Friends,
It turns out that one of the few accomplishments of the involvement of a large number of international NGOs during the preparations for CND 2009 is that at least a beginning of a dialogue has started between opposing groups.
In July 2008 almost 300 NGOs came together for the Beyond 2008 meeting, organized by the Vienna NGO Council, with the seemingly impossible task to draw up a statement, in consensus, for CND 2009. The statement came about, thanks to the fact that the more radical groups (to which I count LEAP and INPUD and my own organization ENCOD on one side, and Drug Free America and other drugfree groups on the other) restrained themselves significantly and accepted painful compromises.
Before that time, communication between these groups was rare, and limited to short and unpleasant exchanges and mostly angry looks.

Interestingly, after Beyond 2008, an open correspondence started slowly between these groups, with mostly lengthy and hardly readable texts, and my impression was that this effort was useless and aimless, although not meaningless.
The most enduring writers kept going however, and recently this culminated in a letter that I think is one of the best arguments in the history of the drug policy debate, the letter to Calvina Fay of Drug Free America, from Alex Wodak from Sydney, Australia, formerly president of the International Harm Reduction Association.

I also copied the previous letters of Mrs. Fay and of Wodak.
( I deleted the long list of recipients with email addresses that was originally still attached.)

Enjoy!

Fredrick Polak
Netherlands Drug Policy Foundation
ENCOD European Coalition for Just and Effective Drug Policies


The Failure and Futility of the War on Drugs

Dear All,

Ms Calvina Fay was right a few weeks ago to point out that there have been some benefits of the War on Drugs. I should have acknowledged this myself. When Nixon launched the War on Drugs in 1971, it was always intended primarily as a political strategy rather than as a public policy. Nothing has changed. While it has been an abject failure as a public policy, the War on Drugs has often succeeded as a political strategy - which is why it still survives. It has been the political benefits which were largely responsible for the adoption of the War on Drugs by so many countries around the world. Of course, the USA provided a lot of help and encouragement to many countries around the world to adopt a War on Drugs approach.

It is no accident that the examples Ms Fay listed as proof that the War on Drugs had succeeded were all political. She listed: "UNGASS [sic] was just wrapped up in Vienna" and provided "a renewed pledge to wage the war on drugs"; "many recent laws have been enacted to better control the misuse of prescription drugs, control the flow of precursors used to manufacture methamphetamine, reduce pharmacy fraud over the Internet, and require individuals receiving support from government tax dollars to be drug free. The UK, recognizing the serious harms of marijuana, reclassified it and Amsterdam closed many of it "coffee shops.""

It was no accident that Ms Fay did not list any significant health, social or economic benefits of the War on Drugs. No actual outcomes. She did not list any these kinds of benefits because there have not been any. No reduction in deaths, diseases, crime or corruption. It is true that CND (not UNGASS) recently approved another attempt "to eliminate or substantially reduce global drug use". That failed in the last decade so why not renew the pledge? Yes, some countries have passed new harsh laws but many more countries have repealed previous Draconian laws and passed more moderate legislation. It is also true, as Ms Fay notes, that the current UK government, trailing very badly in the polls with elections coming up, ignored its own expert scientific advisory body and re-classified cannabis as a more dangerous drug. But the prevalence of cannabis use in the UK actually declined after it was last re-classified as a less dangerous drug. And senior UK police publicly opposed the re-classification of cannabis. Yes, some coffee shops selling cannabis in the Netherlands were closed. Wow! These are the sum total of evidence presented by Ms Fay that the War on Drugs is working.

The War on Drugs would not have survived so long it there had been no beneficiaries. Who has benefited from the War on Drugs? For many unelectable, ageing, (usually male) politicians in many countries, the War on Drugs has been like Viagra. Others benefiting from the War on Drugs included criminals and corrupt police. Could Al Capone or Pablo Escobar have ever acquired such extraordinary wealth had it not been for the prohibition of alcohol or drugs? Another group that has benefited from the War on Drugs has been the "drugs-industrial complex" - similar to the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned the world about 50 years ago. In many countries funds have been generously showered on the "drugs-industrial complex"; customs, police, courts, prisons, drug testing laboratories and War on Drugs advocacy groups have grown beyond their wildest dreams.

For many decades the overwhelming majority of countries in the world have tried very hard to control illicit drugs using a War on Drugs Approach. Many have used a fire and brimstone rhetorical style to describe their approach to illicit drugs. It is only in the last couple of decades that an increasing number of countries have started supporting evidence-based, pragmatic approaches and advocating these in public. As Ms Fay pointed out, the War on Drugs groups still manage to get their own way in many important decisions. It is not just a matter of rhetoric and winning critical battles. Drug law enforcement has consistently attracted the lion's share of funding from governments while harm reduction has been lucky to just get a few crumbs. Tim Moore estimated that Australian governments in 2003/04 allocated 56% of their expenditure in response to illicit drugs to drug law enforcement while only 3% was allocated to harm reduction. The 1993 RAND US study on responding to cocaine demand estimated that 93% of US government expenditure in response to cocaine was allocated to drug law enforcement while only 7% was allocated to drug treatment. The Canadian Auditor General estimated that 95% of the Canadian government's expenditure in response to cocaine was allocated to drug law enforcement. There are many similar estimates of this kind.   

What would we look for to decide that global drug prohibition had been an effective public policy?

The sorts of indictors of a successful drug policy most people would look for would include:
global drug production had decreased;
the number of people using illicit drugs had declined;
the number of countries reporting that illicit drugs are a problem had fallen;
the street price of illicit drugs had increased;
the street purity of illicit drugs had decreased;
the number of different kinds of illicit drugs had stayed the same or even gone down;
more dangerous street drugs (like heroin) had been replaced by less dangerous street drugs (like opium) with less dangerous routes of administration replacing more dangerous routes;
the number of people dying as a result of illicit drugs (e.g. drug overdose, AIDS) had fallen sharply;
the number of people with illnesses (e.g. HIV, hepatitis C)  associated with illicit drug use had declined;
people who use illicit drugs had been accepted as equal citizens, enjoying similar opportunities in areas such as education, housing and employment;
fewer people who use drugs were behind bars;
governments were spending less money in response to illicit drugs;
the rates of drug-related crimes had fallen;
international terrorism (including the Taliban) were now earning much less from drug trafficking;  
there were fewer (none?) "narco-states", countries where the government of the country and the local drug traffickers were one and the same.
What has happened to these parameters around the world?

Global drug production has increased steadily. In the period 1998-2007, global opium production more than doubled, cocaine production increased 20% and cannabis production also increased substantially;
The number of people using illicit drugs around the world has steadily increased in recent decades;
The number of countries where illicit drugs are reported to be a problem have grown steadily;
In Europe and the USA since the early 1980s, the street price of heroin and cocaine decreased by 30-40%;
The street purity of these drugs has also steadily increased in Europe and the USA since the early 1980s;
The number of different kinds of illicit drugs that are available now is much greater than it was in the 1960s or 1970s;
More dangerous street drugs like heroin have increasingly replaced less dangerous street drugs like opium; in Asia, heroin injecting in young and sexually active men has replaced the smoking and eating of opium by old men; HIV is the critical complication associated with injecting heroin in Asia. Constipation was one of the main complications seen in gaunt old men smoking or eating opium in Asia;
The number of people in the world dying as a result of illicit drugs (e.g. drug overdose, AIDS) has steadily increased;
The number of drug users who are ill with conditions such as HIV or hepatitis C has steadily increased;
People who use illicit drugs are often subjected to stigma and discrimination and are generally denied equal opportunities in areas such as education, housing and employment;
The number of drug users behind bars has grown steadily in many countries but nowhere as spectacularly as the USA. The USA accounts for 5% of the world population but 25% of the world's correctional population. In the USA, 55% of federal inmates and 21% of state correctional inmates are serving sentences for drug related crimes;
Governments in most countries are spending more money in response to illicit drugs;
In most countries around the world, the rates of drug-related crimes are much higher now than they were in the 1960s or 1970s;
Many major terrorist groups (including the Taliban) generate spectacular incomes from trafficking drugs thanks to drug prohibition;
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Mexico are "narco-states" most of the time. A major US intelligence agency recently warned that Mexico and Pakistan are now dangerously unstable - both are "narco-states".  
If Ms Fay thinks the War on Drugs has been a success, what would she think failure would look like?

It is only possible to say that the War on Drugs has been a public policy success if we also say that "Bernie Madoff was a prudent financier". Or that "the US auto industry is currently in great financial shape". Or that "Lehman Brothers and AIG are doing fabulously well". Or that "US military forces in Vietnam (1945-1975) were very successful". Or that "the USSR delivered great prosperity to its citizens". As George Orwell said "Political language...is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind".

The starting point in any realistic discussion about drug policy is to accept the truth; and the truth is that the War on Drugs approach has been tried but has failed miserably.

Our task is to contribute to finding way for more effective drug policies to gain more widespread political acceptance. The 2009 CND showed that this journey has already started. It is now clear for the first time that there is no international consensus about drug policy. Twenty six countries made it clear in 2009 that harm reduction has to be the centrepiece of any future effective international drug policy.

I appreciate that the staunch the War on Drugs supporters will not be changing their views in a hurry. But they are now only a small minority of people around the world with an intense interest in drug policy. The Vienna NGO Forum in July 2008 made that pretty clear.

If the War on Drugs was a roaring success, why did Richard Holbrooke, special US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, say recently (in reference to US policy on drugs in Afghanistan) "The United States alone is spending over $800m a year on counter-narcotics. We have gotten nothing out of it, nothing. It is the most wasteful and ineffective programme I have seen in 40 years." A few weeks ago US Secretary  of  State  Hillary  Clinton, commenting on the increase in violence in Mexico in the last 2 years following increased efforts to reduce drug trafficking, said "Clearly what we've been  doing  has  not  worked." Before he became President of the US, Obama said US drug policy was an "utter failure".

As the UNODC said in 2008 (Reducing the adverse health and social effects of drug use: A comprehensive approach) ""Harm reduction" is often made an unnecessarily controversial issue as if there was a contradiction between prevention and treatment on one hand and reducing the adverse health and social consequences of drug use on the other. This is a false dichotomy. They are complementary".

This is the long standing approach taken by supporters of harm reduction and drug law reform. It's time that we all started working towards these ends. Finding more effective approaches for the future requires accepting reality: the War on Drugs has failed miserably and it is futile trying to base future policy on it. Of course, there always should and always will be an important secondary role for drug law enforcement in any effective drug policy just as law enforcement plays an important role in alcohol and tobacco policy.

best wishes,
Alex

Dr. Alex Wodak,
Director, Alcohol and Drug Service,
St. Vincent's Hospital,
Darlinghurst, NSW, 2010,
AUSTRALIA

Telephone: (61+02) 9361 8012
If no prompt answer, try 9361 8014
Facsimile: (61+02) 8382 4738
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
skype: alex.wodak


>>> "Calvina Fay" 31/03/2009 4:28 am >>>
Interesting that you think the war on drugs is collapsing when the evidence says quite the contrary.  UNGASS was just wrapped up in Vienna and once again member countries committed to continuing efforts to push back against drugs and to uphold the UN Drug Conventions.  This does not indicate a failure but, rather a renewed pledge to wage the war on drugs.  Drugs are killing our children and destroying the very fabric of societies.  We simply cannot afford to give up the battle.  This important war is waged by mothers, fathers, and other family members on a daily basis as they fight to save their loved ones from the scourge of drugs.

Many recent laws have been enacted to better control the misuse of prescription drugs, control the flow of precursors used to manufacture methamphetamine, reduce pharmacy fraud over the Internet, and require individuals receiving support from government tax dollars to be drug free.  The UK, recognizing the serious harms of marijuana, reclassified it and Amsterdam closed many of it "coffee shops."  I could list MANY more recent successful efforts in the war on drugs but, I think I have made my point.
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From: Alex Wodak [mailto: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ]
Sent: Friday, March 27, 2009 9:29 PM
To: Calvina Fay; This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it ; Gary Christian
Cc:
Subject: RE: Drug Legalisation in Australia
Dear Ms Fay,

It must be painful for you to admit that the War Against Drugs is slowly but steadily collapsing.

Around the world every week, there are usually several major defeats for the War Against Drugs.  

As you know, on Thursday 26 March 2009 New York state dismantled most of its Draconian Rockefeller drug laws.

On the same day, President Obama participated in a live internet chat and responded to one of the most popular questions put to him, namely, 'whether legalizing cannabis might stimulate the economy by allowing the government to regulate and tax the drug'. He did not agree with the proposition. But Obama, the third US President in a row to have used cannabis, realised that he had to respond to the question. Unfortunately, he did not accept the advice of 500 leading conservative US economists who recommended the taxation and regulation of cannabis some years ago.  

This morning I read a persuasive commentary by Dr. David E Krahl, until recently Deputy Director of your organisation, the Drug Free America Foundation, who now endorses the medical use of cannabis. His arguments are very strong.

The web site of your organisation has recently been revised. The previous wall-to-wall hostility to harm reduction is gone. It now almost seems as if DFA is actually claiming to have invented harm reduction.

Harm reduction supporters are tired of this polarised debate. It is clear that harm reduction is now the global mainstream drug policy. The scientific and intellectual debate over harm reduction is over: harm reduction won.

It's time to move on.

best wishes,
Alex
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