Pubdate: Wed, 25 Jun 2014
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2014 Guardian News and Media Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Authors: Ewen MacAskill
Page: 13

LEGALISE DRUGS, SAYS FORMER AMBASSADOR

The former UK ambassador to Afghanistan, Sir William Patey, has come
out in favour of legalising drugs after acknowledging the failure of
British-led efforts over the last 10 years to eradicate poppy crops in
the country.

Patey, one of the most experienced diplomats of his generation, with a
string of postings that include Iraq, Sudan and Saudi Arabia, becomes
one of the highest profile figures in Britain to back legalising and
regulating drugs.

His comments run counter to Home Office policy and will be rejected
outright by many drug policy groups.

In an article in today's Guardian, Patey, who has a reputation inside
the Foreign Office for being outspoken, writes: "If we cannot deal
effectively with supply, then the only alternative would seem to me to
try to limit the demand for illicit drugs by making a licit supply of
them available from a legally regulated market."

He adds: "Putting governments in control of the global drug trade
through legal regulation will remove the incentive for those in
fragile, insecure regions to produce and traffic drugs. Putting
doctors and pharmacists in control of supply in the UK will save
lives, improve health and reduce crime."

While the legalisation of cannabis is growing fast in the US and
elsewhere, there is little support worldwide for similar action on
opium.

Patey's call for legalising production and supply is backed by one of
the leading groups calling for reform, Transform Drug Policy Foundation.

Danny Kushlick, head of external affairs at Transform, said: "The
importance of Sir William's support for reform cannot be
underestimated ... In the absence of genuine engagement on the issue
of drug policy failure from the two major political parties in the UK,
it falls to the likes of Sir William to fill the gap."

But Kevin Sabet, director of the Drug Policy Institute at the
University of Florida and one of the leading opponents of
legalisation, said: "Legal regulation has been a disaster for drugs
like alcohol and tobacco. Both of those drugs now are sold by highly
commercialised industries who thrive off addiction for profit."

Patey's transformation is similar to that of another former British
diplomat, Sir Keith Morris, who saw the drug wars at first-hand in the
1990s while ambassador to Colombia. In 2001, he had an article
published in the Guardian describing the drug war as unwinnable and
calling for legalisation. Calls for legalisation have also been made
by senior police officers and a scattering of politicians.

The Home Office said: "Heroin is illegal and the government has no
plans to change that.

"Drug use in the UK is at its lowest level since records began in 1996
and the number of heroin and crack cocaine users in England fell below
300,000 last year."

Afghanistan, based on UN figures, is estimated to have produced UKP1.7
bn worth of opium and its derivatives heroin and morphine in 2013.

When Tony Blair deployed British troops in Afghanistan, ending the
illicit production and supply of opium was cited as a key objective.
In 2001 the prime minister linked heroin use in the UK with opium
cultivation in Afghanistan: "The arms the Taliban buy are paid for by
the lives of young British people buying their drugs. This is another
part of the regime we should destroy." Yet after 10 years of effort
with tens of thousands of troops in the country, and having spent
billions trying to reduce poppy cultivation, Afghans are growing more
opium than ever before.

As the December US troop draw-down deadline approaches, the UN Office
of Drugs and Crime estimates that last year Afghanistan produced
nearly $3bn worth of opium and its derivatives heroin and morphine.
Since 2002 the US has provided more than $7bn for counter-narcotics
efforts and agriculture stabilisation programmes.

John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghan reconstruction,
told a US Congress subcommittee recently: "On my trips to Afghanistan
in 2013 and earlier this year, no one at the (US) embassy could
convincingly explain to me how the US government counter-narcotics
efforts are making a meaningful impact on the narcotics trade or how
they will have a significant impact after." The illicit global trade
in drugs has an estimated annual turnover of $320bn and the war to
stop it costs $100bn a year.

In a country such as Afghanistan, with weak institutions, remote areas
ripe for poppy cultivation and a well-established smuggling network,
we are fighting a lost battle. It is well understood that not only
does illicit trade migrate towards "ungoverned spaces", particularly
those inhabited by people in dire poverty, it then makes matters far
worse.

In 2012 the International Institute for Strategic Studies published
Drugs, Insecurity and Failed States: The Problems of Prohibition,
concluding that "the present enforcement regime is not only failing
to win the 'war on drugs', it is also a major cause of violence and
instability in producer and transit countries". Afghanistan
exemplifies this in spades. The opium trade is corrupting Afghan
institutions at all levels  arming insurgents and warlords, and
undermining security and development.

In short, the war on drugs has failed in Afghanistan, and without
removing the demand for illicit opium, driven by illicit heroin use in
consumer countries, this failure is both predictable and inevitable.
If we cannot deal effectively with supply, then the only alternative
would seem to be to try to limit the demand for illicit drugs by
making a supply of them available from a legally regulated market.

Half of the world's opium is grown for the legal opiates market of
which the UK grows 3,500 hectares. This legitimate drug trade does not
fund the Taliban and warlords, and there is no reason why it cannot be
expanded to include non-medical trade and use.

I am not the first former ambassador who has served in a
drug-producing country to call for an end to prohibition. In 2001 my
colleague Sir Keith Morris, the former UK ambassador to Colombia, told
the BBC that if drugs were legalised and regulated the "benefits to
life, health and liberty of drug users and the life, health and
property of the whole population would be immense".

Many more have made the same plea. In 2002 the home affairs select
committee called on Britain to initiate a debate at the United Nations
on alternatives to drug prohibition - including legal regulation. One
of its members was David Cameron MP.

I understand why some politicians are reluctant to take up this
debate. Before going to Afghanistan my own instincts told me that it
could not be right to decriminalise drugs. But my experience there has
convinced me that all political parties need to engage seriously,
without trying to score points off each other.

I was deeply moved when I came across an article written by a mother
who had lost both of her sons to heroin overdoses. In the unregulated
prohibited market there is no quality control, no purity guide, and no
safer-use advice. Had her two boys been able to acquire their heroin
from a doctor, they might well still be with us. In fact thousands of
dependent users around Europe are already prescribed heroin, including
a handful in the UK, with great benefits to them and society as a whole.

Tony Blair was absolutely right to make the link between opium
production in southern Afghanistan and heroin use in Britain. But it
is clear now that he and others were wrong to think this link could be
broken through military action internationally and police enforcement
domestically.

Putting governments in control of the global drugs trade through legal
regulation will remove the incentive for those in fragile, insecure
regions to produce and traffic drugs. Putting doctors and pharmacists
in control of supply in the UK will save lives, improve health and
reduce crime. Ultimately we could improve the underlying lack of
wellbeing that drives so many in the UK and Afghanistan into lives of
degradation and misery. For the sake of both Afghans and British
citizens, senior politicians must take responsibility for the failings
of global prohibition, and take control of the drug trade through
legal regulation.

William Patey was British ambassador to Afghanistan from 2010 to 2012
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MAP posted-by: Matt