{"id":47363,"date":"2014-09-22T12:00:40","date_gmt":"2014-09-22T11:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=47363"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:30:34","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:30:34","slug":"global-commission-urges-decriminalisation-of-drug-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/09\/global-commission-urges-decriminalisation-of-drug-use\/","title":{"rendered":"Global Commission Urges Decriminalisation of Drug Use"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Coca<\/a>

Coca field in an Amazon jungle village. Credit: Courtesy of Central Ash\u00e1ninka del R\u00edo Ene\/IPS<\/p><\/div>\n

A top-level international panel called Tuesday [9 Sep 2014] for a major shift in global drug-control policies from prohibition to decriminalisation and regulation.<\/p>\n

In a 43-page report<\/a>, the Global Commission on Drug Policy denounced what has been known for more than four decades as the \u201cwar against drugs\u201d as a failure and argued that new approaches prioritising human rights and health were urgently needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this report, we set out a broad roadmap for getting drugs under control,\u201d wrote former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who chairs the Commission. \u201cWe recognize that past approaches premised on a punitive law enforcement paradigm have failed, emphatically so.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have resulted in more violence, larger prison populations, and the erosion of governance around the world. \u2026The Global Commission on Drug Policy instead advocates for an approach to drug policy that puts public health, community safety, human rights, and development at the center,\u201d according to Cardoso.<\/p>\n

Such an approach would, among other changes, encourage governments to regulate markets in currently illicit drugs, beginning with marijuana, coca leaf, and certain psycho-active drugs; seek alternatives to prison for low-level, non-violent participants in the drug trade; and ensure equitable access to essential medicines, especially opiate-based pain medications, according to the report, \u201cTaking Control: Pathways to Drug Policies That Work.\u201d It called for a pragmatic approach that would include experimentation and trial and error.<\/p>\n

The report\u2019s recommendations, which come as governments prepare for the 2016 U.N. General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on Drugs, drew a mixed response from the U.S. government which has largely driven international drug policy since former President Richard Nixon first declared a \u201cwar on drugs\u201d in 1971.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe agree that we should use science-based approaches, rely on alternatives to incarceration for non-violent drug offenders, and ensure access to pain medications,\u201d said Cameron Hardesty of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026However, we disagree that legalisation of drugs will make people healthier and communities safer. Our experience with the tobacco and alcohol industries show that commercialization efforts rely upon increasing, not decreasing use, which in turn increases the harm associated with the use of tobacco and alcohol. In fact, if we take Big Tobacco as prologue, we can predict that that approach is likely to cause an entirely new set of problems,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, independent analysts said the Commission\u2019s recommendations are likely to substantially advance the growing debate over drug policy if, for no other reason, than its membership is not easily dismissed.<\/p>\n

In addition to Cardoso, its 21 members include former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria, former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, and former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, as well as former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz and former Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Paul Volcker.<\/p>\n

The report was released at a press conference that featured several of the Commission\u2019s members in New York City Tuesday morning.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a very important report that will provoke more serious discussion and debate,\u201d Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, an influential Washington-based inter-hemispheric think tank, told IPS. \u201cThere have already been significant changes at the state level [in the U.S.] and in some countries in Latin America, and this will push things along.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2011, the Commission published its first report in which it also condemned the drug war as a failure and made a series of recommendations designed to \u201cbreak the taboo\u201d against considering legalisation and regulation of some drugs as alternatives.<\/p>\n

Having broken the taboo, the Commission offered political cover for some Latin American leaders, including former Mexican President Felipe Calderon, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina, and Uruguayan President Jose Mujica (whose country last December became the world\u2019s first to regulate the legal production, distribution, and sale of marijuana), to endorse far-reaching reform.<\/p>\n

In mid-2013, the Organisation of American States (OAS) also released a report commissioned by the region\u2019s reads of states that included legalisation as a policy alternative and that strongly favoured the view that drugs should be seen increasingly as a public health, rather than a security issue.<\/p>\n

Among other measures, it proposed legalising and regulating marijuana production, distribution and sales \u2013 a recommendation that has since been adopted by voters in the U.S. states of Colorado and Washington. Nearly half of all U.S. states have legalised cannabis for medical purposes, and 17 states have decriminalised personal possession.<\/p>\n

Virtually all observers agree that the drug war has been a signal failure. As prices drop for drugs that are have become purer with each passing year, governments have been spending an estimated 100 billion dollars annually on enforcement measures. The U.N. has estimated the value of global illicit drug trade at over 350 billion dollars.<\/p>\n

The Commission offered a number of general recommendations in its report, beginning with a call for a \u201cfundamental re-orientation of policy priorities\u201d that would replace traditional goals and measures \u2014 such as amounts of drugs seized, the number of people arrested, prosecuted, and convicted for drug law violations \u2013 with \u201cfar more important\u201d benchmarks, such as reducing drug-related harms, such as fatal overdoses, HIV infections, crime, violence, human rights abuses, and the power of criminal organisations that profit from the drug trade.<\/p>\n

In addition to calling for equitable access to essential medicines, regulating markets for some drugs, and relying on alternatives to incarcerating non-violent, low-level participants in illicit drug markets, such as farmers and carriers, the report called for governments to be \u201cfar more strategic\u201d in efforts to reduce the power of criminal organisations.<\/p>\n

It noted that militarised \u201ccrackdowns\u201d may actually increase criminal violence and public insecurity without actually deterring drug production, trafficking or consumption.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026(I)n the longer term, drug markets should be responsibly regulated by government authorities. Without legal regulation, control and enforcement, the drug trade will remain in the hands of organised criminals. Ultimately this is a choice between control in the hands of governments or gangsters; there is no third option in which drug markets can be made to disappear,\u201d according to the report.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea behind this report and its timing is to ensure that there can be no repeat of the empty slogans, such as \u201ca drug-free world, we can do it,\u201d which was the theme of the UNGASS on Drugs in 1998, said John Walsh, a drug-policy expert at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).<\/p>\n

\u201cTo avoid a repeat, the idea is to ensure that a genuine debate will be unavoidable. That doesn\u2019t mean that the world\u2019s countries will rally around this new paradigm of legal regulation instead of prohibition, but the hope is that these issues cannot be ignored.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no question now that the genie of reform has escaped the prohibitionist bottle,\u201d said Ethan Nadelmann, the veteran director of the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA). \u201cThe former presidents and other Commission members pull no punches in insisting that national and global drug control policies reject the failed prohibitionist policies of the 20th<\/sup> century in favour of new policies grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

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