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

A top level United Nations conference on drugs has highlighted growing divisions between member states on how to move forward in dealing with global drug problems as calls grow for major reforms in approaches to international drug policy.

The High-Level Review at the latest annual session of the U.N. Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) – the chief policymaking body for international drug control – in Vienna assessed last week how the organisation is meeting goals for dealing with the global drug problem ahead of the U.N. General Assembly Special Session on Drugs in 2016."We have been taking a certain approach for 50 years and it hasn’t worked. It’s time to experiment with alternatives.”-- Ann Fordham, executive director of NGO, International Drug Policy Consortium

But it ended with a joint ministerial statement that was only agreed at the very last minute after months of fractious debate, with states failing to agree on a common approach to key points, and proposed paragraphs on issues such as the death penalty absent from the final text.

This, say civil society groups promoting global drug policy debate, underlines a growing split in attitudes towards drugs in U.N. member states between those pushing for liberal reforms and those continuing to follow conservative and repressive approaches which evidence is increasingly showing is failing.

Ann Fordham, executive director of the International Drug Policy Consortium NGO, told IPS at the conference: “The joint ministerial statement always comes out, even if individual member states disagree over some fundamental things. But this year things were much harder, it was much more difficult for countries to agree, and for a while it looked like the unthinkable might happen and they wouldn’t agree and there would be no statement.

“But while there was one in the end, and although it was full of watered-down language, it shows there are growing fractures between states on how to approach drug problems and just how big those differences are.”

A number of U.N. member states have recently either undertaken or are planning fundamental reforms to their drugs policies.

In December last year Uruguay became the first country to legalise commercial sales of marijuana and regulate its production. Commercial sales of marijuana began in the U.S. state Colorado in January while sales of marijuana will begin in Washington state in June.

These developments came just months after Latin American leaders used U.N. platforms to deride the body’s approach to drugs. The president of Guatemala told the U.N. General Assembly that the regulated supply of illicit drugs should be considered while his Colombian counterpart told the same body that the U.N.’s conventions “gave birth to the war on drugs …. that war has not been won.”

These reforms have been praised by many third sector organisations working with drug users and pushing for debate on drug policy. They say reform is desperately needed and a traditional punitive criminal approach to dealing with global drug problems has been shown to have failed.

But the U.N. has slammed drug legalisation. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) executive director Yury Fedotov told journalists just days before the start of the Vienna Conference that Uruguay’s decision to legalise cannabis sales was “not a solution to dealing with world drug problems.”

The U.N.’s International Narcotics Control Board has labelled the country’s government “pirates” for going against the U.N.’s conventions on drugs.

The apparent distance between U.N. drugs policy bodies’ thinking on drugs and that of individual member states was further evidenced at the conference itself.

Individual country representatives – particularly those from Latin America which has seen decades of horrific violence connected with the drugs trade – spoke vociferously of the need to move away from criminalisation of drug use to a health-based approach to drugs problems.

Colombian minister of justice Gomez Mendez told delegates: “…people have been sacrificed in our actions to tackle the drug problem….we call for more effective ways to achieve the objectives stated in international agreements.”

Meanwhile, representatives of the Ecuadorian government spoke of “the failure of present drug policies” and said “many voices are calling for a change in paradigm in the understanding and approach to the drug phenomenon.”

This was backed up by civil society representatives who spoke in special sessions and meetings during the conference.

Senior U.N. officials too emphasised the importance of preventive measures, rather than punitive criminal justice legislation, in helping deal with problems caused by drugs.

Michel Kazatchkine, U.N. Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, said at the conference that “ciminalisation of drug use, restrictive drug policies and aggressive law enforcement practices are key drivers” of serious public health threats such as of HIV and hepatitis C epidemics among people who inject drugs.”

However, despite these warnings, the joint ministerial statement was released without the use of the term ‘harm reduction’ as such language is still deemed unacceptable by countries like Russia which stringently enforce severely punitive anti-drug policies.

This, argued civil society groups at the conference, shows that the U.N.’s drug policy bodies have abrogated their responsibility as leaders in dealing with the global drug problem, focusing on punitive measures rather than a health-based approach.

Joanne Ceste, deputy director of the Open Society Global Drug Policy Programme told IPS: “For a long time, UNODC has abdicated its responsibility as the global leader for HIV prevention, treatment and care among drug users because it has had such a hard time getting serious about real advocacy on decriminalisation of minor offences.”

However, there is hope that the current divisions between member states’ views on drug policy could end up providing the impetus for important debate ahead of the U.N. General Assembly special session on drugs in 2016.

Fordham told IPS: “What was interesting about watching negotiations on the joint ministerial statement is that usually when they can’t agree, member states just say, ‘OK, let’s just reaffirm what we said last time’, which was in 2009.

“But this time, even though the eventual statement is much weaker than we would have liked, there were many states that said, ‘no we can’t go back to that. Things have changed, we need to come to new agreements on drugs policy’.”

She added: “There are some governments now, ahead of 2016, that are really pushing for global drugs policy to be debated. We have been taking a certain approach for 50 years and it hasn’t worked. It’s time to experiment with alternatives.”

Intravenous drug users are the last in line to get support from Pakistan's government-run AIDS programme. Credit: Fahim Siddiqi/IPS

By Samuel Oakford
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 24 2014 (IPS)

In the exclusive, rarified air of Davos, Thursday’s attendees at the World Economic Forum shared in a whiff of decriminalisation at a panel on drug policy in the Swiss alpine city that included former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, Texas Governor Rick Perry and the head of Human Rights Watch, Ken Roth.

“I believe that drugs have destroyed many people, but wrong governmental policies have destroyed many more,” said Annan.  “When we realised [alcohol] prohibition wasn’t working, we had the courage to change it.”"How can I tell a farmer with half a hectare growing marijuana he will go to jail if in the [U.S.] states of Washington and Colorado it's legal?" -- Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos

Santos echoed a common theme, complaining of half-baked policies and lip service paid to drug reforms. Colombia, for many years Washington’s staunchest ally in the so-called war on drugs, has recently made an about-face, joining much of Latin America in questioning the increasingly violent consequences of prohibition.

Perry served as a foil for the other three panelists, though he agreed that U.S. states had the right to decide on policies independently from the federal government.

“I am not for legalisation of drugs,” Perry said. “We certainly would never jump out in front of a parade because that’s where the public seems to be going.”

“I’ve long wondered what it would take to persuade the Davos organisers to put drug policy on the main stage of the forum,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, in a statement. “Drug policy reform as a global political movement has come of age.”

Davos comes a month after a leaked internal U.N. document showcased disagreement among member states over the future course of global drug policy. Shortly after, Uruguay became the first country to legalise possession of marijuana, flouting existing U.N. conventions.

The response from the U.N.’s quasi-judicial International Narcotics Control Board was tepid and left the door ajar for more countries to challenge a faltering consensus on interdiction.

“I don’t see any evidence of any political will at the U.N. to penalise states that are exploring these options,” said Sean Dunagan, a former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent in Guatemala and current member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

The U.S., which largely wrote the U.N. conventions that codified the war on drugs, has emerged Janus-faced on the world stage, with a president who admittedly inhaled, recent legalisation in two U.S. states – Colorado and Washington – and a populace increasingly unbothered by drug use among their friends and neighbours.

“How can I tell a farmer with half a hectare growing marijuana he will go to jail if in the states of Washington and Colorado it’s legal?” said Santos.

Despite increasingly viral coverage of the few that flout interdiction – next week’s Superbowl pits teams from Washington and Colorado and has been dubbed the “Marijuana Bowl” – nearly all countries still schedule and criminalise drugs based on guidelines codified in the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotics and the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances.

“I see the conventions as lagging indicators. I don’t think they will be changed any time soon,” Dunagan told IPS.

In the developing world, Nadelmann says countries tend to pull their punches and can at times feel obliged to follow the path of retrograde policies, even as the countries which authored them distance themselves from those laws.

“Policy innovation in this area doesn’t come easily or naturally in Africa,” Nadelmann told IPS. “I think the old moralistic notions have yet to really be challenged.”

But Nadelmann says Annan’s evolution on the issue is vital for the region and carries significant symbolic weight. In 1998, Annan oversaw a special session of the General Assembly that focused exclusively on eradication, much to the chagrin of activists. But by 2011, Annan had joined other members of the Global Commission on Drug Policy in encouraging “experimentation with models of legal regulation of drugs.”

“What’s most significant in many ways is the fact that Kofi Annan was willing to identify so publicly and boldly with the cause of drug policy reform. He’s been on the global commission since its inception, but it’s only in the last year that he’s begun to step out of it more,” said Nadelmann. “In recent months he’s decided to make a deeper commitment on the issue.”

In May, the Organisation of American States released a report that raised the prospect – long advocated by harm reduction activists – of decriminalisation, elevating the easing of interdiction policies that since the 1970s were accepted as gospel by countries when confronting drug use.

Though Colombia had successfully reined in its once seemingly-untouchable cartels, Santos said increased production elsewhere, particularly in Central America, was an example of the “balloon” effect, where eradication only displaces, rather than eliminates production and does nothing to reduce demand.

While the U.S. relaxes federal enforcement domestically, militarisation continues in Central America, where DEA agents silently accompany local forces on often violent missions in rural areas.

Perry’s Socratic responses seemed to at times befuddle other panelists, particularly when he attempted to draw links to the fight against Al Qaeda. “How long have we been in the War on Terror?” asked the governor to the bemusement of the crowd.

Dunagan said it was important that reform not forget those already incarcerated. In the U.S., half a million prisoners are currently serving terms for drug offences.

“There are declines in prosecutions in Colorado and Washington but people aren’t being led out of jail in those states,” said Dunagan.

“There’s certainly a willingness for world leaders to challenge that orthodoxy that is U.S.-driven, and is enforced by the U.S. via the U.N. The trend is clear but I don’t know if we are at a critical mass.”

A group of drug users in a Dhaka suburb. Credit: Shafiqul Alam Kiron, Map/IPS

By Samuel Oakford
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 7 2013 (IPS)

An internal United Nations draft document leaked last weekend has offered outsiders a rare look at longstanding disagreements between member states over the course of U.N. drug policy.

The document, first publicised by the Guardian and obtained by IPS, contains over 100 specific policy recommendations and proposals from member states, many at odds with the status quo on illicit drug eradication and prohibition.“Countries feel real pain. But they are being told they should strengthen interdiction.” -- Guatemala's U.N. Ambassador Gert Rosenthal

It confirms a widespread belief that discontent is growing among national governments and in the corridors of New York and Vienna, where the leak originated from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

In a candid proposal, Norway calls for “questions relating to decriminalization and a critical assessment of the approach represented by the so-called War on Drugs.”

“It’s not particularly news to me,” said Kasia Malinowska-Sempruch, director of the Open Society Global Drug Policy Programme. “What’s news is that we are talking about it.

“I think there is this sort of façade put up by the U.N. as a whole, which is ‘we are one big happy family’, but that hasn’t been true for years,” she told IPS.

As early as 1993, Mexico told the U.N. General Assembly in a letter that because “consumption is the driving force that generates drug production and trafficking, the reduction in demand becomes the radical – albeit long-term– solution of the problem.”

But despite recent moves in Latin America and Europe towards policies of harm reduction, U.N. reforms remain mired in mid-20^th-century dogmas and perennial horse-trading between member states.

As prices drop for drugs that are purer by the year, governments continue to spend 100 billion dollars annually on enforcement measures. The U.N. estimates the illicit drug trade has grown to over 350 billion dollars per year. And by 2050, the number of illicit drug users is set to rise by 25 percent.

In the document, Switzerland notes “with concern that repressive drug law enforcement practices can force drug users away from public health services and into hidden environments where the risk of overdose, infection with hepatitis C, HIV and other blood-borne diseases become markedly elevated.”

Switzerland elsewhere voices support for the Organisation of American States (OAS), which this year proposed alternative forums for discussions of international drug policy. The OAS has been outspoken on the damage that drug traffickers – attracted by voracious North American consumption and potentially huge profits – have wrought on large swaths of Latin America.

In September, Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina told the U.N. General Assembly “we have clearly affirmed that the war against drugs has not borne the desired results, and that we cannot continue doing the same waiting for different results.”

Among the recommendations, Ecuador asks that “special efforts are made in order to achieve significant reduction of demand” and that enforcement measures are completed “with full respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity of States, the principle of non-interference in the internal affairs of states and human rights.”

“Countries feel real pain,” Gert Rosenthal, Guatemala’s U.N. representative, told IPS. “But they are being told they should strengthen interdiction.”

Such documents are whittled down, behind closed doors, into unified policy recommendations. In this case, a consensus statement will be presented at the High-Level Review by the Commission on Narcotic Drugs next March in Vienna. That meeting will set the stage for a Special Session of the U.N. General Assembly in 2016, when member states are expected to outline an updated drug policy for the next decade.

The consensus process, which can give outsized control to already powerful pro-interdiction countries like Russia and the U.S., has come under criticism, says Tom Blickman, a research at the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam.

“If one country is blocking reform, they can be successful,” Blickman told IPS. “Countries are tired – it shouldn’t be this way.”

In negotiations, the EU speaks on behalf of all its members, further homogenising opinion, says Malinowska-Sempruch. “The voice of Portugal and other more progressive countries get drowned out because they are part of a bigger block.”

A spokesperson for UNODC told IPS it had a policy of not commenting on draft documents and would not speak about the consensus process.

Since the heavily U.S.-influenced 1961 Single Convention on Narcotics laid the groundwork for the modern “war on drugs,” countries have struggled to navigate its legal obligations. Much as later conventions led to the normalising of individual drug testing, the agreements in effect required countries to practice virtual total prohibition in order to gain acceptance internationally.

Today, most countries still schedule drugs based on guidelines set in 1961 and in the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances.

Under the 1961 convention, certain plants and their derivatives are considered prima-facie illegal. But under the 1971 convention, which applied to psychoactive and pharmaceutical drugs mostly produced in Western countries, prohibition only follows proof of a drug’s danger. The disparity means that in the eyes of international law, chewers of cocoa leaves in the Andes are considered as aberrant as Oxycontin or methamphetamine abusers in the United States.

“Certain drugs have been demonised and it’s hard to turn the clock back,” said Blickman.

In the U.S., the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 had introduced mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes, assuring a nascent private prison industry with a steady flow of inmates. And a final 1988 U.N. convention required signatories to criminalise the possession of drugs included in the previous conventions, overnight creating a global criminal class of drug users.

In its draft recommendations from the leak, the U.S. reasserts the three conventions “remain the cornerstone of the international drug system.”

How far, how quick?

For countries like Uruguay, where marijuana decriminalisation awaits only a procedural Senate vote, skirting the agreements can be a delicate game of geopolitical chicken.

The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), a quasi-judicial organisation charged with keeping tags on countries’ compliance with the three agreements, threatening the proposed law “would be in contravention of the 1961 Convention on Narcotic Drugs.”

“Looking at Switzerland, or Germany that has heroin injection sites, or Netherlands with coffee shops, or Portugal or Uruguay, it is clear there are countries that think there should be different policies,” said Malinowska-Sempruch.

But while these countries may make headlines – Portugal removed all penalties for drug users in 2000 – smaller states fear offending the likes of the U.S. and Russia, perennial aid sources and holders of Security Council veto power.

Under U.S. law, the Department of State must every year publish a report that includes evaluating whether foreign aid recipients meet the “goals and objectives” of the 1988 agreement.

“Not that many care about drugs enough to fight so hard and make enemies, because they know they will need those votes for what they really care about,” said Malinowska-Sempruch.

Most UNODC funding comes from member states, which can attach strings to “special-purpose funds.”

This means countries can maintain both private and public stances on drug policy. Switzerland, which began offering heroin-assisted treatment for addicts in 2008, backtracked this week in a press statement that stressed the leaked document was part of a “brainstorming” session and that it “does in no way support any efforts or attempts of changing the three U.N. Drug Conventions as they are today.”

As for 2016, Blickman says it’s important the special session be organised not just by UNODC but also by the U.N.’s human rights and development arms.

But while the session could prove a pivotal turning point, activists also say reform will likely first come out of piecemeal efforts to disentangle the conventions’ cascading legal web. Because the agreements exist in so far as countries enforce them, simply ignoring their mandate could as effective as anything else.

“There is leeway in the convention,” says Blikman. If countries start flouting them, the “INCB couldn’t do anything except maybe not allow certain (pharmaceutical) drugs into the country.”

If that trend continues, an ignored INCB could eventually be relegated to the scholarly study of an historical document.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has directed the Justice Department to institute a slew of major reforms to federal charging policies that have long required automatic prison time for even minor drug offences.

Since 1980, the U.S. federal prison population has grown by almost 800 percent. Credit: Bigstock

“As the so-called ‘war on drugs’ enters its fifth decade, we need to ask whether it, and the approaches that comprise it, have been truly effective – and … to usher in a new approach,” Holder stated in a watershed speech Monday before the American Bar Association.

“And with an outsized, unnecessarily large prison population, we need to ensure that incarceration is used to punish, deter and rehabilitate – not merely to warehouse and forget. Today, a vicious cycle of poverty, criminality and incarceration traps too many Americans and weakens too many communities. And many aspects of our criminal justice system may actually exacerbate these problems, rather than alleviate them.”

Holder announced that “draconian mandatory minimum sentences” would no longer be required for those charged with low-level, nonviolent drug offences with no ties to large-scale gangs.

The “mandatory minimum” policy has been a cornerstone of a decades-long anti-drugs approach that many blame for record levels of incarceration, a massively overstretched prison system, and decimated minority communities. With some 219,000 inmates – a number official researchers earlier this year called “historically unprecedented” – the country currently holds a quarter of the world’s prisoners.

Half of those are locked up on drug-related crimes, with more than 80 percent considered non-violent offenders.

Not only have such numbers created a colossal budgetary drain, but scholars have suggested that this level of incarceration is dangerous for society at large. According to landmark research by the Pew Centre on the States, a research group, higher incarceration rates actually produce more crime by affecting families and vesting people with criminal records.

While the U.S. prison system cost the cash-strapped country some 80 billion dollars in 2010, Holder noted Monday that 40 to 60 percent of inmates are rearrested within three years of their release.

“As a nation, we are coldly efficient in our incarceration efforts,” he stated. “While the entire U.S. population has increased by about a third since 1980, the federal prison population has grown at an astonishing rate – by almost 800 percent. It’s still growing – despite the fact that federal prisons are operating at nearly 40 percent above capacity.”

Tipping point

The decisions announced Monday follow a department-wide review initiated by Holder early this year, aimed at cutting down on inefficiencies, ineffective policies and inequities in the U.S. federal criminal justice system. The reforms will go beyond drug offences, but ultimately aim to bring down the federal prison population.

Holder announced, for instance, that the Justice Department would come up with a new framework for determining when U.S. attorneys should file charges in federal cases – and when they should not. Simultaneously, the agency will mount a series of programmes to focus on alternatives to incarceration.

This spring the department broadened the cases under which inmates could be considered for “compassionate release”, including due to medical problems or age, a move long urged by rights groups.

The department overhaul will also focus on the startling racial disparity in the U.S. penal system. On Monday, Holder said black men are on average receiving prison sentences around 20 percent longer than white men convicted of the same crimes.

A group of U.S. federal attorneys will now be tasked with examining these disparities and offering recommendations on how to mitigate such inequities.

“This is very encouraging – since the beginning of the explosion of the U.S. prison population during the 1970s, I don’t recall any attorney general making such statements in such a high-profile way,” Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project and a longstanding expert on the U.S. criminal justice system, told IPS.

“Of course, most of these suggestions have been widely discussed in recent years. But to have the attorney general of the United States say that we incarcerate too many people, that we’re having a disproportionate impact on minority communities, and that we need to shift our direction – if nothing else, this will have an important symbolic effect in opening up the political dialogue.”

Indeed, the political dynamic around the United States’ over-incarceration and increased reliance on the federal rather than state criminal justice system is today surprisingly united in favour of reform. Holder says the administration is keen to work with Congress to put in place farther-reaching legislation.

Two such bipartisan bills were recently introduced in the U.S. Senate (here and here), both of which share many of Holder’s core aims. Although Congress is currently in a five-week recess, several lawmakers from across the ideological spectrum released statements Monday in support of the attorney general’s speech.

In addition, in mid-June a bipartisan committee in the House of Representatives began combing through the U.S. federal penal code, looking to cull statutes that are seen as overlapping, ineffective or otherwise unnecessary. The effort, the first such undertaking in two decades, is expected to result in recommendations by the end of the year.

Holder is also a key ally of President Barack Obama. Several times during his speech Monday, the attorney general noted that the new reforms have come about in part from extensive discussions with Obama.

“This is clearly the moment for change – it’s long overdue, but we seem to be at a tipping point here,” Mary Price, vice-president and general counsel of Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), an advocacy group, told IPS.

“There are so many voices being raised on this issue right now, by both the usual suspects and some very prominent conservatives. They’ve looked at the experiences of the states, which have been experiencing crushing budget problems and seeing remarkable success in changing their own sentencing requirements.”

The changes will depend in part on shifting greater responsibility for responding to nonviolent crimes onto local communities and state courts, while also vesting greater powers in judges to determine case-specific punishment. Price says state governments have already been acting as “Petri dishes” for the federal government, undertaking innovative experiments in how to wean their criminal justice systems off of incarceration and redirect them towards alternatives.

“It is towards these alternatives that the federal government, too, clearly wants to head,” Price notes. “We can’t just incarcerate our way out of social problems, and in this the states have been leading the way. So we can now expect a new emphasis on developing both alternatives and the mechanisms under which people can be sentenced to them.”

The controversial topic of medical cannabis has been put under a microscope after the internationally known neurosurgeon Dr. Sanjay Gupta came out in support of its use this week.

An ounce of “Green Crack” bought from a dispensary in California. Credit: Coaster420/public domain

In a lengthy opinion piece on CNN, Gupta outlines the benefits of medical cannabis, claims that U.S. citizens have been misled by the government for years, and apologises for his role in that. This reversal of opinions occurred during the yearlong production of his documentary “Weed”, which premiers this Sunday on CNN.

“Gupta literally made a 12 or 13 year turn on this,” the executive director of the advocacy group NORML, Allen St. Pierre, told IPS. “But as a really genuine doctor who is a scientific minded person, he really did want to see the science and let it led him to a different standing.”

The benefits

Illinois is the most recent state to legalise medicinal marijuana, making a total of 20 U.S. states and the District of Columbia that allow its medical use. Approval conditions, regulations and quantity limits can vary from state to state.

The federal law enforcement agency, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), has classified marijuana as a Schedule I drug, meaning it has no medical benefit and has a high potential for abuse, with nine to 10 percent of its adult users becoming addicted.

Cocaine, according to the DEA, is less dangerous than marijuana and is a Schedule II drug even though 20 percent of its users become addicted.

“They didn’t have the science to support that claim [of marijuana as a Schedule I drug], and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true,” wrote Gupta in his CNN piece. “It doesn’t have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications.”

Gupta uses Charlotte Figi, a patient in Colorado, as an example of the benefits. She began having seizures soon after birth, and by age three she was having up to 300 a week despite being on seven different prescription medicines. Medicinal cannabis calmed her brain and limited her seizures to two to three times per month.

According to NORML, cannabis is specifically used to alleviate pain from nerve damage, nausea, spasticity, glaucoma and movement disorders. It is also a powerful appetite stimulant, which is beneficial for patients suffering from dementia, HIV and AIDS.

“The government and some of our opponents will say with a straight face that it [medical marijuana] has no utility,” St. Pierre told IPS. “It is cheaper than most pharmaceuticals and can be used for over a dozen aliments. The utility combined with the price makes it hard for them to make a convincing argument.”

A new survey done at the nonprofit organisation The Partnership at Drugfree.org found that 70 percent of respondents support the medical use of marijuana and 50 percent support decriminalisation. Forty percent of respondents supported the legalisation of marijuana altogether.

“Most frightening to me is that someone dies in the United States every 19 minutes from prescription drug overdose, mostly accidental,” Gupta wrote. “It’s a horrifying statistic. As much as I searched, I could not find a documented case of death from a marijuana overdose.”

The consequences

According to a study done in the United Kingdom, people who smoke marijuana regularly tend to produce less dopamine, a feel good chemical in the brain that plays a large role in reward-driven behaviour and motivation. Regular marijuana use can also lead to inflammation in the brain, according to the study, which can affect coordination and learning.

Gupta also admitted in his CNN piece that regular marijuana use in younger and developing brains can lead to a permanent decrease in IQ. There is also clear evidence that some users can experience withdrawal symptoms including insomnia, anxiety and nausea.

“Much in the same way that I wouldn’t let my own children drink alcohol, I wouldn’t permit marijuana until they are adults,” wrote Gupta. “If they are adamant about trying marijuana, I will urge them to wait until they’re in their mid-20s when their brains are fully developed.”

Project SAM, the nonprofit organisation advocating for the responsible use of medicinal cannabis, is urging Gupta to clarify what he is referring to when he says marijuana. According to the organisation, CBD is a non-intoxicating element found in medically used cannabis whereas street bought marijuana contains THC, which is specifically used to get a high.

“Dr. Gupta is a person Americans looks up to with high esteem. And for good reason – he is thoughtful, thorough and dispassionate about the science. That is why we are troubled by how people might interpret his comments,” Project SAM said in a press release.

Despite the highly documented consequences and concerns, marijuana is the third most popular recreational drug in the United States, behind alcohol and tobacco. About 100 million citizens use it, and about 14 million do so regularly.

Some 50,000 people each year die from alcohol poisoning and 400,000 people die from tobacco each year, but marijuana is a non-toxic drug that cannot cause death by overdose.

“The fact that this guy [Gupta] enjoys a really wonderful national reputation, and now he is saying ‘my bad’ in a culture where alpha males don’t usually admit that they are wrong, will…affirm that we are in an era of change,” St. Pierre told IPS.