Opium wars

Time to talk about UN drug conventions reform .

2011-08-26T16:05:21+02:00

The following letter to the editor appeared in the Financial Times today.

Sir,

The profit margins for illicit drugs are such that it is simply an irresistible product, and because it is illegal the business model includes violent death as a standard option. Latin America has the misfortune to be politically weak and close to the world’s biggest consumer market for drugs, the US. In Europe, in spite of the usual warlike rhetoric from some politicians, authorities are increasingly – and quite sensibly – decriminalising the use, possession and even small-scale cultivation of cannabis. They have little choice, since more than 22 per cent of the population have now become sometime users and have effectively opted out of an unenforceable law.

There is more emphasis on prevention and treatment in Europe than on suppression. European Union member states and institutions have spent the last 15 years keeping the lid on this issue, at least at home, but as you say in your article “A toxic trade” (Analysis, August 24), we’re catching up. One reason for this is that too many EU governments (and the US of course) are still loath to support the rising chorus of experts – and now the Global Commission on Drug Policy – calling for an end to the taboo of even discussing a reform of the UN conventions on drugs, which are the legal corner that the world has painted itself into on this issue. The conventions were written in another age (starting in 1961) and are doing more harm than good. It is to be hoped that at least some politicians may rediscover the art of explaining such an uncomfortable truth to their electorates.

Carel Edwards,
Brussels, Belgium
Head of the European Commission’s Drug Policy Unit 2003-10

The March of Folly Revisited

2011-08-25T11:37:46+02:00

In 1981, the American historian Barbara Tuchman wrote in The March of Folly:"Mankind, it seems, makes a poorer performance of government than of almost any other activity...Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and elightened self-interest suggests? Why does intelligent mental process seem so often not to function?"

The question is as relevant today as it was then, or during the gaffes of the civilisations that she described, from Troy to Vietnam.

One issue to which her question applies directly is the global narcotics control system. A construct which reflects mainly American prejudice about alien customs and fear of losing social control, and which was embedded into the UN system of drug conventions between 1961 and 1988. The Financial Times yesterday joined the growing chorus of serious media with a one-page spread on the situation in Latin America. Conditions in Central America are particularly dire, as drug trafficking to the US market that goes through the region has produced unprecedented and widespread violence (El Salvador is quoted as having 71 murders per 100,000, or nearly 12 times the level of the US, 35 times more than in Europe). The legalisation debate, the article claims, "is bogged down by legitimate fears about the risk of increased addiction rates". Why are these fears legitimate? In the 1950's, anti- communist paranoia was rife. It was used "legitimately" by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics to create a toxic mix of fear and xenophobia about an international drugs conspiracy to undermine the free world. The rest is history: by 1961 the world (i.e. the West) had painted itself into a legal corner by adopting the first UN convention on illicit drugs. By 1971 Richard Nixon had called for the War on Drugs, and today we have the world's fastest growing illegal commodities market ever.

So, what about those "legitimate" fears? Just how scared do we have to be of addiction? Not half as scared as we should be of violence and the growing bonds between the legal and black economies as billions in drug money are seeping into our daily lives. Does your town or city have no-go areas? Mine does, and the fact that drugs are illicit gives the local tough guys their "respect" and their currency. Regulating drugs would not turn these people into honest citizens, but it would take a form of crime out of circulation that is so easy I'm almost tempted myself. It would also free up a lot of cash for prevention and treatment that is now being spent on rather unsuccessful law enforcement. Prof Kleinman from UCLA may claim that the former is "cost-effective but not very effective", at least it is not a ruinous and murderous joke like much of the law enforcement efforts over the last decades.

The fear is not "legitimate". It is understandable, which is entirely different. It is understandable because self-serving politicians have played on it for so long - assisted by sensational media - that the mere suggestion of doing this differently provokes outbursts of righteous anger, particularly from "people with children", who somehow have the moral high ground in this debate. What about children with parents in prison, usually poor, serving inhumanely long sentences for posession or small scale retail trafficking? What about children living in prison, as they do in some Latin American countries? What if your adolescent child gets a taste of tough drug laws, looses his place at school, his bright future suddenly cancelled?

The fear can be addressed and the options for regulating the drugs market explained. However distatsteful the idea is to most of us, regulating drugs is being discussed by many serious people in civil society, universities, and unexpected places like the House of Lords. A lot of work has been done on it, the complexity and risks of the idea are fairly well known. What is lacking is a political class that does more than follow its most rabid electorates in stead of showing a statesman-like way out of the present mess.

Let me end with Barbara Tuchman again. To qualify as political folly, she wrote, the policy must have been recognised as counter-productive in its own time, and, secondly, an alternative policy must have been available.

Good night and good luck.

There will be more riots.

2011-08-18T15:33:33+02:00

The riots in London have "shocked" and "dismayed" all honest citizens, and most of all, the British government. The real surprise however is not that the riots took place, but that they are seen as something that is incomprehensible and incompatible with our way of life. Riots are a recurring feature of our societies and they break out regularly in many rich and less rich countries. Just look up "Urban riots" on Wikipedia and you'll get the point.

Riots start with an event - often the shooting of a local inhabitant by the police. This usually sparks off an explosion of pent-up frustration and anger by those who are or who feel marginalised by society. The police is usually taken by surprise and things quickly get out of hand. What follows is less spontaneous than it seems; typical ringleaders are coloured men in their late 20s with a record of violence and arrest and scores to settle with the police. This was also the case in Tottenham. What they're after is to get their own back by having a go at anything. It's a territorial thing: to get back some "respect" for their turf.

Arson and looting on a more or less large scale then follows. It is possibly the most vocal and logical expression of the rejection of the West's new religion of "shopping". The growing number of people in the West who are unlikely to ever be able to buy the consumer products that are rammed down their throats in media every day may well acquire a taste for rioting. The process is helped along by a second category of ringleaders, self-styled "activists", mostly white young men with a reasonable level of education, the sort of people we used to call anarchists or nihilists, but only because we didn't know what else to call them.

There is nothing new about any of this, nor about the ineffectual and vengeful way in which most governments react. Once they have collected their wits and get a grip (or the riots simply die down) they begin the "clean up". President Sarkozy promised to root out "the scum" with a high-pressure hose, after the last round of violence in the french "cités". In England, two bewildered facebookers who tried - and failed - to start their own riot were given four-year prison sentences. What this reveals more than anything else is governments' fear that they might not be able to contain this. That fear seems quite justified, as European countries are cutting back massively on spending on education and social services - and law and order - while a recession looms.

Counting the cost of bad politics

2011-08-03T16:28:57+02:00

The Netherlands have been a byword for tolerant and realistic drug policies for years. It took some courage to do that because it provokes some pretty rough criticism from its partners in Europe and around the world.

The Dutch system effectively suspends its own drug law (drugs remain technically illiegal) and tolerates both drug use and the sale of cannabis in a regulated way through the "coffeeshops". These are regulated, legal (and taxed). Their supply is not. When the system started decades ago the "back door" was supplied by green-fingered "hippy" types and other amateurs. Now that cannabis has become a mainstream consumer product in much of the world - although production remains illegale - organised crime has stepped in.

It is a good illustration of the point I made in my post of 4 April (Power sharing with the Mafia). There is no easy option for weak politicians: all-out prohibition doesn't work (anywhere in the world) nor does the half-hearted tolerance policy of the Dutch (and, incidentally, quite a few other European countries).

As demand for cannabis grew in Holland - boosted by drugs tourism from neighboring countries - the volume of the cannabis trade overtook heroin and cocaine somewhere around 1995 and is still expanding. The police has responded by creating special teams, sentencing is now tougher, but the profits to be made are totally irrisistable and the business plan of a serious canabis producer includes prison as a calculated risk and lethal violence as an essential management technique. Take a look at the fundamentals: a 1000-plant cannabis plantation with grow lights and automatic irrigation yields up to five harvests a year worth 700.000 EURO. The electricity and water are free because they are illegally tapped from the public networks.

What does this lead to? An unprecedented growth in organised violent crime in a country that has a firmly non-violent tradition. Drive-by shootings, public assassinations in bars and people's homes. Although much of this is gang warfare, the degree of intimidation of private citizens who are "pursuaded" to make a room, garage or cellar available to the growers is such that they rarely go to the police to complain. One mayor of a Dutch town is in hiding under police protection. Dutch police claim they destroy 6000 plantations a year or 2,5 million plants (one plant produces app. 40 grams). And yet, cannabis production is not thought to have decreased significantly.The market however is becoming more violent every year.

The problem has now spread over the border into Belgium, which has a weaker police system than Holland and less experience with the drugs trade. Belgian police recently claimed that more tha, 90% of plantations discovered were linked to Dutch organised crime. A Belgian criminologist, Prof. Decorte, describes the (Dutch) police tactics as "hit and run" raids on plantations, but which do no significant harm to the organisations behind the trade itself. Going for the top criminals would take resources that are simply not available and are likely to remain so for years to come. Meanwhile, others are moving into the business. Turkish, Bulgarian and Moroccan networks are increasingly active, to say nothing of the Vietnamese, already dominating the Canadian market and expanding rapidly in the UK.

How long will it take for our feeble and election-hungry politicians to take their eyes off the economy and to recognise that the bells are tolling for traditional prohibition of drugs and for the UN Conventions on drugs, at least in their present form. If they persist in "fighting" rather than regulating and reducing the side effects, we should expect a gradual slide into a form of society in which organised crime plays a major part in mainstream politics and in ordinary people's lives. Try to explain that to your children.

Bolivia, the Global Commission on Drugs, and Europe

2011-07-04T11:46:40+02:00

One month ago, the Global Commission on Drug Policy called on the UN to end to the “war on drugs”, the world’s “multilateral narcotics control system” which has been going for more than 50 years. Scientific evidence has been piling up that this system is not only failing spectacularly but providing organised and other crime with a sort of legislative gold standard for drug production and trafficking.

The Global Commission’s action followed on the request by Bolivia last January to drop a particular clause from the 1961 Single Convention, which would require it to eradicate the traditional chewing of coca leaf (not to be confused with cocaine) a cultural and social habit as old and deeply engrained in parts of Andean society as having a pint in an English pub (only less bad for you).

Predictably, some of the friends of the Single Convention, like theUS,Sweden, and others, blocked the move. The fact that Germany joined in this was less expected but probably a symptom of something else: the fact that Germany may be the undisputed economic giant of Europe but that it remains painfully provincial on the world stage, but that is another subject altogether.

Having had its request turned down Bolivia turned to option nr two and decided to withdraw from the Convention before the 1 July deadline and seek re-accession to it, but with a reservation about the coca leaf clause. The Bolivian Permanent Representative at the UN, Pablo Solon, explained in a recent press conference that this would leave the Convention intact for those countries that feel strongly about it but without inflicting an unrealistic clause on his country. He made the point clearly that this was not to encourage, or in any way be less tough on, the production or trafficking of cocaine.

If fewer than 63 states express a reservation the Bolivian request should be accepted and effective from 1 January 2012. Currently only seventeen countries are opposed. Mr Solon did not name them, as is the custom in these matters. This brings us back to the Global Commission: what is its role to be in the next six months? It has had good coverage in the world media, and the idea that drug policies should shift away from huge quasi-military security operations and massive incarceration of users and small dealers, towards treating drugs as a health and social issue that requires urgent attention is gaining acceptance everywhere.

Cannabis, the world’s most widely used drug, calls for an urgent reappraisal, and the need for some form of regulation is slowly but surely creeping towards many political agendas as politicians in many countries squirm and fear for their ratings in the polls. So now that the Global Commission has had its day, we are waiting for the next move. Xavier Solana and other Europeans who until recently dominated the political scene are members of the Commission. They know how politics work. They also know that another big media event will now have less novelty value and loose the public’s interest more quickly than the first. They will have to do something different and less formalistic, but they should realise that quite a few EU Member States are ripe for a fundamental re-think on drugs in general but cannabis in particular, if only to find the billions of Euros that this would save them. They will find plenty of people inEurope with intimate knowledge of the politics of drugs in the EU who will be only too happy to assist them

More on Nixon's legacy

2011-06-19T16:28:38+02:00

This week my post is a link to a tv interview with Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance (US). He says it all and better than I can. What we need is more of this kind of interview on European media. Greece, the Euro, and the Arab Spring are important issues, but other issues remain. Deaths and crime induced by drug policies are amongst them. Go to http://youtu.be/oq8kBaFtY-g If the link doesn’t work, Google Ethan Nadelmann. You’ll find it.

Global Commission on Drugs, don't let this fade away.

2011-06-07T11:23:18+02:00

As the dust settles on the "coming out" of the former world leaders who make up the Commission (www.globalcommissionondrugs.org/Commission) it is interesting to feel the pulse of some of the world's media in relation to the idea that the drugs war has not just been lost but has made things worse, as well as the proposal that a sensible debate on regulation of drugs like cannabis is the best way forward.

If the idea has been overwhelmingly welcomed by civil society and professionals in the drugs and drug policy field, it has predictably been rejected by most governments, like the US, Russia, and other nations that have essentialy military/ideological approaches to mass sociological problems like drugs.The UK and other governments had their rejection ready but there was good coverage in most of the media in Europe.
Some of the official reactions are almost comical. Apart from the old favourite about "sending the wrong message" there ist the World Federation against Drugs. Have a look at their website. Its headlines are an emotional rant aimed at discrediting individuals ("Russian Drugs Tsar Viktor Ivanov accused Koffi Annan of lobbying on behalf of drug traffickers"). The Russian Federal anti drugs service is a notoriously corrupt and ineffectual body, while Russia itself has a huge drugs problem that it is failing to deal with. The site goes on to name the "legalisers" and "harm producers" behind the report, which looks like a Who'sWho for evidence-based policies; surely an unintended consequence.

Mr Ivanov was also active at Deauville, where the G8 recently looked at this (Why the G8?). He stated that we should be aware that this is "a public relations campaign in favour of drugs linked to the huge revenues they generate". He also called for a Russo-European agency to eliminate drugs in ..... Afghanistan. The French government has a way of pretending to go along with this type of initiative because it gives them international visibility but it rarely leads to much (who knows what results the 2010 Hortefeux Pact against Drugs in West Africa produced?). François Hollande on the other hand, potential socialist candidate for the presidential elections, calls for a commission at European level to look at treatment and decriminalisation of cannabis. Let's see if he remembers if he wins. And let's hope that the European Commission is listening and will anticipate the need to support such an initiative and channel it away from ideologically induced platitudes in order to obtain EU consensus.

Freek Polak of ENCOD gave a particularly clear and helpful interview on Dutch radio. That is now more important than it used to be as the Dutch are becoming wobbly on drug policy and are in denial about the reasons why home-grown organised crime has got into the home-grown cannabis trade, but that is another subject..

Ruth Dreifuss, former President of Switzerland - and member of the Global Commission - is on record as saying "I have high expectation of European action on this. Europe must put public health at the centre of the drugs problem."

As the old joke goes in Brussels: maybe the EU should apply for membership of the Swiss Confederation.