Pubdate: Wed, 11 Mar 2009
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2009 Guardian News and Media Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Duncan Campbell
Referenced: European Commission report: the world drugs problem, ten 
years on http://drugsense.org/url/yEsNto0k
Cited: the International Drug Policy Consortium http://www.idpc.info/

TEN WASTED YEARS: UN DRUG STRATEGY A FAILURE, REVEALS DAMNING REPORT

The UN strategy on drugs over the past decade has been a failure, a 
European commission report claimed yesterday on the eve of the 
international conference in Vienna that will set future policy for 
the next 10 years.

The report came amid growing dissent among delegates arriving at the 
meeting to finalise a UN declaration of intent.

Referring to the UN's existing strategy, the authors declared that 
they had found "no evidence that the global drug problem was 
reduced". They wrote: "Broadly speaking, the situation has improved a 
little in some of the richer countries while for others it worsened, 
and for some it worsened sharply and substantially, among them a few 
large developing or transitional countries."

The policy had merely shifted the problem geographically, they said. 
"Production and trafficking controls only redistributed activities. 
Enforcement against local markets failed in most countries."

Representatives from governments are split in their efforts to 
formulate an international drugs policy for the next decade. The UN 
Commission on Narcotic Drugs is due to formulate a strategy over the 
next two days, but there is widespread disagreement among delegates 
and a general feeling that an opportunity for a united approach has been lost.

In an article for the Guardian, Mike Trace, chairman of the 
International Drug Policy Consortium, says: "We're about to see the 
international community walk up the political and diplomatic path of 
least resistance. It will do nothing to help the millions of people 
around the world whose lives are destroyed by drug markets and drug 
use. And the depressing thing about it is that we can all book our 
seats for 2019, to go through this charade again."

Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and 
Crime, has defended the approach. He is due to talk today on 
organised crime, which he has described as "one of the unintended 
consequences of drug control". He will warn that "a criminal market, 
of staggering proportion, risks undermining drug control" and outline 
a three-pronged approach to tackling drug-related crime.

In London, however, Lady Meacher, speaking on behalf of more than 30 
members of the Lords, warned that the existing hardline 
prohibitionist strategy, which has been led by the US, had been 
deeply damaging. It was now being challenged by politicians, 
scientists and lawyers around the world, she said.

"We are concerned that the war on drugs has failed and the harm it 
has caused is far greater," said Meacher, at a briefing organised by 
the drugs advice charity Release. "What we want the UN to do is 
accept that the previous declaration was hopelessly unrealistic."

She said that Barack Obama had yet to appoint a new drugs tsar in the 
US but there were already signs that he was adopting a more liberal 
approach to the issue. The US president has lifted the ban on federal 
funding for needle exchange programmes, which are seen as crucial in 
the struggle to combat the spread of HIV. Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch, 
director of the global drug policy programme at the Open Society 
Institute, Warsaw, said: "It is now clear that after months of 
negotiations, millions of people around the world will continue to 
suffer needlessly. Thanks to the global 'war on drugs' over the past 
decade, close to 2 million people living in the former Soviet Union 
are infected with HIV, half a million US citizens languish in prison 
for non-violent, drug-related crimes, and billions of dollars are 
spent on destructive military actions in Colombia while the 
production of cocaine continues to rise."

The first two days of the session will be held at ministerial level 
to assess progress made in the decade since a special session of the 
UN general assembly set the target of a "drugs-free" world. The aim 
has been criticised for not addressing the problems of addiction and treatment.

Prof Tim Rhodes, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Health, 
said the number of injecting drug users around the world could have 
reached 15 million and this was responsible for 10% of global HIV infections.

Rhodes said the problem was particularly serious in Russia, where 
intensive street-level policing had exacerbated the difficulties. 
- ---
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake