VI. CONCLUSION

Drug use is a complex social phenomenon, involving the drugs which are used, the people using them, the context in which they are used, and the social construction and governmental construction of drug use by society. Most people consider drug usage to be a voluntary and innocuous, yet illegal activity. This has important, but often overlooked privacy implications. Drug use itself, societal responses to it, and efforts to control it through legal measures, have an impact on the human rights of drug users. The impact may include infringements of the rights of drug users, vulnerability to human rights abuses, and diminished capacity to exercise these rights due to the consequences of drug use itself. Very often the occurrence of these harms can be prevented or reduced by addressing the adverse societal responses to drug use. Doing so would likely involve:

(1) considering drug use to be a risky private activity, but one that is not inherently or necessarily harmful, other than for its present illegality. Its control by governments is necessary, and may even be desirable, but this can create risks and inflict harms. These harms can be minimized or avoided by limiting control to the reduction or prevention of harms associated with drug use in situations in which these are likely to occur;

(2) preventing or reducing the vulnerability that underlies and predisposes individuals to use drugs. This would entail, among other initiatives, preventing or reducing the stereotyping, stigmatization, scapegoating and discrimination that is linked with drug use;

(3) recognizing that disabling health impairments -can result from drug use and that these impairments can interfere with opportunities to exercise human rights, and that protection of drug users in these situations is necessary and urgently needed;

(4) shifting the legal and policy approaches to drug use from those which rely upon controlling the supply of drugs, to those which emphasize reducing the demand for drug use and the harms of drug usage; and

(5) examining domestic and international legal and policy responses to drug use for their compliance with human rights standards.

Improving the health and the human rights of drug users is possible. Doing so, however, requires commitment-most of all, political commitment. As the American poet Alan Ginsberg said recently, ‘The whole drug problem has now spun out of control, and it is really not a medical problem or a police problem but a political problem."347 Responding to this problem, as an analysis of human rights and drug use shows, necessitates recognizing that "the way we conceptualize or define a problem dictates the measures we take to solve it."348