Image from the film International Drug Policy: Animated Report 2009
Whether it's Afghanistan or Colombia, drug-producing countries face strikingly similar challenges: severe control policies push communities deeper into poverty, worsen conflicts, cause rights violations, uproot people, and damage the environment.
At this year's annual conference of the International Harm Reduction Association in Liverpool in April, Damon Barrett, a senior human rights analyst for the IHRA, moderated a panel of experts from Latin America and Southeast Asia.
Harm reduction strategies—such as easily accessible supplies of clean needles, drug replacement therapy using methadone or buprenorphene, keeping nonviolent offenders out of prison—are cheap, effective, and easy to implement. Yet rarely have they been implemented by countries producing illicit crops.
The exception, as Pien Metaal of the Transnational Institute pointed out, is Bolivia. For the last five years, President Evo Morales has been trying to find solutions, among them, assigning a limited number of peasant families a small plot of land growing coca for traditional uses, such as chewing or tea.
"Already 3,000 years ago, people knew about the benefits of consuming the coca leaf. Millions of people in the Andean region use coca as a mild stimulant, comparable to what coffee is for us here. This is legal in several countries, even outside the Andes," said Metaal.
Yet coca chewing should have disappeared almost 25 years ago, thanks to UN drug conventions, which tend to obstruct countries from adopting pragmatic drug policies.
Campaigns to forcibly eradicate illicit crops merely displace the problem, at the same time causing a variety of rights violations. A pastor from Northern Burma, where opium cultivation is traditionally the main income, spoke of how families struggle from day to day, lack access to health services or education, and are often forced to leave for larger cities.
It's a similar story in Colombia, as a local mayor—who has had several attempts made on his life—described: "People keep growing [coca] because there's no infrastructure, access to markets, vehicles, roads—no help. Coca keeps proliferating. There is malnutrition and hunger, and high homicide rates all related to illegal coca production activity."
Government fumigation programs not only eradicate coca but often food crops as well. Various estimates suggest that almost 4 million people in Colombia are displaced in search of food or refuge from violence and aerial fumigation. This figure is around the same as in Sudan. But as these people have been involved in an illicit activity, authorities do not recognize them as officially displaced, and so they're forced to invent another reason to receive aid.
As Tom Kramer of the Transnational Institute put it, drug policies are "always targeting the poorest of the poor."
As the discussion illustrated, prohibitionist policies have failed and experts are calling for a fresh approach that involves the communities at stake. "Harm reduction is about acknowledging rights in general," said the Colombian mayor, who also underlined the need for help from the consumer countries (Spain, followed by the UK, are the biggest consumers in Europe).
"We must involve the cultivators of opium, coca, and cannabis in the debate," said Tom Kramer.
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Hello, Alex, I'm Joao from Lisbon, Portugal (we met in Liverpool and spoke a little in Amsterdam airport...). Excelent article, and I wish european countries can follow the suggestion from the Colombian mayor. If it may interest you, here is the portuguese site of the national institute, where maybe you can find some material that could be interesting for you:
http://www.idt.pt/EN/Paginas/HomePage.aspx
This month we are having our national meeting.
Hope to see you someday in Lisbon, greetings from Joao
Hello Joao!
Very nice to hear from you, and thanks for the link.
As I mentioned, we're really interested in finding out more about decriminalization in Portugal, and other countries, like the Czech Republic and Mexico.
Results from Portugal are pretty impressive - such as the decline in drug-related deaths and new HIV infections. The more documentation we have of these kind of policies, the easier it will be to show other countries that such approaches really work!
Will be in touch soon,
Alex.
Joao,
I am an university professor, a researcher and social scientist. I'm quite interested in the drug policies adapted in Portugal (I was born in Lisbon, many, many, many years ago..).
I will be in Lisbon at the end of the month. E-mail me and let me know if we could get together to discuss your work in Lisbon regarding drug therapy and policies.
thanks you
Eddie
Thank you for your article. The effects of America's drug policies have been nearly as devastating abroad as they have been domestically for black, brown and poor Americans. Here in Texas, syringe exchange programs remain illegal. And nationally, African American men are arested at seven times the arrest rate of black South African men int he days of the Apartheid regime in South Africa. All is not well in America either.
Joy,
Thanks for your comment, I completely agree. So many communities are affected by prohibitionist drug policies.
There's going to be a two-day conference about race-related issues in the UK in early June: http://www.raceanddrugsproject.org.uk/may2009.html where Terry Williams (Crackhouse author) will also be speaking.
A year or so ago, we made an animated film you might be interested to see - it has a small part on the absurdly high number of African-American men in prison on drug-related charges: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do-RCrOrkpY
Alex.
May 20, 2010
It is good to see that some work is being done to solve the problem of the consequences of drug control on the poor people of the various drug-producing counries.
The obvious overall solution is to learn from the mistakes of the Prohibtion of the drug alcohol in the United States. It caused the deaths of many men and led to the creation of gangterism. The government finally recognized that it was a complete failure with terrible consequences, so it was repealed.
The gross errors of thecontrol of drugs are exactly the same as those of Prohibiton only they are on a greater scale of murders and in most countries where Prohibition was limited to the States.
The radical solution to the problem is as follows;
1. The legalization of the consumption of drugs of all kinds.
2. The drugs will be sold over the counter in drugstores with no prescriptions. The buyer will be given a pamphle encouraging him or her to take the cure at a clinic at government expense.
3. Syringes will be purchssed at drugstores as easily as aspirin.
The results of the legalization would be immediate and of great impact as follows;
1. The prices of the drugs would diminish to their normal value.
2. The drug mafias would collapse immediately with an end to the continual murders among rival gangs.
3. The laundering of huge sums of money would come to an abrupt end.
4. Drug addicts would be able to come out of the closet and be encouraged to seek cures.
5. HIV contact by the multiple use of syringes would cease abruptly.
The Principle Objection to the Legalization of Drugs is that it would supposedly encourage the massive use of drugs. This was the same argument used by the Christian Far Right in the States that the elimination of Prohibition would increase the number of alcoholics. The statistics showed, however, that in the years following the suspension of Prohibition did not increase at all. This would be the same result with the legalization of drugs. The number of persons who are drug addicts has been established in all the countries. Those people who do not take drugs and who are the immense majorities in those countries will not give up the strength of their characters to start taking drugs just as in the case of the great majority of the American people who were not alcoholics during Probition did not become alcholics when it was finally suspended.
http://peterreynolds.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/i-weep-for-jamaica/
Just look what's happening in Jamaica now!
Drug laws promote organised crime and corruption. Legalise, tax, regulate. It makes sense.
Joao,
I am an university professor, a researcher and social scientist. I'm quite interested in the drug policies adapted in Portugal (I was born in Lisbon, many, many, many years ago..).
I will be in Lisbon at the end of the month. E-mail me and let me know if we could get together to discuss your work in Lisbon regarding drug therapy and policies.
thanks you
Eddie
All signatories to the Single Convention (and subsequent covenants) are aiding and abetting the subsequent mayhem (a) because it is happening on their collective watch and (b) they have collectively or individually failed to do any impact assessment's yet have been advised by a chronic legacy of prohibitions systemic 'failure' have chosen to give licence to all that is rotten, from hangings (for pot dammit!), prohibition sponsored violence, prohibitions subsidised black markets corrupting civil society and craven human rights vile'ations [on a global scale] that makes apartheid look good.
All this science, experience and evidence telling us we got it wrong.
Its an abrogation of common sense...
First we have to stop media, politicians and police lying 'about drugs'.
The most principled reason for a drug policy with social integrity is it will remove the impediments to credible 'anti-drug' education. Such policy will work for alcohol and usefully re-engage youth.
It would probably look something like this...
(seeing as this legislative standard is UN compliant and has Royal assent in a western democracy, it should, I think deservedly, attract more international attention)
see New Zealand, Misuse of Drugs (Restricted Substances) Regulations 2008 - 11 May 2008/373. Anand Satyanand, Governor General. Order in Council ...
http://www.legislation.govt.nz/regulation/public/2008/.../096be8ed802cbf5d.pdf
How to regulate drugs and keep Police, Media and Politicians out of the mix! (see explanatory note: pg 5)
Is this crucial 'soft' drug policy adjustment too incredulous for folk to believe... ?
If there ever was an opportunity going to waste this has to be it.
Soros [el al]? Where are you?
Wow. were we to adapt any of these radical solutions the fallout would be massive. geting to the point of being able to accept that these solutins may wok will take some stiff lobbying on the parts of many. the problem of drug use will be a long time in coming to a permanant solution if ever. Education on the part of both the users and the ones who are working to develop solutions to the problem will be met by a variety of roadblocks. we must develop a stiff upper lip and perservere no matter what.