McMafia: Crime without frontiers

An interesting book review in today's Observer of 'Mc'Mafia: Crime without frontiers' by Mischa Glenny.

The book examines the world of organised crime and, unsurprisingly perhaps, inevitably alights on the role of the illicit drug market at the heart of many of the most profitable enterprises, the reviewer noting the reality that: 'when goods and activities are illegal, it's the criminals who make the profits' .

The review also highlights that:

If the writing is occasionally a little colourful, the conclusions are mostly sober and sound. Glenny correctly identifies the contradiction of the Wars on Drugs and Terror, in which the illicit trade created by the former sustains the enemy in the latter.

and quoting Glenny;

'If the UN is right and drugs account for 70 per cent of organised criminal activity, then the legalisation of drugs would administer by far the deadliest blow possible against transnational organised criminal networks.'

Below is a short video of the McMafia author confronting Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the recent NATO summit in Bucharest about how "the Taliban are the biggest backers of the of the War on Drugs." Harper responds typically ineffectually with more talk about how "demand reduction requires a change in the culture."

How enforcing prohibition creates street crime

Researchers at the University of British Columbia have made a compelling case that drug prohibition and backwards welfare rules increase criminal activity.

A team led by Kora DeBeck and Thomas Kerr surveyed injection drug users in the Vancouver area. They asked, "If you didn't need the money to pay for your drug use, are there any sources of income in the last 30 days that you would eliminate?"

In that study, 62 percent of sex workers and 41 percent of drug dealers said that they would cease their criminal activities if they did not need the extra income for drugs.

It may seem obvious that streetwalkers don't like their jobs. However, a scientific study like this is exactly the sort of evidence that is necessary to change public policy. The researchers were able to eloquently use their findings to highlight the shortcomings of Canadian laws and social services. That critique, and the results of their survey, will appear in an upcoming issue of the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence .

DeBeck and Kerr began with a simple argument; seizures and arrests by law enforcement agencies raise drug prices. This makes it hard for serious addicts to afford their habits without resorting to prostitution, drug dealing, panhandling, binning, and other illegal activities.

By disrupting drug markets and increasing risks involved in producing and distributing illegal substances, prohibition-based drug enforcement policies play a role in inflating drug prices, which in turn induces active IDU (injection drug users) with high intensity addictions to engage in prohibited income generating behavior to finance their drug use. While the ultimate objective of inducing high drug prices is to deter drug use, this analysis and a growing body of research indicates that the unintended consequences of these enforcement-based policies produce significant harm for drug using individuals and broader society.

Here is the biggest policy dilemma: people that receive financial assistance from the government will lose their support if they earn more than a minuscule amount from legitimate sources. This standard, intended to keep checks out of the hands of people that don't need them, may also strongly discourage the rightful recipients from pursuing normal work. Since there are no records of the illegal transactions, the drug dealers and sex workers can have their cake and eat it too.

Furthermore, the current structure of social assistance in Canada is such that recipients will lose their income benefits if they begin to earn above $400 per month through legitimate work, leaving this population with limited income generating options beyond resorting to prohibited sources.

At the end of their report, the scholars offered several more ways to keep problematic dependent users out of trouble: increase the availability of low-end jobs, make heroin available by prescription, and offer methadone or stimulant substitutes for free.

One method of trying to reduce engagement in prohibited income generation among drug user populations with severe addictions is to expand their economic opportunities. This would involve supporting the development of legitimate means of earning income through various low threshold employment opportunities and skill building measures. A recent intervention designed to economically empower drug addicted sex trade workers to develop alternative legitimate sources of income has been shown to have a positive influence on reducing involvement in the sex trade industry. Alternatively, policy makers could intervene by providing addiction prescription and substitution therapies to individuals with markers of serious addiction to decrease their reliance on, and subsequent need to purchase, street drugs. This could be achieved in part through heroin prescription programs and by expanding substitution therapies including methadone maintenance.

this is an edited version of guest article on Respectacle by Aaron Rowe

Economist: spoof annual report from the drug mafia

As a follow up to Monday's UN world drug report the Economist, a long time supporter of drug law reform, has published a tongue in cheek editorial yesterday tellingly demonstrating how the global illicit drug market operates as a multinational business much like any other, albeit minus any legal regulatory framework, and with violence as its modus operandi. The only laws the market responds to are those of supply and demand. The piece also subtly highlights the irrelevance of current enforcement measures.

Is the narcotics industry in trouble?

"FOR decades business has been booming. Over the years rival operators have found ways to lift production, they have devised inventive supply chains that reach across the globe and have expanded markets so that they supply loyal consumers in almost every country. Estimates are hard to confirm, not least because enterprises have been reluctant to open their accounts to public scrutiny, but the industry was thought to claim global annual sales of some $320 billion in 2005 (tax free). And although some better-known trade bodies (the Medellin and Cali cocaine cartels, for example) have been forced to close shop, largely as a result of tough state regulation, the industry as a whole remains in rude health."

read the complete article here

Drugs and Health Alliance editorial in the Guardian

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Increment of Harm

Government obsession with drug crime has overshadowed the needs of the truly marginalised

Danny Kushlick
Wednesday May 16, 2007
The Guardian

UK drug policy is unique. In no other area of social policy do we criminalise at one stroke both recreation and disadvantage. In no other area have we seen so much evidence of the counterproductive effects of a predominantly criminal justice response to a public health problem. And we have seen almost no genuine debate or evidence-based scrutiny from ministers. The last 10 years of this parliament's tacit and active support for a policy based on moral panic has finally broken the camel's back. As the Home Office reviews its last 10-year strategy - results are expected next month - the Drugs and Health Alliance has been formed to bring together organisations committed to bringing about a public health-led approach for the next decade.

In the mid-80s the Conservative government, in the face of a potential HIV/Aids epidemic, initiated a proactive harm reduction strategy that led to the UK having one of the world's lowest rates of HIV. It was based exclusively on a pragmatic public health and harm reduction approach to dealing with unsafe sex and injecting. No one suggested that we should ramp up penalties for injecting drugs or make unsafe sex illegal. How times have changed. Twenty years later there are significant political taboos among senior policymakers who dare question the prevailing tough criminal justice line on drugs. The result has been that most of the drugs initiatives in the last decade have had draconian law-making at their core.

Our current policy is completely at odds with social and legislative norms, a strategy based on criminalising drugs in order to reduce social harm. Yet, as the PM's strategy unit drugs report of 2003 showed, it is the very illegality of the supply and use of drugs that causes harm. Despite our commitment to harm reduction, drug use exists within a political and legal framework that is harm maximising; hepatitis C remains at 80% among injecting drug-users and HIV, while still very low, is on the increase.

Throughout the last decade government has shown a pathological unwillingness to debate the efficacy of the current approach. Witness the lack of genuine engagement with the Police Foundation drugs report of 2000, the Home Affairs Select Committee report of 2002, the Science and Technology Committee report on drug classification of 2006 and the recent RSA report, as well as the announced and then withdrawn public consultation on the drug classification system and the lack of consultation or parliamentary scrutiny of the Drugs Act 2005. The list is endless. One concern is that the upcoming consultation on the future of the UK drug strategy will end up looking strikingly similar to the last one.

The frustration of many working in the drugs field is that the obsession with crime reduction has overshadowed the need for improvement of individual and public health. We are demonising some of the most marginalised people in the UK rather than offering them effective treatment. For commissioners of services, this ought to look perverse and bizarre: enforce the drug laws in such a way as to increase the offending of problematic users of the most dangerous drugs, "identify" them through the criminal justice system and finally spend money on "treatment", as ordered by the court, as a way of reducing their offending. The £13bn to £16bn in crime costs associated with the current drug policy should suggest an urgent reallocation of the billions spent on counterproductive heavyhanded enforcement, toward education, dealing with underlying social problems and treatment in a primary care setting.

Ultimately, we need a new paradigm for drug policy development, one based around health and wellbeing rather than macho posturing and knee-jerk, short-term responses to the failures of the current criminal justice-based policy. The UK sits atop the rankings for levels of problematic heroin and cocaine use. The Dutch, Spanish, Swiss, Portuguese and numerous other nations have all adopted a more public health-focused approach. The average age of heroin users in the Netherlands is 40. They have half the rate of cannabis use compared to the UK. Isn't it time that we joined them?

The consultation on the new strategy offers a window of opportunity for change that will close again soon. This is our chance to let government know that tough enforcement does not reduce harm, it creates it. We should grab the chance with both hands.

Danny Kushlick is spokesperson for the Drugs and Health Alliance
Drugshealthalliance.net
dannykushlick@yahoo.co.uk

Note: Danny Kushlick is also director of Transform Drug Policy Foundation

Unhappy birthday for SOCA

SOCA's annus horriblis must be even more dispiriting for all concerned given that the agency is only 1 year old. They really have had a shoca.

In January the blog discussed how the historic failure of supply side drug inteventions combined with populist 'get-tough' law and order politics provided the backdrop for the emergence of the the new Serious Organised Crime Agency - and also suggested why it was reportedly running into problems. A recent report in the Guardian to mark the agencies 1st birthday details the ongoing problems.

To the good folks at SOCA, just so you in the future you don't say we didn't warn you, to spell it out again: supply side drug control is doomed to fail because of high demand for drugs combined with the brutal economics of unregulated markets run by criminal profiteers (aka prohibition). No10 knows it, The Home Office knows it, in fact anyone who has even glanced at the evidence (that would be the trillions of pounds/dollars spent on interdiction whilst drug production, supply and availablity have increased consistently for 40 years) know it too. Its OBVIOUS: really, theres no more evidence required.

see also Massive drug seizures solve world crisis
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RSA Drugs Report - so near and yet so far

The RSA published their long awaited drugs report last week to not a little fanfare. The report suggests that the current policy is based on ‘moral panic’, suggests that most drug use is relatively harmless, that tobacco and alcohol should be included in the drug policy making process and that prohibition cannot stop people using drugs – they are here to stay.

It will be seen as a watershed report in raising the level of debate on drugs and drug policy in the years to come. The Commissioners are to be congratulated for producing a groundbreaking report. You can read the press release , the exec summary, or the full volume here and judge for yourself.

In my op-ed for the Guardian online I argue that it is the politics of prohibition that makes it so difficult for politicians to engage with Reports like the RSA's.

And in the Mirror I ask whether we are adult enough to engage in a public debate on the efficacy of repealing prohibition and replacing it with legal regulation

The RSA analysis could easily be the basis for a Phd on the repeal of prohibition and its replacement with a far more effective system of legal regulation and control. But that is not quite where the RSA report takes us. I’ve identified a number of reasons why I think that the report fails to reach what should have been its natural conclusion.

A fundamental mistake: not nailing the problem

My experience of commenting on drug policy issues is that the failure to identify prohibition as the overriding problem leads to convoluted and internally inconsistent solutions. Unfortunately the Report fails to recognise that it is prohibition that is the radical and anomalous response to drugs and that regulation is the policy response that conforms far more closely to social and legislative norms.

Oddly, prohibition seems to be identified as not being ‘viable’ very early on in the report but the analysis is not developed. This is a quote from the report (p 29) that would lead us to believe that there is only place that the analysis could go:

“As readers of our report will quickly discover, all of our recommendations and suggestions are founded on two core beliefs. One is that drugs and other psychoactive substances are simply not going to go away. People have used them for thousands of years, widespread demand exists, supply is plentiful, and the illegal-drugs industry, not to mention the alcohol, tobacco and legal drugs industries, are among the best organized and most market-oriented in the world. Prohibition is no more a viable policy in Britain today than it proved to be in America during the 1920s and 1930s.With regard to illegal drugs, young people, in particular, are often told ‘Just say no’. That may sometimes be good advice. The only trouble is that there are, and always will be, large numbers of people who, for whatever reason, ignore that advice and choose to say yes. Drugs are a fact and, in our view, need to be accepted as a fact. We believe, as our choice of title suggests, that policy and the administration of policy should be based on a cool appraisal of the facts, not on fantasy and wishful thinking. In the words of Reinhold Niebuhr’s famous prayer:

God, give us the serenity to accept what cannot be changed;

Give us the courage to change what should be changed; and

Give us the wisdom to distinguish one from the other.”

But whilst no one claims it will be easy or happen overnight, history clearly shows that prohibitions can be changed. If drug prohibition is ‘no more a viable policy in Britain today than it proved to be in America during the 1920s and 1930s’ then the logical conclusion is surely that it should be repealed and replaced with something more viable. What it might be replaced with takes us to the next point.

A new Substance Misuse Act?

The failure to identify prohibition as the key problem leads to some confusion about what the legislative framework is for. The Report recommends that all drugs come under one new Misuse Act. Leaving aside the fact that the report suggests that most drugs are used rather than misused, what would be the point of putting all drugs into one piece of legislation if some are prohibited and some are legally regulated? It would end up being nothing more than a list.


Not dealing with supply side

In one of the their discussion documents (produced in the run up to the final report and available here) titled 'The supply of illegal drugs in the UK' , under the 'points to consider' section, the Commission notes:

"1. HM Revenue and Customs estimate that we spend 1 billion + per year trying to control the supply of drugs. Given the difficulties in the path of these efforts, can we really say that our enforcement policies are motivated by practical considerations, or are they moral ones? Are we pursuing a policy of supply reduction because we think it will work, or because we think drug dealing is wrong and should be punished?"

they then ask:

"Is legalisation of the drugs trade the only real way of controlling the supply of drugs? – (e.g. by creating a trade which could be regulated and taxed and could guarantee stable prices and safer drugs, which would not require a smuggling network that can be used for other illicit trades, which would not be surrounded by a gun culture, etc.)"

This question of supply seems to have been lost when it came to writing the final report. What is called for seems deliberately ambiguous, hinting at the obvious but terribly wary of being explicit about it:

"Drugs policy should, like our policy on alcohol and tobacco, seek to regulate use and prevent harm rather than to prohibit use altogether. Illegal drugs should be regulated alongside alcohol, tobacco, prescribed medicines and other legal drugs in a single regulatory framework."

Strangely the Commission opted for regulating use rather than supply. Perhaps it was a case of committee syndrome, where dissent forced a somewhat unsatisfactory and woolly compromise around the prohibition / regulation question? When asked at the launch event last week, Anthony King said the committee felt that it was for ministers and civil servants should be sorting out the specifics for each drug. Perhaps this is fair enough, yet it is at odds with the very specific recommendations in much of the rest of the report.

The committee received various reports from Transform, including our own (referenced by the RSA) aswell as reports from the Health Officers of British Colombia and the King County Bar Association - which provide very clear and detailed analysis of how legal regulation of different drugs would work - from a public health and legal standpoint respectively. This was a missed opportunity to introduce some clarity, nuance and sophistication into the debate about regulatory alternatives to prohibition - and the flirting around the issue without nailing it makes for frustrating reading when the much of the other analysis is so spot on.

Why no recommendation of cost-benefit analysis?

From the report (p 113):

"The most recent version of the strategy is the Updated Drug Strategy 2002. Its overall objective is ‘reducing the harm that drugs cause to society – communities, individuals and their families’. This objective is anchored in a philosophy of prohibition. The opening paragraph of the summary of the strategy states: ‘We have no intention of legalising any illicit drug. All controlled drugs are dangerous and nobody should take them.’ What is missing from all these accounts is a detailed analysis of the cost-effectiveness of the drug strategy itself. Basic calculations have been published of the ratios between the costs of drug interventions and their savings in terms of health and social costs. But Christine Godfrey, co-author of the key study of the economic and social costs of drug use mentioned above, has argued that a really robust and thorough-going cost-benefit analysis should be a priority for government.

Failure to complete this analysis makes it impossible for policy makers to consider alternatives to existing policy by comparing the costs of the current strategy with the estimated future costs of other options, whether these be decriminalization, legalization or zero-tolerance. We agree with Professor Godfrey.

It is dissapointing and inconsistent then that the report did not call for such a cost-benefit analysis (of current policy and alternatives) in its recommendations. Transform called for just such an audit in 2002.

The decision to keep the remit domestic rather than international

There is a significant problem in attempting to review and recommend change from a narrow domestic viewpoint. The UK is committed to international prohibition in the form of the three UN drug conventions to which we are signitories, and it is these that creates the vast globa lillegal drug markets and associated problems. The RSA report shows that the significant price hike in heroin and cocaine occurs between production and domestic wholesale. But calls only for enforcement to be focused on Mr Bigs. (p 13):

"The fight against the supply of illegal drugs should not stop, but it should be refocused so that it concentrates on organized criminal networks rather than on largely futile efforts to interdict supply."

Whilst no one is suggesting enforcement should ignore violent gangsters, unfortunately all the evidence shows that this is futile at interrupting drug supply too, on the basis that the trade is so lucrative that there is always a queue of gangsters waiting to make a killing by moving into the vacuum successful busts will occassionally create. Furthermore it is prohibition that creates the opportunity for gangsters in the first instance - just as it did with non-viable alcohol prohibition. Transform believes that it is impossible to truly understand domestic drug policy unless it is placed in its global context.

Weak analysis of drugs and crime link

The failure to ‘nail’ prohibition as the specific first cause of the link between drugs and crime appears to be a major fator in the Commission's avoidance of calling for its repeal. Although it cites the £16 billion annual crime costs committed by a few hundred thousand heroin and crack users fundraising to support a habit, it fails to identify prohibition as the culprit. The report does call for heroin prescribing (what is that if not legal regulation of a currently illegal drug?) for the usual familiar reasons including reduction in offending - but still fails to make the link explicit. Prohibition directly causes almost all 'drug-related crime' - they really needed to make the point much more clearly.

We are left with what is undoubtedly a thoughtful and throrough report, but also one that walks you to the door but isn't quite willing to suggest you walk through, that does all the hard work and then fails to quite see it through. It doesn't dare go the one step further than the similar reports from the Police Foundation (2000) or the Home Affairs Select Committee (2002), that would have marked it out as historic. Arguably, the HASC went further by at least recommending the Government 'initiate a debate' on 'legalisation and regulation' 'at 'UN level'.

Overall the thrust of the Report has created a significant window of opportunity to scrutinise the failings of current policy. It is now up to those with a vision of prohibition's replacement to use this opportunity to increase the momentum toward a more effective system based upon regulation and control of supply. Despite our criticisms, thanks must go to the RSA for opening up the debate once again.

Media comment on the report:


Alice Miles in the Times suggests that the Commission has been equivocal over its attitude to alcohol

Mark Lawson in the Guardian doesn’t quite get it

Telegraph leader

Guardian leader

Independent leader