Less than eight per cent of drug users worldwide have access to a clean syringe programme. Credit: Fahim Siddiqi/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 26 2015 (IPS)

As the call for the decriminalisation of drugs steadily picks up steam worldwide, a new study by a British charity concludes there has been no significant reduction in the global use of illicit drugs since the creation of three key U.N. anti-drug conventions, the first of which came into force over half a century ago.

“Illicit drugs are now purer, cheaper, and more widely used than ever,” says the report, titled Casualties of War: How the War on Drugs is Harming the World’s Poorest, released Thursday by the London-based Health Poverty Action."This approach hasn’t reduced drug use or managed to control the illicit drug trade. Instead, it keeps drugs profitable and cartels powerful." -- Catherine Martin of Health Poverty Action

The study also cites an opinion poll that shows more than eight in 10 Britons believe the war on drugs cannot be won. And over half favour legalising or decriminalising at least some illicit drugs.

The international treaties to curb drug trafficking include the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances and the 1988 United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.

But over the last few decades, several countries have either decriminalised drugs, either fully or partially, or adopted liberal drug laws, including the use of marijuana for medical reasons.

These countries include the Netherlands, Portugal, Czech Republic, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Ecuador, Honduras and Mexico, among others.

According to the report, the governments of Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala seek open, evidence-based discussion on U.N. drugs policy reform.

And “both the World Health Organisation (WHO) and UNAIDS not only share this view, but have called for the decriminalisation of drugs use.”

Asked if the United Nations was doing enough in the battle against drugs, Catherine Martin, policy officer at Health Poverty Action, told IPS, “The problem is that the U.N. is doing too much of the wrong things, and not enough of the right things.”

She pointed out that an estimated 100 billion dollars worldwide is poured into drug law enforcement every year, driven by U.N. conventions on drug control.

“However, this approach hasn’t reduced drug use or managed to control the illicit drug trade. Instead, it keeps drugs profitable and cartels powerful (fuelling corruption); spurs violent conflict and human rights violations; and disproportionately punishes small-scale drug producers and people who use drugs,” she added.

The report says UK development organisations have largely remained silent, while calls for drugs reform come from Southern counterparts, British tycoon Sir Richard Branson, current and former presidents, Nobel prizewinning economists and ex-U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan.

The charity urges the UK development sector to demand pro-poor moves as nations prepare for the U.N. general assembly’s special session on drugs next year.

Many non-governmental organisations (NGOs), including British groups, have no lead contact or set process for participating in the session, says the report.

The report claims many small-scale farmers grow and trade drugs in developing countries as their only income source.

And punitive drug policies penalise farmers who do not have access to the land, sufficient resources and infrastructure that they would need to make a sustainable living from other crops.

Alternative crops or development programmes often fail farmers, because they are led by security concerns and ignore poor communities’ needs, the report notes.

The charity argues the militarisation of the war on drugs has triggered and been used to justify murder, mass imprisonment and systematic human rights violations.

The report stresses that criminalising drugs does not reduce use, but spreads disease, deters people from seeking medical treatment and leads to policies that exclude millions of people from vital pain relief.

Less than eight per cent of drug users have access to a clean needle programme, or opioid substitution therapy, and under four per cent of those living with HIV have access to HIV treatment.

In West Africa, people with conditions linked to cancer and AIDS face severe restrictions in access to pain relief drugs, amid feared diversion to illicit markets, according to the study.

Low and middle-income countries have 90 per cent of AIDS patients around the globe and half of the world’s people with cancer, but use only six per cent of morphine given for pain management.

Health Poverty Action states the war on drugs criminalises the poor, and women are worst hit, through disproportionate imprisonment and the loss of livelihoods.

Drug crop eradication devastates the environment and forces producers underground, often to areas with fragile ecosystems.

Asked what the U.N.’s focus should be, Martin told IPS the world body should focus on evidence-based, pro-poor policies that treat illicit drugs as a health issue, not a security matter.

These policies must protect human rights and end the harm that current policies do to the poor and marginalised, she said.

“Drug policy reform should support and fund harm reduction measures, and ensure access to essential medicines for the five billion people worldwide who live in countries where overly strict drug laws limit access to crucial pain medications,” Martin said.

Meanwhile, the report says that drug policy, like climate change or gender, is a cross-cutting issue that affects most aspects of development work: poverty, human rights, health, democracy, the environment.

And current drug policies undermine economic growth and make development work less effective, the report adds.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Coca field in an Amazon jungle village. Credit: Courtesy of Central Asháninka del Río Ene/IPS

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Sep 10 2014 (IPS)

A top-level international panel called Tuesday for a major shift in global drug-control policies from prohibition to decriminalisation and regulation.

In a 43-page report, the Global Commission on Drug Policy denounced what has been known for more than four decades as the “war against drugs” as a failure and argued that new approaches prioritising human rights and health were urgently needed.“There’s no question now that the genie of reform has escaped the prohibitionist bottle.” -- Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance

“In this report, we set out a broad roadmap for getting drugs under control,” wrote former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who chairs the Commission. “We recognize that past approaches premised on a punitive law enforcement paradigm have failed, emphatically so.

“They have resulted in more violence, larger prison populations, and the erosion of governance around the world. …The 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,” according to Cardoso.

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, “Taking Control: Pathways to Drug Policies That Work.” It called for a pragmatic approach that would include experimentation and trial and error.

The report’s 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 “war on drugs” in 1971.

“We agree that we should use science-based approaches, rely on alternatives to incarceration for non-violent drug offenders, and ensure access to pain medications,” said Cameron Hardesty of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

“…However, 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,” she said.

Nonetheless, independent analysts said the Commission’s recommendations are likely to substantially advance the growing debate over drug policy if, for no other reason, than its membership is not easily dismissed.

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.

The report was released at a press conference that featured several of the Commission’s members in New York City Tuesday morning.

“This is a very important report that will provoke more serious discussion and debate,” Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, an influential Washington-based inter-hemispheric think tank, told IPS. “There 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.”

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 “break the taboo” against considering legalisation and regulation of some drugs as alternatives.

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’s first to regulate the legal production, distribution, and sale of marijuana), to endorse far-reaching reform.

In mid-2013, the Organisation of American States (OAS) also released a report commissioned by the region’s 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.

Among other measures, it proposed legalising and regulating marijuana production, distribution and sales – 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.

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.

The Commission offered a number of general recommendations in its report, beginning with a call for a “fundamental re-orientation of policy priorities” that would replace traditional goals and measures — such as amounts of drugs seized, the number of people arrested, prosecuted, and convicted for drug law violations – with “far more important” 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.

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 “far more strategic” in efforts to reduce the power of criminal organisations.

It noted that militarised “crackdowns” may actually increase criminal violence and public insecurity without actually deterring drug production, trafficking or consumption.

“…(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,” according to the report.

“The idea behind this report and its timing is to ensure that there can be no repeat of the empty slogans, such as “a drug-free world, we can do it,” 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).

“To avoid a repeat, the idea is to ensure that a genuine debate will be unavoidable. That doesn’t mean that the world’s countries will rally around this new paradigm of legal regulation instead of prohibition, but the hope is that these issues cannot be ignored.”

“There’s no question now that the genie of reform has escaped the prohibitionist bottle,” said Ethan Nadelmann, the veteran director of the Drug Policy Alliance (DPA). “The 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 20^th century in favour of new policies grounded in science, compassion, health and human rights.”

Jim Lobe’s blog on U.S. foreign policy can be read at Lobelog.com. He can be contacted at ipsnoram@ips.org

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Caden Clark has Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, a catastrophic form of epilepsy that causes him to have seizures from 10 to 20 times a day. Courtesy of the Clark Family.

By Matthew Charles Cardinale
SPOKANE, Washington, Mar 14 2014 (IPS)

Beth Collins recently picked up and moved from Virginia to Colorado, but it wasn’t for the typical reasons: new job, better schools, nicer weather. Collins’ 14-year-old daughter, Jennifer, has intractable epilepsy. Medical cannibis eases her frequent seizures. But it’s illegal in their home state.

“We got here the first week in December [2013]. She has been on THCA [a strain of cannabis],” Collins told IPS. “She takes it three times a day. We are seeing a 70 to 90 percent decrease in seizures. She’s been on the medication now for close to two months.”"It's just a huge gift and a trauma. Coming here and sort of ripping away, it was horrible and it was so hard." -- Kim Clark

Prior to the THCA, Jennifer tried a variety of drugs and diets, but they all had bad side effects, her mother says.

“She’s feeling better but she misses her dad, she misses her sister, she misses her friends. When you have a sick kid, we have a network of people it takes a long time to [build]. You have to start over again finding that support system when you move,” she said.

“Just she and I came. We want to make sure it works before we sell the house,” Collins said, adding that her family will probably be forced to permanently relocate to Colorado.

“I can’t leave with the medicine – we’ll be criminals if we do. They have pretty harsh fines [in Virginia]. I’d rather not be a criminal – it’s not how I want my daughter to see things, that if things don’t go your way, you’d commit a crime. I’d rather have her see us fighting,” Collins said, crying. “It’s emotional, it’s a hard thing. My family’s split.”

The Collins family is just one of hundreds that have migrated to the states of Colorado and Washington to access medical cannabis, or marijuana, to treat their children or other relatives, since voters in those states legalised the drug in the November 2012 elections.

An estimated 36,284 people moved to Colorado in 2013, almost 8,000 more than the year before, according to the Daily Beast. A good part of this increase is believed to be due to families migrating for medical cannabis, legal recreational cannabis, and cannabis-related business opportunities.

Caden and his mother, Kim Clark. The 10-year-old has been through numerous surgeries, including a partial lobotomy, which failed to stop his seizures. Courtesy of the Clark Family.

At least 200 families moved after cannibis oil was featured in a documentary called “Weed” by Dr. Sanjay Gupta of the cable television news station CNN.

One is the Clarks, whose 10-year-old son Caden has Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, a catastrophic form of epilepsy that causes him to have seizures from 10 to 20 times a day.

“He’s never had a seizure-free day in his life, ever,” said Caden’s mother, Kim Clark.

Kim moved with Caden from Georgia to Colorado after trying everything the legal medical community had to offer: prescription medications with severe side effects; a starvation diet; severing the brain hemispheres; even a partial lobotomy.

“We are not anti-science people. We are very pro-science people. Our child has had a lobotomy per science. It just didn’t work for him,” she told IPS.

The Clarks are on a waiting list for cannabis oil and said they had just received a phone call that their medicine might be ready as early as next week.

“We saw the special that Sanjay Gupta did on CNN about Charlotte Figi [a child whose epilepsy was cured by cannabis oil]. I took it to my husband, who is a narcotics officer in Atlanta, Georgia,” Clark said. “He’s the guardian of the drug vault, so there’s a bit of a conflict of interest there.

“When I approached him, my husband is highly anti-drug. He was like ‘not happening, anywhere’. I had to bring the science hard and heavy, with of course our son dying in front of us. It had to be really convincing,” she recalled. “We packed up everything. It’s very hard.”

Clark’s husband and other son stayed in Georgia. “We’re living in separate states. It’s what we have to do. Our older son actually said it. He looked at us, and he said, how can we not do it if we love him [Caden]? That became our mantra, our resounding call to Colorado,” Clark said.

Caden (right) and his brother, Jackson, who stayed in Georgia with their father. HB 885 is a bill currently pending in the state that would allow for medical cannabis to be administered to patients like Caden suffering from seizure disorders. Courtesy of the Clark Family.

An eighth-generation Georgian, she is bitter that her home state has not yet legalised medical cannabis and considers her and Caden to be “refugees”.

“My grandma taught me to grow vegetables and love God. I knew what county I’d raise my children in when I was 10 years old,” she said. “Do I feel disenfranchised and unwelcome [in Georgia]? Yes, you bet your ass I do,” she said.

“This is such a huge emotional screw. It’s a trauma. It’s just a huge gift and a trauma. Coming here and sort of ripping away, it was horrible and it was so hard,” Clark said.

Clark said eventually her family will run out of savings and will have to sell their house in Georgia in order to support a split household that is half living in Colorado.

Helping with the huge expenses involved in uprooting a family from one state to another are grassroots organisations like the Undergreen Railroad (a twist on the historic “Underground Railroad,” which during the 1800s helped slaves escape the U.S. South).

Another charity, Ride to Give, has raised 12,000 dollars for one family, the Coxes, who relocated from Georgia to Colorado to access medical cannabis for an ailing child, Haleigh, who also suffers from Lennox-Gastaut.

Nicole Mattison tells a similar story. “We moved in January from Tennessee to Colorado for our two-year-old daughter,” she told IPS.

“It’s been a bit of an undertaking, but so far it’s been well worth it,” she said. “Our daughter is diagnosed with intractable infantile spasms.”

Like other parents, Mattison had tried everything, including the starvation diet, which had the side effect of causing kidney failure in her daughter, Millie.

Mattison has been giving Millie THCA, with amazing results. “She’s been on it for six weeks now. We’ve seen a 75 to 90 percent decrease. She hasn’t had any infantile spasms.”

Mattison’s whole family made the move. “My husband owned a landscape company in Tennessee. We sold that to help fund the move. Currently, neither one of us have a job. It’s been really tough. We have two other children,” she said. “We left our church, our established support group.”

But Mattison does not regret her decision. “I would take the hardships any day for the possibility that Millie could one day have an improved quality of life.”