Losing the 'war on drugs'
01 March 2003
In April 2003 the UN Commission for Narcotic Drugs (CND) concluded its annual meeting and Ministerial Conference of member states to mark the half way point in the ten year UN strategy: “a drug free world, we can do it!”. Devised at the 1998 UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) in New York, world leaders put their faith in the elimination or significant reduction in poppy, coca and cannabis cultivation.
Despite the positive spin to emerge from the CND gathering, it is impossible to disguise the failings of this strategy. Neither did the ministerial endorsement of the ten-year plan, and vague recommendations to enhance drug control strategies, mask the crisis in international drugs policy. The UK Home Affairs Select Committee had called for a discussion of alternatives at the conference, “including the possibility of legalisation and regulation to tackle the global drugs dilemma”; the CND ministers subsequently expressed:
grave concern about policies and activities in favour of the legalization of illicit narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances that were not in accordance with the international drug control treaties and that might jeopardize the international drug control regime (1)
Losing the war on drugs
The UK is a signatory (along with almost all UN member states) to three UN drug control treaties (1961, 1971, 1988) that enshrine the basic tenets of prohibition: the criminalisation of production, supply, and possession of specific drugs into domestic law. After four decades of the 'war on drugs' and untold billions spent on co-ordinated international drug control and enforcement, the market for illegal drugs continues to expand (estimates for the size of the international drug trade now range from £100-£300 billion a year, putting it on a par with the oil and arms trade). The negative consequences of these illegal markets expand accordingly, exacting a terrible toll across the world from producer countries such as Colombia and Afghanistan, to the deprived crime ridden inner cities of Western Europe. This crisis has essentially been precipitated by the collision of rising illegal drug use with prohibitionist policies formulated in an era when patterns of use were unrecognisable from those of today.
Unintended consequences
For the first time ever the UK updated drugs strategy 2002 refers to “maintaining prohibition” (as a deterrent for young people) (3). What the strategy excludes is the potential to address the unintended negative consequences of a prohibitionist approach. Just as with alcohol in 1920's and 30's USA, violent and deregulated illegal markets are inevitable when a policy of prohibition collides with a continued or growing demand for prohibited substances. Significantly, the negative impacts of prohibition in the UK, and globally, have expanded in proportion to the ballooning demand for illegal drugs over the past three decades.
The price of illegal drugs is artificially high. The price of a kilo of cocaine in Colombia is £1,000. In the UK it is £30 000 (4). This 3,000% profit margin not only attracts organised crime, it also makes street prices far higher than they would be in a legal market, leading to high levels of property crime and street prostitution amongst problematic users. That heroin use in the UK has increased by over 1000% since 1971 illustrates the extent to which the policy-making environment has shifted (5). This change has presented problems that could hardly have been imagined when the original UN drug control treaties were drafted, with some of the text dating back to the late 1940's.
Market forces
At the global scale the inflated prices of illegal drugs provide an extraordinary profit opportunity for trans-national criminal organisations, whether traditional organised crime networks, or newer terrorist groups. As an adjunct to illegal drug supply activities, such groups are invariably also involved in murder, assault, fraud, tax evasion, money laundering, in