A historic meeting of Latin America's leaders, to be attended by Barack Obama, will hear serving heads of state admit that the war on drugs has been a failure and that alternatives to prohibition must now be found.
The Summit of the Americas, to be held in Cartagena, Colombia is being seen by foreign policy experts as a watershed moment in the redrafting of global drugs policy in favour of a more nuanced and liberalised approach.
Otto Pérez Molina, the president of Guatemala, who as former head of his country's military intelligence service experienced the power of drug cartels at close hand, is pushing his fellow Latin American leaders to use the summit to endorse a new regional security plan that would see an end to prohibition. In the Observer, Pérez Molina writes: "The prohibition paradigm that inspires mainstream global drug policy today is based on a false premise: that global drug markets can be eradicated."
Mexico's president, Felipe Calderón, has called for a national debate on the issue. Last year Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia's president, told the Observer that if legalising drugs curtailed the power of organised criminal gangs who had thrived during prohibition, "and the world thinks that's the solution, I will welcome it".
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One diplomat closely involved with the summit described the event as historic, saying it would be the first time for 40 years that leaders had met to have an open discussion on drugs. "This is the chance to look at this matter with new eyes," he said. US vice-president, Joe Biden, has acknowledged that the debate about legalising drugs is now legitimate.
Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former president of Brazil and chairman of the global commission on drug policy, has said it is time for "an open debate on more humane and efficient drug policies", a view shared by George Shultz, the former US secretary of state, and former president Jimmy Carter.
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Do We Need A Fresh Perspective?
Decriminalisation of drug possession does not lead to increase in drug use, a new report has found. Now new research from Release, a UK drug policy organisation, illustrates how countries that have already taken the brave step of changing their drugs policies are not experiencing adverse effects.
The study (A Quiet Revolution: Drug Decriminalisation Policies in Practice across the Globe) reviews the evidence in 21 countries that have adopted some form of decriminalisation, from the Netherlands to Estonia, Australia to Mexico, Uruguay to Portugal.
Drug prohibition in various forms has been in place for over 100 years now, its historical roots traceable back to the temperance movement. This punitive criminal justice-led approach, premised on the understandable but simplistic concept that drugs are a threat, therefore we must fight them, and thence that drugs are bad, therefore we must prohibit them, was enshrined as global policy under the UN single convention on drugs 1961.
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For a policy that has the very specific aim of creating a ‘drug-free’ society, criminalising drug production, supply and possession has been a remarkable failure on its own terms. Consistently under the legislation, use and related harms have risen, drugs have become cheaper and more available, and illicit production has easily met the growing demand.
Worse still, this policy approach, (one that we must remember is fantastically and increasingly expensive), has delivered a series of catastrophic consequences associated with the sprawling international illicit trade controlled by violent criminal entrepreneurs, now turning over in the region of $300 billion each year.
On the global front this prohibition-fuelled crime has placed an intolerable burden on all tiers of the world criminal justice system. The prisons crisis - with over half of prisoners inside for drug, or drug-related offending – being the most high profile, but the same stress being carried through the police, courts and probation systems.
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The vast sums generated by the illicit trade, particularly in producer and transit countries, are frequently used to corrupt state institutions, police, judiciary, and politics, as well as providing a ready source of funding for armed insurgency (fuelling civil war in Colombia for example) and terrorism (most obviously the Taliban) that can in turn become a very real threat for developing countries in Africa.
A historical stumbling block in the debate has been the fact that no clear vision of a post prohibition world has been available. The question ‘how would it work?’ has thus been met with a lack of clarity, with myths and misrepresentations filling the void. Transform Drug Policy Foundation argues the choice is clear; drug markets can remain in the hands of organised criminals and street dealers or they can be controlled and regulated by the government.
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There is no third option under which there are no drugs in society. Therefore we must choose the policy approach that delivers the best outcomes from our limited criminal justice and public health resources; in terms of minimising harms associated with drug production supply and use. The evidence from the failure of prohibition demands that we meaningfully explore the options for legal regulation.
After the War on Drugs considers the menu of options for controls over products (dosage, preparation, price and packaging), vendors (licensing, vetting and training requirements), outlets (location, outlet density, appearance), who has access (age controls, licensed buyers) and where and when drugs can be consumed. It then rationally explores options for different drugs and different using populations to suggest the regulatory models that will deliver the best outcomes on key health and well being indicators. Lessons are drawn from successes and failings with alcohol and tobacco prohibition, as well as controls over pharmaceutical drugs and other risky products and activities that are regulated by government.
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Moves toward legal regulation of drug markets would naturally be phased in cautiously over a number of years, with close evaluation and monitoring of impacts and any unintended consequences. A flexible range of regulatory tools would also be applied differentially across the spectrum of products, with the more restrictive controls deployed for more risky drugs or drug preparations, and, less restrictive controls for lower risk products. If implemented intelligently such an approach holds the potential to not only reduce harms associated with patterns of consumption as they currently exist but, in the longer term to encourage patterns of use to move towards safer products, safer behaviours, and safer using environments – the precise opposite of what has happened under prohibition.
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Five basic models are proposed; medical prescription and supervised using venues for the highest risk drugs and most problematic users; a specialist pharmacist sales model, combined with named/licensed user access and volume sales rationing for mid-risk drugs, such as amphetamines, powder cocaine, and ecstasy; various forms of licensed retail, and licensed premises for sale and consumption (familiar with pubs and Dutch-style cannabis coffee shops); and unlicensed sales for the least risky products such as caffeine drinks, or coca tea.
Has Drug War Driven Mass Incarceration?
The United States leads the world in the rate of incarcerating its own citizens with 2.2 million people currently in the nation's prisons or jails -- a 500% increase over the past thirty years.. The U.S. locks up more of her own people than any other country on earth, including China which has four times our population, or in human history.
Over the past 23 years, California constructed roughly one new prison per year, at a cost
of $100 million each, while it built only one new public college during the same period.
Nationwide, spending on prisons has risen six times faster than spending on higher education.
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Largely casualties of the "war on drugs," and vigorously promoted at the federal level by the "drug czar" and a $15 billion annual budget, the number of incarcerated Americans has quadrupled since 1980. Approximately half a million people are in prison or in jail for a drug offence today, compared to around 41,000 in 1980. Four out of five drug arrests are for simple possession,80% for marijuana. Most people in state prison for drug offences have no history of violence.
At the end of 2007, more than 7 million Americans were behind bars, on probation, or on
parole, many whose initial violation of the drug laws spiralled into a life of crime. This is a level of mass incarceration unprecedented in history. And despite the fact that surveys show that whites are just as likely to use illegal drugs as blacks, one out of every 14 black men was behind bars in 2006, compared to one in 106 white men.
For private business, 'prison labour is like a pot of gold. No strikes. No union organizing. No health benefits, unemployment insurance, or workers’ compensation to pay. No language barriers, as in foreign countries. New leviathan prisons are being built on thousands of acres of factories inside the walls.
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Prisoners do data entry for Chevron, make telephone reservations for TWA, raise hogs,
shovel manure, make circuit boards, limousines, water beds, and lingerie for Victoria’s
Secret — all at a fraction of the cost of free labour.
Some of the companies that use prison labor are IBM, Motorola, Compaq, Texas Instruments,
Honeywell, Microsoft, and Boeing. But it is not only the hi-tech industries that reap the profits of prison labor. Nordstrom department stores sell jeans that are marketed as “Prison Blues,” as well as t-shirts and jackets made in Oregon prisons. The advertising slogan for these clothes is “made on the inside to be worn on the outside.” Maryland prisoners inspect glass bottles and jars used by Revlon and Pierre Cardin, and schools throughout the world buy graduation caps and gowns made by South Carolina prisoners.
The Summit of the Americas, to be held in Cartagena, Colombia is being seen by foreign policy experts as a watershed moment in the redrafting of global drugs policy in favour of a more nuanced and liberalised approach.
Otto Pérez Molina, the president of Guatemala, who as former head of his country's military intelligence service experienced the power of drug cartels at close hand, is pushing his fellow Latin American leaders to use the summit to endorse a new regional security plan that would see an end to prohibition. In the Observer, Pérez Molina writes: "The prohibition paradigm that inspires mainstream global drug policy today is based on a false premise: that global drug markets can be eradicated."
Mexico's president, Felipe Calderón, has called for a national debate on the issue. Last year Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia's president, told the Observer that if legalising drugs curtailed the power of organised criminal gangs who had thrived during prohibition, "and the world thinks that's the solution, I will welcome it".
Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former president of Brazil and chairman of the global commission on drug policy, has said it is time for "an open debate on more humane and efficient drug policies", a view shared by George Shultz, the former US secretary of state, and former president Jimmy Carter.
Do We Need A Fresh Perspective?
Decriminalisation of drug possession does not lead to increase in drug use, a new report has found. Now new research from Release, a UK drug policy organisation, illustrates how countries that have already taken the brave step of changing their drugs policies are not experiencing adverse effects.
The study (A Quiet Revolution: Drug Decriminalisation Policies in Practice across the Globe) reviews the evidence in 21 countries that have adopted some form of decriminalisation, from the Netherlands to Estonia, Australia to Mexico, Uruguay to Portugal.
Drug prohibition in various forms has been in place for over 100 years now, its historical roots traceable back to the temperance movement. This punitive criminal justice-led approach, premised on the understandable but simplistic concept that drugs are a threat, therefore we must fight them, and thence that drugs are bad, therefore we must prohibit them, was enshrined as global policy under the UN single convention on drugs 1961.
For a policy that has the very specific aim of creating a ‘drug-free’ society, criminalising drug production, supply and possession has been a remarkable failure on its own terms. Consistently under the legislation, use and related harms have risen, drugs have become cheaper and more available, and illicit production has easily met the growing demand.
Worse still, this policy approach, (one that we must remember is fantastically and increasingly expensive), has delivered a series of catastrophic consequences associated with the sprawling international illicit trade controlled by violent criminal entrepreneurs, now turning over in the region of $300 billion each year.
On the global front this prohibition-fuelled crime has placed an intolerable burden on all tiers of the world criminal justice system. The prisons crisis - with over half of prisoners inside for drug, or drug-related offending – being the most high profile, but the same stress being carried through the police, courts and probation systems.
The vast sums generated by the illicit trade, particularly in producer and transit countries, are frequently used to corrupt state institutions, police, judiciary, and politics, as well as providing a ready source of funding for armed insurgency (fuelling civil war in Colombia for example) and terrorism (most obviously the Taliban) that can in turn become a very real threat for developing countries in Africa.
A historical stumbling block in the debate has been the fact that no clear vision of a post prohibition world has been available. The question ‘how would it work?’ has thus been met with a lack of clarity, with myths and misrepresentations filling the void. Transform Drug Policy Foundation argues the choice is clear; drug markets can remain in the hands of organised criminals and street dealers or they can be controlled and regulated by the government.
After the War on Drugs considers the menu of options for controls over products (dosage, preparation, price and packaging), vendors (licensing, vetting and training requirements), outlets (location, outlet density, appearance), who has access (age controls, licensed buyers) and where and when drugs can be consumed. It then rationally explores options for different drugs and different using populations to suggest the regulatory models that will deliver the best outcomes on key health and well being indicators. Lessons are drawn from successes and failings with alcohol and tobacco prohibition, as well as controls over pharmaceutical drugs and other risky products and activities that are regulated by government.
Moves toward legal regulation of drug markets would naturally be phased in cautiously over a number of years, with close evaluation and monitoring of impacts and any unintended consequences. A flexible range of regulatory tools would also be applied differentially across the spectrum of products, with the more restrictive controls deployed for more risky drugs or drug preparations, and, less restrictive controls for lower risk products. If implemented intelligently such an approach holds the potential to not only reduce harms associated with patterns of consumption as they currently exist but, in the longer term to encourage patterns of use to move towards safer products, safer behaviours, and safer using environments – the precise opposite of what has happened under prohibition.
Has Drug War Driven Mass Incarceration?
The United States leads the world in the rate of incarcerating its own citizens with 2.2 million people currently in the nation's prisons or jails -- a 500% increase over the past thirty years.. The U.S. locks up more of her own people than any other country on earth, including China which has four times our population, or in human history.
Over the past 23 years, California constructed roughly one new prison per year, at a cost
of $100 million each, while it built only one new public college during the same period.
Nationwide, spending on prisons has risen six times faster than spending on higher education.
At the end of 2007, more than 7 million Americans were behind bars, on probation, or on
parole, many whose initial violation of the drug laws spiralled into a life of crime. This is a level of mass incarceration unprecedented in history. And despite the fact that surveys show that whites are just as likely to use illegal drugs as blacks, one out of every 14 black men was behind bars in 2006, compared to one in 106 white men.
For private business, 'prison labour is like a pot of gold. No strikes. No union organizing. No health benefits, unemployment insurance, or workers’ compensation to pay. No language barriers, as in foreign countries. New leviathan prisons are being built on thousands of acres of factories inside the walls.
Prisoners do data entry for Chevron, make telephone reservations for TWA, raise hogs,
shovel manure, make circuit boards, limousines, water beds, and lingerie for Victoria’s
Secret — all at a fraction of the cost of free labour.
Some of the companies that use prison labor are IBM, Motorola, Compaq, Texas Instruments,
Honeywell, Microsoft, and Boeing. But it is not only the hi-tech industries that reap the profits of prison labor. Nordstrom department stores sell jeans that are marketed as “Prison Blues,” as well as t-shirts and jackets made in Oregon prisons. The advertising slogan for these clothes is “made on the inside to be worn on the outside.” Maryland prisoners inspect glass bottles and jars used by Revlon and Pierre Cardin, and schools throughout the world buy graduation caps and gowns made by South Carolina prisoners.