By Terence Corcoran

UN WAGES HARMFUL WAR ON DRUGS

WHEN U.S. President Bill Clinton appeared yesterday before a special United Nations General Assembly session on illegal drugs, there was virtually no hope that he would heed a growing number of critics— from libertarian economist Milton Friedman to conservative William F. Buckley and Canadian leftists Clayton Ruby and Alexa McDonough—who are calling for a moratorium on the catastrophic war on drugs. Instead of ending the war, which is causing more grief and havoc than the drugs themselves, Mr. Clinton renewed the campaign, pledged more money and urged members of the UN to accelerate their efforts to eliminate illegal drugs throughout the world. "We stand as one against drugs. No nation is so big that it can conquer drugs alone," he said. "None is too small to make a difference. All of us share a common responsibility to defeat this common threat."

It was classic anti-drugism, of which the world will hear more over the next couple of days as the UN cranks up the rhetoric and commits to another assault on illicit drug use and the drug industry. For an agency created in 1945 to further the cause of world peace, the UN is involved in a surprisingly large number of wars—now on people rather than among nations. There’s the war on fossil fuels to save the world from climate change, a war on population growth to save the world from famine and overpopulation, an emerging war on tobacco and smoking, and the war on drugs, which comes closest to mimicking a military operation.

The consequences of the expanding drug war are already well known and obvious: Hundreds of thousands of people are in jail, civil rights are under attack, cities are being turned into war zones, police forces are growing increasingly militarized, juveniles are being entrapped into drug deals, a global criminal class is thriving on the estimated $400-billion (U.S.) industry, new health hazards and disease risks are proliferating. In petitions sent to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, more than 500 people, many with significant public profiles and from diverse ideological and professional backgrounds, concluded that "the global war on drugs is now causing more harm than drug abuse itself."

A few hundred signatures won’t change the UN, but the growing number of enlightened opponents of the war on drugs, and their diversity, must be taken as a sign that momentum is building for a change in attitudes and policy. The politicians have yet to catch the message, however. Self-evident though it may be that the war on drugs is an expanding global tragedy, the UN special session this week aims to expand the war.

Most of the new effort is designed to repair crises created by existing anti-drug laws and enforcement measures. One item on the agenda is money laundering, a multibillion-dollar business that exists solely because of the criminalization of drugs. Seizing drugs and incarcerating thousands of people doesn’t work, the UN paper on money laundering says, because it "has limited impact on overall trafficking and abuse of illicit narcotics." In other words, the war is failing:

To secure support for more government intervention into business and individual transactions, the UN claimed the financial system is at stake. "The money laundering derived from illicit drug trafficking, as well as from other serious crimes, has become a global threat to the integrity and stability of financial and trading systems."

More media attention to the war’s consequences is also needed. The Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy, leading the Canadian campaign to end the drug war, found other examples of the control mentality building within the UN. The 1997 annual report of the UN’s International Narcotic Control Board wants governments to mount a censorship blitz to "curb the showing by public broadcasting media, such as the press, radio, film and television, of favourable images of drug abuse," including hemp and marijuana.

Never mind freedom of speech or expression, the UN says—this is a war. Governments of countries where rights to free speech exist "may need to reconsider whether unrestricted access to and the propagation of such information are detrimental to the social and health conditions of their populations." To bring the media into line, the UN board suggests "voluntary codes of conduct" that would "limit irresponsible statements that are sometimes made and encourage a more balanced approach to dealing with the issues of drug abuse."

The greater the UN effort to create a mythical drug-free society, the more oppressive its methods will become. It’s time to start looking at alternatives.

© THE GLOBE AND MAIL - 1998

The Globe and Mail
letters@globeandmail.ca

June 9, 1998

Call off the war on drugs

By Eugene Oscapella and Diane Riley
Ottawa

This week’s United Nations summit on drug policy in New York is an appropriate occasion to reflect on the global war on drugs and on Canada’s part in that war.

Every decade, the UN adopts new international drug-control conventions, focused largely on criminalization and punishment, that prevent individual nations from devising local solutions to local drug problems. Every year, governments enact more punative and costly drug-control conventions and politicians endorse harsher drug-war strategies.

The result? UN agencies estimate the annual revenue generated by the illegal drug industry at $400-billion (U.S.), roughly the equivalent of 8 per cent of total international trade. This industry has empowered organized criminals, corrupted governments, eroded internal security, stimulated violence and distorted economic markets. These are the consequences not of drug use as such, but of decades of futile prohibitionist policies.

In Canada, prohibition has encouraged marketers to sell and users to use more potent forms of drugs or more dangerous methods of ingestion. Users have no guarantee of quality. As a result, some, especially the young and inexperienced, die; others are maimed.

Our drug laws have turned thousands of otherwise law-abiding citizens into criminals and thrown many of them into prison for their involvement with drugs. Having sent them to jail, we deny them the means to prevent HIV infection from massive levels of drug use in prison. Until recently we refused to make condoms available to prisoners, in part for fear condoms would be used to hide drugs; better to preserve the moral fibre of our prisons than to protect peoples lives. Yet despite finally acknowledging that drug use in prisons is widespread, we have largely refused to help prisoners with needle exchanges or cleaning solutions to help prevent the further transmission of the AIDS virus.

Canada’s 1982 statement of principles, The Criminal Law in Canadian Society, said criminal law should be used only to deal with conduct for which other means of social control are inadequate or inappropriate. Nice words, but no reflection of reality. Instead, the criminal law has become the instrument of first resort in dealing with drugs. And still we have not stopped the flow of drugs into Canada, any more than the United States— the most powerful nation on Earth, with some of the most repressive drug laws in the world—has stopped the flow into the U.S.

End ing prohibition makes common sense. Instead of propping up an enormously profitable black market in drugs, and pushing drug users to the margins of society, governments could focus on productive ways to control the harmful use of substances, be they alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, heroin or cocaine. They could turn away from soul-destroying prisons and toward understanding drug use as a natural, not deviant, part of human behavior.

Too often those who call for open debate, rigorous analysis of current policies and serious consideration of alternatives are accused of "surrendering." But the true surrender is when fear and inertia combine to shut off debate, suppress critical analysis and dismiss all alternatives to current policies. Surely it is time to hold an open debate on global drug-control policies.

Eugene Oscapella is a lawyer and Diane Riley is a policy analyst. Both work with the Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy, a non-profit organization founded in 1993 to seek humane and effective drug policies and a reduction in harm related drug use.

From The Globe and Mail
letters@globeandmail.ca

June 9, 1998

Drug crackdown defies skepticism

World leaders press for punitive measures, public doubt unheeded at UN conference

By Timothy Appleby

The Globe and Mail

TORONTO—Futile, harmful and costly though it may be, in the eyes of a swelling legion of critics, the "war on drugs" looks set to run for at least a few more years.

But the battleground—the hearts and minds of Western voters who ultimately pick up the huge tab—may be undergoing something of a transformation.

As a special United Nations conference on drugs opened in New York yesterday, a long, diverse list of high profile international figures (more than 600) delivered an open letter urging the reappraisal of traditional tactics, arguing that the antinarcotics fight is causing more damage than the drugs themselves.

"The war on drugs has been an abysmal failure, it’s a war on people not a war on drugs," said Ms. Davies, whose Vancouver East constituency has the highest number of addicts in Canada.

"We literally have people dying in my constituency, and this kind of approach—hiring more cops—is not working. That’s why I’m here [in New York]."

Few foresee any quick change to the status quo. Certainly there was no indication of one at the UN conference yesterday.

Even as the petition was submitted, the world’s most powerful leaders were making it clear that it’s business as usual. Indeed more so than ever.

The three-day session, whose twin aims are to cut consumption amongst the world’s estimated 218 million drug users by the year 2008, and reduce cultivation of the coca bush, the opium poppy and the cannabis plant, was opened by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who urged delegates to endorse a new global assault on drugs.

"It is time for every nation to say ‘No’ to drugs," he said.

Then, U.S. President Bill Clinton called on the forum to "stand as one against this threat.... Drugs are every nation’s problem, and every nation must act to fight then. Together, we must extend the long arm of the law."

Equally anxious to renew the battle are such powerful figures as French President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, which has the highest rate of drug abuse in Europe.

"We attach great importance to and are very concerned about the comeback of drugs in China and have taken a series of firm counter measures," China’s delegate, state counsellor Luo Gan, told the conference.

Between $4.3-billion and $5.8-billion in additional drug-fighting funds are expected to be authorized by the end of the conference.

However, to an eclectic band of critics, who echo a collective opinion heard for years in such countries as the Netherlands and Switzerland, it all amounts to throwing good money after bad.

Among those unimpressed by the tough talk is Mr. Kendall, whose three years at the head of the ARF—Canada’s largest drugs-and-alcohol think-tank—reinforced his view that drug abuse is primarily a medical and social problem rather than a criminal one.

He is also cautiously optimistic that public opinion will come around to this perspective.

"The tide will shift from the front lines forward—the people at the pointy end of the stick, the coroners, the police, the counsellors," he suggested.

Other critics of the status quo include hundreds of police officers, academics, scientists and politicians of all stripes, who put their names to the open letter, decrying that year after year, governments enact punitive policies toward an illicit global drug industry worth an estimated $583-billion (an astounding 8 per cent of all world trade) and that year after year people continue to sell and consume drugs.

Conventional thinking, in the view of the signatories, serves to empower organized crime, corrupt governments at every level, distort the marketplace, hinder health-care and feed into an ever-growing law -enforcement and penal industry.

"The way we’re currently trying to deal with illicit drugs is in many senses counter-productive," Mr. Kendall said.

"It costs more in terms of public-health damage, criminal and social costs than would a more rational, pragmantic approach. But the status quo is being driven very much by ideology, and there’s a tremendous economic imperative as well. At least $87-billion a year in North America goes toward [drug] enforcement."

Mr. Ruby, the civil libertarian concurred.

"We spend huge amounts on this prosecution model, when we know for certain that we achieve very little by it," he said.