Pubdate: Tue, 26 Jun 2012
Source: National Post (Canada)
Copyright: 2012 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Contact: http://drugsense.org/url/wEtbT4yU
Website: http://www.nationalpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/286
Author: Evan Wood
Page: A15

THE WAR ON DRUGS HAS FAILED

A doctor from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside explains how draconian
drug laws cause more human suffering than the substances they are
supposed to target

As an internal medicine physician working in the inner-city hospital
serving Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside, I see the unintended
consequences of the war on drugs daily. Gang members engaged in drug
supply and distribution arrive in the emergency room bloody and
panicked, after being shot, stabbed or beaten. On the demand side,
impurities and adulterants stemming from basement drug labs and
uncertainties regarding potency keep emergency personnel busy
responding to drug overdoses.

Overdose survivors commonly suffer from chronic injection-related
infections including hepatitis C and HIV. They result from sharing
needles in abandoned buildings, rat-infested flophouses and other
hidden environments where addicts often congregate to avoid police
sweeps. Due to drug law enforcement, inner city emergency rooms have
become triage centres in a war governments are waging against their
own citizens.

Despite enormous taxpayer investments in enforcing laws aimed at
reducing the supply of illegal drugs, Canada's streets remain awash in
heroin and cocaine. Meanwhile, designer drugs such as ecstasy are
becoming more readily available to young people than alcohol and
tobacco. The war on drugs, like all expensive government programs,
should be subject to scrutiny and a value-for-money audit. However, so
far, it has been remarkably exempt from accountability. This type of
impact assessment is long overdue given that conservative estimates
suggest that U.S. taxpayers alone have spent more than $1-trillion
since former president Richard Nixon first declared America's "War on
Drugs."

Fortunately, a clarion call for change is emerging in the form of a
blue-ribbon panel known as the Global Commission on Drug Policy. The
commission - which includes former Latin American, European and
American political leaders, respected business executives, including
Virgin Group CEO Richard Branson, and legal scholars such as former
Canadian Federal Supreme Court Justice Louise Arbour - is calling for
a total paradigm shift in illicit-drug policy. The commission released
a scathing report today that excoriates the failed international
system of drug control and highlights how the global war on drugs is
driving the international HIV/AIDS pandemic.

The report, titled The War on Drugs and HIV/AIDS: How the
Criminalization of Drug Use Fuels the Global Pandemic, reveals that
the worldwide supply of illicit opiates, such as heroin, has increased
by more than 380% in recent decades. Drug seizures, arrests, criminal
convictions and other commonly reported indices of drug law
enforcement "success" have actually been ineffective in reducing the
availability of illegal drugs. For instance, despite a more than 600%
inflation-adjusted increase in the U.S. federal anti-drug budget since
the early 1980s, heroin prices in the United States have decreased by
approximately 80% during this period. Heroin purity, meanwhile, has
increased by more than 900%. Similar patterns of increasing
availability, falling prices and increasing potency are seen when data
for other drugs, such as cocaine and marijuana, are
scrutinized.

The commission's report also highlights that, as with the prohibition
of alcohol in the 1920s, the war on drugs now fuels corruption and
drug market violence. The commissioners point to recent research that
clearly demonstrates how drug-related arrests drive subsequent gang
violence as remaining cartel members strive to gain or maintain market
share of the lucrative drug trade through violence and intimidation.
This bloodshed does not reduce drug supply. Estimates show that more
than 50,000 people have died since 2006 due to the Mexican
government's escalating military intervention against drug cartels.
Yet recent estimates suggest that Mexican heroin production has
increased by more than 340% during this period.

Those most frequently caught in the endless game of cat-and-mouse
between police and the illicit drug business tend to be the smaller
players. The result? Bloated prison populations in regions where the
war on drugs has been fought most aggressively. Research shows these
subsistence dealers are usually addicted themselves, agreeing to
engage in high-risk street-level distribution in return for heroin or
cocaine.

Sadly, street-level addicts tend to be largely from ethnic minority
populations. Today, approximately one in eight African-American males
in the age group 25 to 29 is incarcerated on any given day in the
United States, largely as a result of the war on drugs. Furthermore,
as described in the commission report, the conditions in prisons help
spread HIV. In fact, genetic analyses of HIV viral sub-types reveal
that sharing used syringes among inmates has contributed to HIV
outbreaks in prisons in many countries.

As commissioners state: "Any sober assessment of the impacts of the
war on drugs would conclude that many national and international
organizations tasked with reducing the drug problem have actually
contributed to a worsening of community health and safety."

The commissioners strongly recommend that cost-effective and
evidence-based forms of addiction treatment be expanded and a public
health approach to drug policy implemented. In the case of marijuana,
the commissioners also recommend governments experiment with models of
"legal regulation" of drugs that are designed to undermine the power
of organized crime.

Having personally seen the horrific results of shootings between gangs
seeking to control the massive drug trade in British Columbia, I
applaud similar calls recently made by the Canadian Public Health
Association and criminal justice experts, including four former
attorneys general of British Columbia.

The unavoidable conclusion is the same when assessing the drug war
carnage in the emergency rooms of inner-city hospitals or the
international data presented by a commission of global leaders: The
war on drugs has failed. Massive taxpayer investments have not reduced
drug supply and, instead, have fueled drug market violence and
contributed to serious health and social harms. With the global HIV
pandemic spreading most rapidly in regions where the drug war is
deeply entrenched, the time to support the commission's "paradigm
shift" is now.

Evan Wood, MD PhD, is a professor of medicine at the University of
British Columbia, and an advisor to the Global Commission on Drug Policy.
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MAP posted-by: Matt