Pubdate: Sat, 04 Jun 2011
Source: New Zealand Herald (New Zealand)
Copyright: 2011 New Zealand Herald
Contact:  http://www.nzherald.co.nz/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/300
Bookmark: http://mapinc.org/topic/Global+Commission+on+Drug+Policy

GLOBAL REFORMERS SAY IT'S TIME FOR CHANGE ON DRUGS

Forty years after United States President Richard Nixon launched his 
War on Drugs, a conflict that far eclipses the War on Terror, the 
struggle to contain, let alone end, illicit drug abuse is far from 
over, spewing violence, corruption and addiction into new markets, 
brutal capitalism at its most malignant. But, finally, there is a 
glimmer of hope.

Yesterday, an extraordinary alliance of the great and good presented 
their recommendations on how to tackle this worldwide scourge to 
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon in New York. Moral 
hysteria was noticeably absent.

The Global Commission on Drug Reform, formed in January, declared the 
War on Drugs a resounding failure, and suggested radical measures 
must be taken if the global narco culture was to ever be defeated.

"Fundamental reforms in national and global control policies are 
urgently needed," said Brazil's ex-president, Fernando Henrique 
Cardosa, who heads the commission.

"Let's start by treating drug addiction as a health issue, reducing 
drug demand through proven educational initiatives and legally 
regulating rather than criminalising cannabis."

Besides Cardosa, the august body included former UN Secretary-General 
Kofi Annan, Cesar Gaviria and Ernesto Zedillo, the ex-presidents of 
Columbia and Mexico, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, former 
US Secretary of State George Shultz, Paul Volcker, the ex-chairman of 
the US Federal Reserve, Javier Solana, the ex-EU High Representative, 
and Virgin tycoon Sir Richard Branson.

They blasted drug policies, driven by "ideology and political 
convenience", that have criminalised "tens of millions", lower-end 
couriers, dealers or farmers who grow opium, coca or marijuana to 
escape poverty, because they are addicts or because they are intimidated.

Such policies, said the commission, have not reduced "the 
availability of illicit drugs or the power of criminal organisations".

Ban Ki Moon was handed four recommendations. Drug users who "do no 
harm to others" should be decriminalised. Legal regulation should 
wrestle control from criminals. Treatment programmes, used in Europe 
and Canada, should be adopted. And states must respect the rights of 
people - addicts, dealers and farmers - found at the lower ends of the trade.

By yanking the debate on the War on Drugs firmly away from 
hysteria-based rhetoric that has bedevilled both reform and any hope 
that the war could be won, the report echoed earlier conclusions. 
These include the 2010 UN World Drug Report, which emphasises public 
health, economic development, security and human rights, and the 2009 
Latin American Drug Commission, which favours decriminalisation.

The major shift is the call for legal regulation, which Danny 
Kushlick, external affairs chief for Transform Drug Policy 
Foundation, a British lobby group, calls a game changer.

Three factors give the commission's recommendations traction, says 
Kushlick. The global recession makes costly and failed drug policies 
unsustainable. Unintended consequences, such as the more than 35,000 
dead in Mexico's savage battle with narco-cartels, compared to an 
"insurgency" by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have taken the 
War on Drugs to America's doorstep.

And President Obama's less "bullish" attitude towards the war makes 
it politically acceptable for US allies, such as Mexico and Colombia, 
to publicly raise decriminalisation and legal regulation.

The sense that change is in the air is echoed by the work of the Law 
Commission in New Zealand, which tabled its findings into the Misuse 
of Drugs Act 1975 in April.

"It advocates a shift in policy process, away from criminal law 
towards public health," says Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei, a 
stance long held by the Greens. Moral judgments, says Turei, skew 
costs, interfere with rational debate and mean that drug policy is 
not evidence based.

The commission's report was accompanied by a public petition - with 
562,000 signatures and counting at press time - collected by internet 
advocacy group Avaaz, which has nine million members. The linkage 
between online activism and old-school political lobbying is a very 
21st century phenomenon. The alliance wants a paradigm shift.

The report and Avaaz's campaign were bolstered by a letter, published 
in yesterday's Guardian newspaper, calling for all illicit drugs to 
be decriminalisation in Britain. Signatories, including Sting, 
Branson, Dame Judi Bench, Mike Leigh, Julie Christie, three former 
chief constables, and an ex-drugs minister, argued that: 
"Criminalising people who use drugs leads to greater social exclusion 
and stigmatisation making it much more difficult for them to gain 
employment and to play a productive role in society. It creates a 
society full of wasted resources." Both the British and US 
governments refused to bow to reformers, but the no-punches tone of 
the report - "that repressive strategies will not solve the problem" 
- - indicates patience with drug war nostrums is waning and public 
debate growing.

The War on Drugs has been fed by specious justifications that, 
despite much evidence to the contrary, just-say-no zero tolerance 
works. Drug warriors emphasise drug seizures, arrests, declining use 
of specific drugs and so forth.

This fantasy is bluntly rejected by commission members.

"The War on Drugs has failed to cut drug use, but has filled our 
jails, cost millions in taxpayer dollars, fuelled organised crime and 
caused thousands of deaths," said Branson. "We need a new approach, 
one that takes the power out of the hands of organised crime and 
treats people with addiction problems like patients, not criminals."

Given this downside, it is hard to ignore parallels with the failed 
US experiment on alcohol prohibition in the 1920s, which hugely 
benefited nascent organised crime.

"In the grand scheme, it has not been successful," Gil Kerlikowske, 
the US "drug czar" told the Associated Press last year. "Forty years 
later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, 
magnified, intensified."

The AP estimated the total cost of the drug war since 1971 at US$1 
trillion ($1.2 trillion). But, in truth, it is hard to arrive at an 
accurate figure, especially if "cost" only weights up budgets to 
fight crime but ignores the social wreckage, whether from diseases 
such as HIV/Aids or hepatitis, or even the cost of home insurance in 
areas plagued by drug crime.

Certainly, the war is fed by huge, arguably unsustainable, budgets. 
The US Drug Policy Alliance, which supports the commission's calls, 
says the US spends US$1 billion a year.

Branson urged political and business leaders to consider 
"alternative, fact-based approaches" to countering illicit drug 
abuse. "The one thing we cannot do is to go on pretending the War on 
Drugs is working."

The war's emphasis on policing, military intervention and 
incarceration has reached its apogee in Mexico. Despite claims 
interdiction cuts the supply of drugs - one explanation for the 
Mexican war's savagery - world demand has grown. Last year's UN 
report says illicit drug use has exploded in developing nations - 
from Africa and Latin America, to Southeast Asia and the Middle East. 
The once Western problem is now a global nightmare.

Historians seeking the heart of darkness in the drug war might ponder 
Brazil, where oxi, or oxiana, a cocaine-derived hallucinogenic, 
reputedly twice as powerful as crack cocaine at a fifth of the price, 
plagues city streets. A social worker was quoted as saying most 
first-time users fast become zombie-like addicts.

Reformers say the state must push aside criminal gangs and take over 
the production and supply of drugs. Given the UN estimate that 
between 155 and 250 million people use illegal drugs [129 to 190 
million using cannabis], it indicates a tax bonanza.

Relaxing drug laws has been flirted with. Britain reclassified 
cannabis, from a Class B to a Class C drug, in 2004 - first 
recommended in 1979 - only to shift it back to Class B in 2009. 
Sixteen US states have legalised medical marijuana and five, 
including California, have ballot initiatives to legalise and 
regulate the drug.

A Californian law change would put the US in an awkward position in 
its relations with Mexico, where the US is supporting the bloody 
crackdown on the cartels that ferry drugs, including cannabis, to US users.

But the test case is Portugal, which decriminalised all illicit drugs 
in 2001, providing evidence-based analysis to weigh the results.

A paper published in the British Journal of Criminology last November 
said: "Portuguese decriminalisation did not lead to major increases 
in drug use. Indeed, evidence indicates reductions in problematic 
use, drug-related harms and criminal justice overcrowding."

Meanwhile, a big push towards decriminalisation and legal regulation 
has come from Latin America, arguably one of the biggest losers in 
the American-led War on Drugs.

Last year Mexico's President Felipe Calderon, faced with public 
revulsion at escalating drug war violence, suggested legalising 
drugs. Last month former President Vicente Fox, speaking in Texas, 
said the US should legalise drugs.

The cries of anguish south of the border are no surprise given the 
havoc and misery drugs have wrought, from Cold War conflicts - such 
as the CIA's use of cocaine to fund the Contras against Nicaraguan 
Sandinistas in the 1980s - to terrorism, violence, addiction and 
pervasive corruption.

"We can no longer ignore the extent to which drug-related violence, 
crime and corruption in Latin America are the results of failed drug 
policies," said Gaviria.

"Now is the time to break the taboo on discussion of all drug policy 
options, including alternatives to drug prohibition."

Kushlick says decriminalisation alone is "a gift to organised crime".

The only way to control production and supply is via legal 
regulation. Politicians will have to step up, something many are 
loath to do because of fears of being branded "soft on drugs" by opponents.

But once drug hysteria is removed from the equation, the cold, hard 
numbers and public-health benefits of regulating illicit drugs make 
shattering the old taboos very attractive.

Ultimately, says Kushlick, ending prohibition would force Governments 
to face societal issues that contribute to drug abuse.

"Criminalisation is a smokescreen. The issue is not whether to 
legalise or prohibit drugs.

"But how do you make societies better?

"That's hard to do if you're being duped by politicians into 
supporting policies that create harm."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom