NYT Coalition Urges Nations to Decriminalize Drugs and Drug Use

[neversickanymore]

Coalition Urges Nations to Decriminalize Drugs and Drug Use
By SOMINI SENGUPTA
SEPT. 8, 2014

A coalition of political figures from around the world, including Kofi Annan, the former United Nations secretary general, and several former European and Latin American presidents, is urging governments to decriminalize a variety of illegal drugs and set up regulated drug markets within their own countries.

The proposal by the group, the Global Commission on Drug Policy, goes beyond its previous call to abandon the nearly half-century-old American-led war on drugs. As part of a report scheduled to be released on Tuesday, the group goes much further than its 2011 recommendation to legalize cannabis.

The former Brazilian president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a member of the commission, said the group was calling for the legal regulation of “as many of the drugs that are currently illegal as possible, with the understanding that some drugs may remain too dangerous to decriminalize.”

The proposal comes at a time when several countries pummeled by drug violence, particularly in Latin America, are rewriting their own drug laws, and when even the United States is allowing state legislatures to gingerly regulate cannabis use. The United Nations is scheduled to hold a summit meeting in 2016 to evaluate global drug laws.

The commission includes former presidents like Mr. Cardoso of Brazil, Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and Ruth Dreifuss of Switzerland, along with George P. Shultz, a former secretary of state in the Reagan administration, among others.

The group stops short of calling on countries to legalize all drugs right away. It calls instead for countries to continue to pursue violent criminal gangs, to stop incarcerating users and to offer treatment for addicts.

Strong resistance is expected from world powers, including the United States and Russia, which favor maintaining strict criminal prohibitions. Several Middle Eastern countries, including Iran, impose the death penalty for drug smuggling.

Drug laws are being reconsidered by some countries around the world. Uruguay last year became the first country to establish a state-run market for marijuana. Colombia established a national commission to re-evaluate its own national policy. In Europe, some countries have long stopped making arrests for marijuana use and possession. President Obama has also questioned the fairness of prosecuting marijuana users.

The global commission takes aim at criminalizing drug use and possession. “Punitive drug law enforcement fuels crime and maximizes the health risks associated with drug use, especially among the most vulnerable,” its report goes on to say.

John Walsh, drug policy analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights advocacy organization, said members of the commission “realize that even if the debate is now really open for first time in half a century, different countries are going to be able to proceed at different paces.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/09/w...to-decriminalize-drugs-and-drug-use.html?_r=0
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I really think its going to finally happen. If it does it will have many positive outcomes for the world.

 

[LSDiesel]

Oh Law Enforcement, please find the serenity
to accept the things you cannot change (demand for narcotics)
the courage to change the things you can (end war on drugs)
and wisdom to know that prohibition of a narcotic is more dangerous than the narcotic itself

 

[LSDiesel]

I dream of a time and place, where there is less crime, poverty and sadness in the streets,
where I don't live in fear everyday for simply taking some medicine.
I fantasize of a world where my soul and spirit is in a much better place, where my success isn't bounded by drug tests or past trasgressions of drug use.
I imagine a world where taking drugs is no big deal, and is much less of a necessity, since I am more balanced and content, there is less of a need to drown out the bullshit and ignorance.
I long for my success to allow for financial, emotional and medical independence.
My financial independence would allow me to have my own land which I freely can grow my own poppies, marijuana, coca, coffee, cacti.
I dream of an existence where my medicine cabinet is growing in my backyard and I no longer need expensive doctors visits that tell me nothing more than I already know and I no longer require expensive pharma pills with side effects far greater than my garden.

 

[ro4eva]

I really think its going to finally happen.

There will be a lot of resistance - much more so than before.

I'm curious to see how certain right wing media outlets will react. Should be amusing.

However I too believe we're almost there.

Hell, it's about damn time.

 

[neversickanymore]

I think South America will go pretty quick. I think parts of Europe have a great chance of going soon as well. America and its corrupt bribery system called lobbying will be hard to get through. But america has tons of problems and I personally think it would be grand to check out life in the Caribbean anyway. Especially with the never ending war machine firing back up. Seriously, we are going to go to war again instead of useing those resources to fix problems here at home.

 

[neversickanymore]

"We are driven by a sense of urgency. There is a widespread acknowledgment that the current system is not working, but also recognition that change is both necessary and achievable. We are convinced that the 2016 United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) is an historic opportunity to discuss the shortcomings of the drug control regime, identify workable alternatives and align the debate with ongoing debates on the post-2015 development agenda and human rights."

Fernando Henrique Cardoso
Former President of Brazil (1994-2002)




The upcoming United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Drugs (UNGASS) in 2016 is an unprecedented opportunity to review and re-direct national drug control policies and the future of the global drug control regime. As diplomats sit down to rethink international and domestic drug policy, they would do well to recall the mandate of the United Nations, not least to ensure security, human rights and development. Health is the thread that runs through all three of these aspirations, and the UN global drug control regime has the ‘health and welfare of mankind’ as its ultimate goal. But overwhelming evidence points to not just the failure of the regime to attain its stated goals but also the horrific unintended consequences of punitive and prohibitionist laws and policies.

A new and improved global drug control regime is needed that better protects the health and safety of individuals and communities around the world. Harsh measures grounded in repressive ideologies must be replaced by more humane and effective policies shaped by scientific evidence, public health principles and human rights standards. This is the only way to simultaneously reduce drug-related death, disease and suffering and the violence, crime, corruption and illicit markets associated with ineffective prohibitionist policies. The fiscal implications of the policies we advocate, it must be stressed, pale in comparison to the direct costs and indirect consequences generated by the current regime.

The Global Commission proposes five pathways to improve the global drug policy regime. After putting people ́s health and safety at the center of the picture, governments are urged to ensure access to essential medicines and pain control. The Commissioners call for an end to the criminalization and incarceration of users together with targeted prevention, harm reduction and treatment strategies for dependent users.

In order to reduce drug related harms and undermine the power and profits of organized crime, the Commission recommends that governments regulate drug markets and adapt their enforcement strategies to target the most violent and disruptive criminal groups rather than punish low level players. The Global Commission’s proposals are complimentary and comprehensive. They call on governments to rethink the problem, do what can and should be done immediately, and not to shy away from the transformative potential of regulation.

The obstacles to drug policy reform are both daunting and diverse. Powerful and established drug control bureaucracies, both national and international, staunchly defend status quo policies. They seldom question whether their involvement and tactics in enforcing drug policy are doing more harm than good. Meanwhile, there is often a tendency to sensationalize each new “drug scare” in the media. And politicians regularly subscribe to the appealing rhetoric of “zero tolerance” and creating “drug free” societies rather than pursuing an informed approach based on evidence of what works. Popular associations of illicit drugs with ethnic and racial minorities stir fear and inspire harsh legislation. And enlightened reform advocates are routinely attacked as “soft on crime” or even “pro-drug.”

The good news is that change is in the air. The Global Commission is gratified that a growing number of the recommendations offered in this report are already under consideration, underway or firmly in place around the world. But we are at the beginning of the journey and governments can benefit from the accumulating experience where reforms are being pursued. Fortunately, the dated rhetoric and unrealistic goals set during the 1998 UNGASS on drugs are unlikely to be repeated in 2016. Indeed, there is growing support for more flexible interpretations and reform of the international drug control conventions aligned with human rights and harm reduction principles. All of these developments bode well for the reforms we propose below.

RECOMMENDATIONS
Putting health and community safety first requires a fundamental reorientation of policy priorities and resources, from failed punitive enforcement to proven health and social interventions.

Both the stated goals of drug control policies, and the criteria by which such policies are assessed, merit reform. Traditional goals and measures – such as hectares of illicit crops eradicated, amounts of drugs seized, and number of people arrested, prosecuted, convicted and incarcerated for drug law violations – have failed to produce positive outcomes.

ar more important are goals and measures that focus on reducing both drug-related harms such as fatal overdoses, HIV/ AIDS, hepatitis and other diseases as well as prohibition-related harms such as crime, violence, corruption, human rights violations, environmental degradation, displacement of communities, and the power of criminal organizations. Spending on counterproductive enforcement measures should be ended, while proven prevention, harm reduction and treatment measures are scaled up to meet need.

Ensure equitable access to essential medicines, in particular opiate-based medications for pain.

More than eighty per cent of the world ́s population carries a huge burden of avoidable pain and suffering with little or no access to such medications. This state of affairs persists despite the fact that the avoidance of ill health and access to essential medicines is a key objective and obligation of the global drug control regime.

Governments need to establish clear plans and timelines to remove the domestic and international obstacles to such provision. They also should allocate the necessary funding for an international program – to be overseen by the World Health Organization (WHO) and developed in partnership with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) – to ensure equitable and affordable access to these medicines where they are unavailable.

Stop criminalizing people for drug use and possession – and stop imposing “compulsory treatment” on people whose only offense is drug use or possession.

Criminalization of drug use and possession has little to no impact on levels of drug use in an open society. Such policies do, however, encourage high risk behaviours such as unsafe injecting, deter people in need of drug treatment from seeking it, divert law enforcement resources from focusing on serious criminality, reduce personal and government funds that might otherwise be available for positive investment in people’s lives, and burden millions with the long-lasting negative consequences of a criminal conviction.

Using the criminal justice system to force people arrested for drug possession into ‘treatment’ often does more harm than good. Far better is ensuring the availability of diverse supportive services in communities. This recommendation, it should be noted, requires no reform of international drug control treaties.

Rely on alternatives to incarceration for non-violent, low-level participants in illicit drug markets such as farmers, couriers and others involved in the production, transport and sale of illicit drugs.

Governments devote ever increasing resources to detecting, arresting and incarcerating people involved in illicit drug markets – with little or no evidence that such efforts reduce drug-related problems or deter others from engaging in similar activities. Community-based and other non-criminal sanctions routinely prove far less expensive, and more effective than criminalisation and incarceration.

Subsistence farmers and day labourers involved in harvesting, processing, transporting or trading and who have taken refuge in the illicit economy purely for reasons of survival should not be subjected to criminal punishment. Only longer-term socioeconomic development efforts that improve access to land and jobs, reduce economic inequality and social marginalisation, and enhance security can offer them a legitimate exit strategy.

Focus on reducing the power of criminal organizations as well as the violence and insecurity that result from their competition with both one another and the state.

Governments need to be far more strategic, anticipating the ways in which particular law enforcement initiatives, particularly militarized ‘crackdowns’, may exacerbate criminal violence and public insecurity without actually deterring drug production, trafficking or consumption. Displacing illicit drug production from one locale to another, or control of a trafficking route from one criminal organization to another, often does more harm than good.

he goals of supply-side enforcement need to be reoriented from unachievable market eradication to achievable reductions in violence and disruption linked to the trafficking. Enforcement resources should be directed towards the most disruptive, problematic and violent elements of the trade – alongside international cooperation o crack-down on corruption and money laundering. Militarizing anti-drug efforts is seldom effective and often counterproductive. Greater accountability for human rights abuses committed in pursuit of drug law enforcement is essential.

Allow and encourage diverse experiments in legally regulating markets in currently illicit drugs, beginning with but not limited to cannabis, coca leaf and certain novel psychoactive substances.

Much can be learned from successes and failures in regulating alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceutical drugs and other products and activities that pose health and other risks to individuals and societies.

New experiments are needed in allowing legal but restricted access to drugs that are now only available illegally. This should include the expansion of heroin-assisted treatment for some long-term dependent users, which has proven so effective in Europe and Canada. Ultimately the most effective way to reduce the extensive harms of the global drug prohibition regime and advance the goals of public health and safety is to get drugs under control through responsible legal regulation.

Take advantage of the opportunity presented by the upcoming UNGASS in 2016 to reform the global drug policy regime.

The leadership of the UN Secretary-General is essential to ensure that all relevant UN agencies – not just those focused on law enforcement but also health, security, human rights and development – engage fully in a ‘One-UN’ assessment of global drug control strategies. The UN Secretariat should urgently facilitate open discussion including new ideas and recommendations that are grounded in scientific evidence, public health principles, human rights and development.

Policy shifts towards harm reduction, ending criminalization of people who use drugs, proportionality of sentences and alternatives to incarceration have been successfully defended over the past decades by a growing number of countries on the basis of the legal latitude allowed under the UN treaties. Further exploration of flexible interpretations of the drug treaties is an important objective, but ultimately the global drug control regime must be reformed to permit responsible legal regulation.

“The world needs to discuss new approaches… we are basically still thinking within the same framework as we have done for the last 40 years … A new approach should try and take away the violent profit that comes with drug trafficking… If that means legalizing, and the world thinks that’s the solution, I will welcome it. I’m not against it.”

Juan Manuel Santos, President of Colombia.

Source http://www.gcdpsummary2014.com/#foreword-from-the-chair

 

[neversickanymore]

COUNTING THE COSTS OF OVER HALF A CENTURY OF THE ‘WAR ON DRUGS’

A FAILURE ON ITS OWN TERMS
The international community is further away than ever from realizing a ‘drug-free world’. Global drug production, supply and use continue to rise despite increasing resources being directed towards enforcement.

• The UNODC’s ‘best estimate’ for the number of users worldwide (past year use) rose from 203 million in 2008, to 243 million in 2012 – an 18 per cent increase, or a rise in prevalence of use from 4.6 per cent to 5.2 per cent in four years.

• Global illicit opium production increased by more than 380 per cent since 1980, rising from 1,000 metric tons to over 4,000 today. Meanwhile, heroin prices in Europe fell by 75 per cent since 1990 and by 80 per cent in the US since 1980, even as purity has risen.

• The international drug control system is, by its own admission, ‘floundering’ in the face of the proliferation of novel psychoactive substances (NPS). In 2013, the number of NPS exceeded the number of drugs prohibited under the international drug control framework.

THREATENING PUBLIC HEALTH AND SAFETY
Punitive drug law enforcement fuels crime and maximizes the health risks associated with drug use, especially among the most vulnerable. This is because drug production, shipment and retail are left in the hands of organized criminals, and people who use drugs are criminalized, rather than provided with assistance.

• Clandestine production and retail often leads to adulterated drug products of unknown potency and purity that pose significantly higher risks. Examples of this problem include heroin contaminated with anthrax and cocaine cut with levamisole (a deworming agent).

• More than one third (37 per cent) of Russia’s 1.8 million people injecting drugs are infected with HIV.

Owing to a preference for criminalizing users, access to life-saving harm reduction services, such as needle exchange and syringe programs (NPS), is either highly restricted, or in the case of opioid substitution treatment (OST), banned outright.

• The current drug control regime has generated significant legal and political obstacles to the provision of opiates for pain control and palliative care. There are over 5.5 billion people with severely limited or no access to the medicines they need.

• Restrictive policies increase the risk of premature death from overdoses and acute negative reactions to drug consumption. For example, in 2010, there were more than 20,000 illicit-drug overdose deaths in the US. Naloxone – a drug that can counter the effects of opiate overdoses – is still not universally available.

UNDERMINING HUMAN RIGHTS, FOSTERING DISCRIMINATION
Punitive approaches to drug policy are severely undermining human rights in every region of the world. They lead to the erosion of civil liberties and fair trial standards, the stigmatization of individuals and groups – particularly women, young people, and ethnic minorities – and the imposition of abusive and inhumane punishments.

• Although the death penalty for drug offences is illegal under international law it is nevertheless retained by 33 countries. As a result of such offences, around 1,000 people are executed every year.

• Drug law enforcement has fuelled a dramatic expansion of people in detention (prisons, pretrial detainees, people held in administrative detention).

Many people are held in mandatory ‘drug detention’ centers, including some 235,000 people in China and South East Asia.

• Globally, more women are imprisoned for drug offences than for any other crime. One in four women in prison across Europe and Central Asia are incarcerated for drug offences, while in many Latin American countries such as Argentina (68.2 per cent), Costa Rica (70 per cent) and Peru (66.38 per cent) the rates are higher still.

• Drug law enforcement disproportionately impacts on minorities. In the US, African Americans make up 13 per cent of the population. Yet they account for 33.6 per cent of drug arrests and 37 per cent of people sent to state prison on drug charges. Similar racial disparities have been observed elsewhere including the UK, Canada and Australia.

FUELLING CRIME AND ENRICHING CRIMINALS
Rather than reduce crime, enforcement-based drug policy actively fuels it. Spiraling illicit drug prices provide a profit motive for criminal groups to enter the trade, and drive some people who are dependent on drugs to commit crime in order to fund their use.

• Drug prohibition has fuelled a global illegal trade estimated by the UNODC to be in the hundreds of billions. According to 2005 data, production was valued at $13 billion, the wholesale industry priced at $94 billion and retail estimated to be worth $332 billion. The wholesale valuation for the drugs market is higher than the global equivalent for cereals, wine, beer, coffee, and tobacco combined.

• Illicit, unregulated drug markets are inherently violent. Paradoxically, successful interdiction efforts and arrests of drug cartel leaders and traffickers routinely create power vacuums. These in turn can spur renewed violence as the remaining players compete to gain market share.

• The trafficking in illicit drugs can strengthen armed groups operating outside the rule of law. For example, the opium trade earns paramilitary groups operating along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border up to $500 million a year.

UNDERMINING DEVELOPMENT AND SECURITY, FUELING CONFLICT
Criminal drug producers and traffickers thrive in fragile, conflict-affected and underdeveloped regions, where vulnerable populations are easily exploited. The corruption, violence, and instability generated by unregulated drug markets are widely recognized as a threat to both security and development.

• Estimates of deaths from violence related to the illegal drug trade in Mexico since the war on drugs was scaled-up in 2006 range from 60,000 to more than 100,000.

• Illegal drug profits fuel regional instability by helping to arm insurgent, paramilitary and terrorist groups. The redirection of domestic and foreign investment away from social and economic priorities toward military and policing sectors has a damaging effect on development.

• In Colombia, approximately 2.6 million acres of land were aerially sprayed with toxic chemicals as part of drug crop eradication efforts between 2000 and 2007. Despite their destructive impact on livelihoods and land, the number of locations used for illicit coca cultivation actually increased during this period.

WASTING BILLIONS, UNDERMINING ECONOMIES
Tens of billions are spent on drug law enforcement every year. And while good for the defense industry, there are disastrous secondary costs, both financial and social.

• The emphasis on counterproductive law enforcement strategies to tackle drugs generates ‘policy displacement’. In other words, it distracts attention and resources from proven health interventions, other police priorities, and other social services.

• The illicit drug trade creates a hostile environment for legitimate business interests. It deters investment and tourism, creates sector volatility and unfair competition (associated with money laundering), and distorts the macroeconomic stability of entire countries.

• The illicit drug business also corrodes governance. A 1998 study from Mexico estimated that cocaine traffickers spent as much as $500 million a year on bribes, more than the annual budget of the Mexican attorney general’s office. As of 2011, Mexican and Colombian drug trafficking groups launder up to $39 billion a year in wholesale distribution proceeds.

source http://www.gcdpsummary2014.com/counting

 

[neversickanymore]

Membership[edit]
Membership of the GCDP Board is:
Aleksander Kwaśniewski (Poland), former President of Poland[7]
Asma Jahangir (Pakistan), human rights activist, former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Arbitrary, Extrajudicial and Summary Executions
Carlos Fuentes (Mexico), writer and public intellectual (died May 15, 2012)
César Gaviria (Colombia), former President of Colombia
Ernesto Zedillo (Mexico), former President of Mexico
Fernando Henrique Cardoso (Brazil), former President of Brazil (chair)
George Papandreou (Greece), former Prime Minister of Greece
George P. Shultz (United States), former Secretary of State (honorary chair)
Javier Solana (Spain), former European Union High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy
John C. Whitehead (United States), banker and civil servant, chair of the World Trade Center Memorial
Jorge Sampaio (Portugal), former President of Portugal
Kofi Annan (Ghana), former Secretary-General of the United Nations
Louise Arbour (Canada), former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, president of the International Crisis Group
Maria Cattaui (Switzerland), member of the Board, Petroplus Holdings; former Secretary-General of the International Chamber of Commerce
Marion Caspers-Merk (Germany), former State Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Health (Germany)
Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru), writer and public intellectual, Nobel Prize laureate
Michel Kazatchkine (France), UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and former executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria
Paul Volcker (United States), former Chairman of the Federal Reserve and of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board
Pavel Bém (Czech Republic) former Mayor of Prague, member of the Parliament, Czech Republic
Ricardo Lagos (Chile) former President of Chile
Richard Branson (United Kingdom), entrepreneur, advocate for social causes, founder of the Virgin Group, co-founder of The Elders
Ruth Dreifuss (Switzerland), former President of Switzerland and Minister of Home Affairs
Thorvald Stoltenberg (Norway), former Minister of Foreign Affairs and United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees[3]