugs. The session will explore the extent to which harm reduction can reduce harms caused by the war on drugs and how the two movements can best work together. This session sets out to offer delegates the opportunity to explore issues that are rarely discussed in the harm reduction field – partly because of political pressures and partly due to the pressing need to save lives. It will be relevant to anyone in the harm reduction field whose work is influenced both by the behaviour of drug users and by the negative consequences of the war on drugs.
There is a growing understanding and acceptance within the drugs field that a significant proportion of what are broadly termed 'drug related harms' stem directly from the policy of prohibition and the illicit markets it has inadvertently fostered. Attempts to disentangle the harms caused by drug use per se, and those created or exacerbated by policy, specifically the enforcement of punitive prohibitions, have been comparatively under-explored and specifically have not been a prominent feature in the harm reduction discourse.This short presentation, as part of the proposed major session, will develop this theme by considering analysis from Transform Drug Policy Foundation and the 'Taxonomy of Drug Harms' by Reteur and McCoun (in 'Drug War Heresies' 2001). The broad analysis will then be illustrated by comparing harms associated with illicit use of 'street' heroin with supervised legal use of prescribed heroin.'Prohibition harms' will be demonstrated to include:
Fueling large volumes of low level acquisitive property crime and street prostitution (low income dependent users fund raising to support a habit)
Organised crime from local street dealing (includingdrug-gang violence and turf wars) to international criminal networks (links to conflict and terrorism)
Destabiliation of producer countries (corruption and violence in Afghanistan)
A case will be made for the definition of harm reduction to be broadened to include the harms (or as the UNODC describes them 'unintended consequences') related to enforcement, for the harm reduction movement to more pro actively engage in the debate around the policy implications of this analysis; including changes to enforcement practice and alternatives to prohibition, and in the longer term, decriminalisation of use and legally regulated drug production and supply.
The Limits of Harm Reduction within the context of Prohibition
This presentation will consider the limits of harm reduction initiatives as aresponse to problematic substance use within the context of the criminalization of drugs and drug use. Harm reduction efforts take place in the margins between illegal underground drug economies, cultures of drug use and officially sanctioned efforts to deliver health care interventions and/or punishment to drug users and sellers. Current approaches to the use and sale of illegal drugs do not acknowledge how the criminalization of drug use limits the impact of health and/or criminal justice responses. International agreements that criminalize drug use have prevented communities from developing a full range of harm reduction interventions. These agreements have also prevented countries from developing alternative responses to illegal drug use and sales. The City of Vancouver has developed a strategy to prevent and reduce harm from substances that includes a call for dialogue on alternative regulatory mechanisms for currently illegal substances with a goal of maximizing prevention and reduction of harm. Regulation and control of currently illegal substances combined with social and economic development efforts can provide an alternative response to problematic drug use. This presentation will consider the significant limitations of harm reduction initiatives within a context of the continued criminalization of psychoactive substances in society.
Can Harm Reduction Win the War on Drugs? A Thai User’s Perspective
Thailand drug policy consists of drug eradication, suppression and prevention approaches, with the heaviest financial and human resource investment on law enforcement and military techniques to achieve a “drug-free” country. Harm reduction is not included in its approach. In 2003, Thai drug policy reached its nadir when 2,500 people were extra-judicially executed and tens of thousands of other people allegedly associated with drugs experienced numerous other human rights violations in the name of drug control.
My community of both HIV-positive and HIV-negative people with a history of drug use is virtually the only group in Thailand to have publicly advocated against abuses committed by government sectors toward drug users. Thai drug users have introduced community-driven harm reduction interventions since the 1990s in spite of the ongoing repressive legal and policy environment: prior, during and following the infamous 2003 crackdown.
My presentation will depict the peer-led harm reduction interventions that we implement regardless of what stage of suppression the government wages, and how the drug war specifically effect the efficacy of our work. Our interventions are severely compromised by the lack of government support for this important rights-based public health approach. Until harm reduction policy becomes a reality in Thailand, drug users are placed at higher risk of HIV, viral hepatitis, TB and other severe diseases due to overemphasis on criminalization and resultant high rates of detention and incarceration.
The lack of support for evidence-based harm reduction approaches, plus the failure of relevant government ministries to recognize the various harms experienced by people who use drugs, combined with a criminalizing and stigmatizing environment condemns drug users and harm reduction workers to ultimately fail to make a significant impact due to the increased risk, extreme duress under which we work, lack of funding and political support, etc. Drug wars must be stopped.
The Bigger Political Picture: International Discourse on Harm Reduction and the Drug War
Politicians and drug warriors often say that we know where the drugs are coming from, so why don't we stop them at the source before they can reach our kids? This is easier said than done. After decades of trying this simplistic strategy, more drugs than ever are reaching consumers. Despite spraying more than 3 million acres under Plan Colombia, coca cultivation has actually increased in that country and has been pushed into other countries in the region as well. In Afghanistan, attempts to curb opium poppy cultivation have been spectacularly unsuccessful. In both countries, hard line eradication policies have left peasant farmers with few economic alternatives and have helped drive some of them into the arms of insurgents.
There is simply too much ungoverned territory in the world and a relatively inexhaustible supply of impoverished farmers willing to take the risk of cultivating illicit crops. Attempts to eradicate these crops have been short-sighted -- trying to produce quick results (no matter how unsustainable) to meet the targets established by political officials -- while the economic development projects to compliment the eradication programs have been woefully under funded. In short, these supply side control measures have been about as effective as shovelling water.
The collateral damage associated with the drug war impacts the poor and people of color in ways unheard of to most harm reductionists. These lives are not squandered by necessity, but by political choice and accompanying neglect. Just as we advocate harm reduction policies for drug users on the demand side, there is a need for harm reduction in source country crop control on the supply side. This presentation will examine why these supply side policies have failed as well as the political dynamics driving this failed paradigm.
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