Breaking taboos - it's time we recognised that illegal drugs are fun
Michael Duffy
September 7, 2007
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Three cheers for my fellow columnist Lisa Pryor, who last week suggested we acknowledge the elephant in the room where public debate about drugs occurs. It's time to stand up and say illegal drug use is fun and - unless you get caught - harmless.
Yes, there are exceptions to this. But far fewer than if you tried to make the same claim about nicotine or alcohol or junk food. The criminalisation of recreational drugs will one day be looked back on with the incredulity we now reserve for Prohibition.
The criminalisation of fun drugs is based on claims about the harm they do, which fly in the face of the experience of a large proportion of the population. The six-week "drug holiday" for rugby league players announced this week is surely an acknowledgment of just how common and acceptable recreational drug-taking is among young people, including very fit and healthy young people.
The persistence of drug criminalisation reflects the self-interest of a loose coalition of politicians, moralists and law enforcement officials, in search of headlines, bigger budgets and more power. They've been winning the argument for a long time now, at least in terms of public policy. What might alter this situation?
The change will eventually come from a growing awareness of the terrible and accelerating damage the illicit drug economy is doing to peace and prosperity around the globe. That trade is booming today because of the trade liberalisation and globalisation we've experienced since the 1990s. These have created enormous wealth, thereby expanding the markets for fun drugs, and making it even easier for drug growers and manufacturers in other countries to reach those markets.
This is the theory of Moises Naim, editor of the magazine Foreign Policy. Recently Naim told me: "The United Nations Office of Drug Control and Crime just released a report estimating the value of the international drug trade at $US660 billion ($800 billion) a year. It is great, it is growing, it is diversifying, both geographically and in terms of product lines. It's a vast industry that moves a lot of money and has huge requirements in terms of infrastructure, transportation and so on. All of that on a daily basis, on a systematic basis, would be impossible without the active complicity of governments around the world."
In many Third World countries (or "narcostates"), governments and their agencies are now corrupted by drug traders and their allies in politics and legitimate business activities. This makes much of the international war against drugs - estimated to cost $US100 million a year - an ineffectual farce.
The scale of the drug economy is only possible because First World countries have been unable to stop the immense craving for fun drugs among their own populations. As Naim puts it: "The markets are massive and they're created by state intervention [ie criminalisation]."
He believes the international drug trade is now so big and corrosive of national sovereignty that it, along with other cross-border crimes such as people smuggling and money laundering, "are reconfiguring and transforming the world's politics and economics today far more than terrorism".
Everywhere you look, the growing spread of drugs is trashing public morality and everyday life. Naim has written that the world is undergoing an unprecedented pandemic of crime. In 2003 the UN reported that crime rates were increasing almost everywhere. In cities such as Johannesburg and Milan there have been large protest marches complaining about rising crime. The World Bank says Latin America's economic growth could be 8 per cent higher if its crime rates dropped.
What drives up crime? Poverty doesn't seem to matter. Inequality and urbanisation play a part. But researchers agree a big contributor is the combination of a high proportion of young men, easy access to guns, and ample drugs.
The Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation leaders this weekend ought to be talking seriously about drugs. But of course they won't, because that would offend the United States, whose expensive and long-running war on drugs is possibly the greatest public policy failure of all time.
The latest issue of Foreign Policy has an article on this by Ethan Nadelmann, founder of the Drug Policy Alliance, which argues for decriminalisation. He notes that the number of Americans incarcerated for US drug-law violations has increased from 50,000 in 1980 to 500,000 today. The US, with five per cent of the world's population, has 25 per cent of its prisoners.
For a long time the US and its punitive-moral agenda has dominated the international agencies set up to deal with drugs. But Nadelmann says this hegemony is now under challenge for the first time. "The European Union is demanding rigorous assessment of drug-control strategies. Exhausted by decades of service to the US-led war on drugs, Latin Americans are far less inclined to collaborate closely with US drug enforcement efforts. Finally waking up to the threat of HIV/AIDS, China, Indonesia, Vietnam and even Malaysia are increasingly accepting of syringe-exchange and other harm reduction programs [which the US opposes]."
This is good news even if it is only a start. The truth is that the West's war on drugs can never be won, because too many people don't want it to be won. And while fun drugs do some damage, it is only a tiny fraction of the destruction caused around the globe by drug prohibition.
