Pubdate: Wed, 11 Mar 2009
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2009 Guardian News and Media Limited
Contact: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Website: http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Duncan Campbell
Referenced: European Commission report: the world drugs problem, ten
years on http://drugsense.org/url/yEsNto0k
Cited: the International Drug Policy Consortium http://www.idpc.info/

TEN WASTED YEARS: UN DRUG STRATEGY A FAILURE, REVEALS DAMNING REPORT

The UN strategy on drugs over the past decade has been a failure, a
European commission report claimed yesterday on the eve of the
international conference in Vienna that will set future policy for
the next 10 years.

The report came amid growing dissent among delegates arriving at the
meeting to finalise a UN declaration of intent.

Referring to the UN's existing strategy, the authors declared that
they had found "no evidence that the global drug problem was
reduced". They wrote: "Broadly speaking, the situation has improved a
little in some of the richer countries while for others it worsened,
and for some it worsened sharply and substantially, among them a few
large developing or transitional countries."

The policy had merely shifted the problem geographically, they said.
"Production and trafficking controls only redistributed activities.
Enforcement against local markets failed in most countries."

Representatives from governments are split in their efforts to
formulate an international drugs policy for the next decade. The UN
Commission on Narcotic Drugs is due to formulate a strategy over the
next two days, but there is widespread disagreement among delegates
and a general feeling that an opportunity for a united approach has been lost.

In an article for the Guardian, Mike Trace, chairman of the
International Drug Policy Consortium, says: "We're about to see the
international community walk up the political and diplomatic path of
least resistance. It will do nothing to help the millions of people
around the world whose lives are destroyed by drug markets and drug
use. And the depressing thing about it is that we can all book our
seats for 2019, to go through this charade again."

Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and
Crime, has defended the approach. He is due to talk today on
organised crime, which he has described as "one of the unintended
consequences of drug control". He will warn that "a criminal market,
of staggering proportion, risks undermining drug control" and outline
a three-pronged approach to tackling drug-related crime.

In London, however, Lady Meacher, speaking on behalf of more than 30
members of the Lords, warned that the existing hardline
prohibitionist strategy, which has been led by the US, had been
deeply damaging. It was now being challenged by politicians,
scientists and lawyers around the world, she said.

"We are concerned that the war on drugs has failed and the harm it
has caused is far greater," said Meacher, at a briefing organised by
the drugs advice charity Release. "What we want the UN to do is
accept that the previous declaration was hopelessly unrealistic."

She said that Barack Obama had yet to appoint a new drugs tsar in the
US but there were already signs that he was adopting a more liberal
approach to the issue. The US president has lifted the ban on federal
funding for needle exchange programmes, which are seen as crucial in
the struggle to combat the spread of HIV. Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch,
director of the global drug policy programme at the Open Society
Institute, Warsaw, said: "It is now clear that after months of
negotiations, millions of people around the world will continue to
suffer needlessly. Thanks to the global 'war on drugs' over the past
decade, close to 2 million people living in the former Soviet Union
are infected with HIV, half a million US citizens languish in prison
for non-violent, drug-related crimes, and billions of dollars are
spent on destructive military actions in Colombia while the
production of cocaine continues to rise."

The first two days of the session will be held at ministerial level
to assess progress made in the decade since a special session of the
UN general assembly set the target of a "drugs-free" world. The aim
has been criticised for not addressing the problems of addiction and treatment.

Prof Tim Rhodes, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Health,
said the number of injecting drug users around the world could have
reached 15 million and this was responsible for 10% of global HIV infections.

Rhodes said the problem was particularly serious in Russia, where
intensive street-level policing had exacerbated the difficulties.
_________________________________________________________
Pubdate: Wed, 11 Mar 2009
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2009 Guardian News and Media Limited
Contact: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Website: http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Mike Trace
Note: Mike Trace is the chairman of the International Drug Policy
Consortium and the former deputy UK drug tsar http://www.idpc.info/

THE GLOBAL DRUG CHARADE

Flying in the face of all the evidence, the UN is about to recommit
to the tried and failed approach

Ten years ago, I represented Britain at a UN general assembly special
session in New York, where political leaders reviewed progress in
tackling the illegal drug market, and set out a 10-year plan to
eliminate the illicit production and use of drugs such as cannabis,
heroin and cocaine. Fast forward to this week in Vienna - where a
similar gathering is tasked with reviewing progress and setting out a
framework for international drug controls for the decade to come -
and the lack of headway is striking.

Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and
over again and expecting different results. So far in Vienna, the
meeting appears to have been struck by a similar affliction.

Yes, it is every politician's nightmare: a controversial subject that
the electorate cares about and that the media write about (some might
say) obsessively. But evidence of the failure of policy is
overwhelming. All credible studies conclude that there has been no
overall reduction in the scale of production or use, and that in many
parts of the world the problem has got significantly worse. There are
at least 200 million users of controlled drugs. The illegal market
generates an estimated $300bn turnover for organised crime. Overall
rates of addiction are probably rising, as is transmission of the
Aids virus through shared needles. States as diverse as Mexico,
Afghanistan and Guinea-Bissau struggle to maintain control as profits
from trafficking foment violence and disorder.

Thirty countries still have the death penalty for drug offences and
many continue to use it despite clear advice that this breaches the
UN charter. The forced eradication of crops in countries such as
Colombia condemns whole communities to poverty and ill health. Legal
clampdowns increase drug users' marginalisation, and the social and
health risks of their behaviour. Perhaps all this "collateral damage"
would be justified if the drug market was being reduced. The
inconvenient truth is, it is not.

How will the international community respond? Well, the head of the
UN drugs agency, Antonio Maria Costa, has issued a report claiming
"undeniable success", and governments are on the verge of signing a
political declaration that meekly reports: "Some progress has been
made." The declaration is essentially a reiteration of the objectives
and activities agreed in 1998 - no recognition of a decade's
evidence; no new ideas or initiatives. Privately, delegates are
acutely aware of the weaknesses and divisions, but have no answers to offer.

Some countries have tried to push for a more honest assessment.
Britain is one - we may still be prone to rhetorical posturing and
have tied ourselves in legislative knots over cannabis
classification, but we do not send lots of people to prison for using
drugs. We prioritise treatment for addiction and promote harm
reduction approaches to improve the life chances of drug users and to
prevent the spread of blood-borne viruses. We also accept that our
law enforcement agencies cannot save the country from drugs. This is
modern, pragmatic thinking. It will be drowned out in Vienna by a
series of exhortations for tougher action in the "war on drugs".

Tomorrow, representatives of all UN member states will adopt a
declaration that commits them to another decade of the same strategy,
in the hope of achieving different results. Einstein's definition
seems to ring true. We're about to witness another walk up the
political and diplomatic path of least resistance. It will do nothing
to help the millions whose lives are destroyed by drug markets and
drug use - and, depressingly, we can all book our seats for 2019, to
go through this charade again.
__________________________________________________________
Pubdate: Wed, 11 Mar 2009
Source: Daily Telegraph (UK)
Copyright: 2009 Telegraph Group Limited
Contact: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Website: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/114
Referenced: European Commission report: the world drugs problem, ten
years on http://drugsense.org/url/yEsNto0k

GLOBAL DRUGS POLICIES 'HAVE FAILED OVER PAST 10 YEARS'

Global drug policies have failed over the past 10 years to reduce the
problem in any way, according to an EU report presented in Vienna,
ahead of a UN conference on narcotics.

The report, which was carried out for the European Commission by an
independent group of international experts, "found no evidence that
the global drug problem has been reduced during the period from 1998 to 2007".

While increased action has been taken against producers and sellers,
the report noted that prices in Western countries "have fallen since
1998 by as much as 10 to 30 per cent".

And "there is no evidence that drugs have become more difficult to
obtain," it added.

The report comes as 53 member states of the Commission on Narcotic
Drugs (CND) are to meet in Vienna on Wednesday to discuss global drug
policies since a 1998 UN plan to reduce drug abuse and trafficking.

But the document, which was ordered by the EU's Justice, Freedom and
Security Commissioner Jacques Barrot, highlights the near total
failure of drug enforcement.

"The most harm comes from policies rather than from drugs," said
Peter Reuter from the University of Maryland, who led the studies for
the report.

"Enforcement of drug policies has caused lots of unintended harm," he
told a press conference in Vienna.

Reuter also noted: "It's very hard to demonstrate the consequences of
tougher enforcement on quantity or prices."

On the contrary, the fight against drugs contributed to corruption
and crime, and increased health risks for consumers, he said.
_______________________________________________________
Pubdate: Wed, 11 Mar 2009
Source: Scotsman (UK)
Copyright: 2009 The Scotsman Publications Ltd
Contact: http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/contactus.aspx
Website: http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/406
Author: Mark Heinrich
Referenced: European Commission report: The World Drugs Problem, Ten
Years On http://drugsense.org/url/yEsNto0k

UN'S WORLDWIDE ANTI-DRUGS CAMPAIGN 'HAS MADE NO PROGRESS'

A GLOBAL campaign by the United Nations to cut supply and demand for
illegal drugs has made no progress, a European Commission report has
said. The report yesterday came on the eve of a ministerial-level
meeting in Vienna by the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs to review the
ten years since the campaign was launched.

Papering over dissent on how to make anti-drug policy more effective,
UN members are expected to sign a declaration committing themselves to
the programme for another decade.

The EC report said enforcing drug bans had backfired by displacing
traffickers to lawless regions. It had led to addicts sharing needles
- spreading disease - as syringe-exchange centres have been
unavailable.

Cocaine and heroin use had declined in the West but had risen to
become "a serious epidemic" in parts of eastern Europe and central
Asia.

The report said: "The world drug situation seems to be more or less in
the same state as in 1998."
_____________________________________________________________
Pubdate: Wed, 11 Mar 2009
Source: Telegraph-Journal (Saint John, CN NK)
Page: A6
Copyright: 2009 Brunswick News Inc.
Contact: http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/onsite.php?page=contact
Website: http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2878
Author: Jennifer Ditchburn, The Canadian Press
Cited: The Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy
http://drugsanddemocracy.org/
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Marijuana)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hr.htm (Harm Reduction)

COUNTRIES RE-EXAMINE WAR ON DRUGS

When Canadian cities like Vancouver become the setting for gang
warfare, when Mexico's stability teeters because of drug violence and
the cartels infiltrate normally quiet American towns, global
policymakers start to wonder where they went wrong.

Representatives from Canada and 52 other countries will scrutinize
international narcotics policy beginning Wednesday at a major United
Nations conference in Vienna.

The declaration they agree to later this week will indicate whether
participants still favour a 10-year approach that focuses on
enforcement - the "war on drugs" - or on reducing the demand for drugs
and the harm they cause.

Camps have already formed in the conference hallways in Vienna, with
Canada somewhere in the middle.

Europe and Latin America arrived at the meetings with reports in hand
that declare the war on drugs ineffective.

The Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy said plainly that
police crackdowns have done nothing to slow the increase in production
and consumption.

They would like to see marijuana legalized as a first step, and for
the UN to see the drug problem as a public-health issue rather than
simply a criminal one.

The European Union is equally critical of current efforts to stem the
drug trade. They would like to see more focus on harm reduction.

On the other side, countries such as the United States, China and
Russia think the phrase harm reduction is too broad, and had it
removed from the draft text of the official declaration this week.

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