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The global war on drugs: has the end game started?

The global war on drugs: has the end game started?. 15 July 2009, Sydney Lowy Institute Dr Alex Wodak St. Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney. Aims global drug prohibition: . Minimise availability, use specified prohibited drugs recreational purposes

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The global war on drugs: has the end game started?

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  1. The global war on drugs: has the end game started? 15 July 2009, Sydney Lowy Institute Dr Alex Wodak St. Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney

  2. Aims global drug prohibition: • Minimise availability, use specified prohibited drugs recreational purposes • Ensure adequate availability drugs medical, scientific purposes • Indicators drug prohibition working: • Low availability drugs • High prices, low purity • Reducing consumption • Benefits > adverse effects

  3. Has drug prohibition worked? • Drugs still readily available • Prices falling dramatically, purity increasing • Production, consumption increasing • Benefits hard to identify • Adverse effects multiple, severe, serious, obvious

  4. Production: GLOBAL ILLICIT OPIUM PRODUCTION 1990 - 2007Source: UN World Drug Report 2008, Office on Drugs and Crime.http://www.unodc.org/documents/wdr/WDR_2008/Executive%20Summary.pdf

  5. Production: 2 GLOBAL COCAINE PRODUCTION 1990 - 2007Source: UN World Drug Report 2008, Office on Drugs and Crime.http://www.unodc.org/documents/wdr/WDR_2008/Executive%20Summary.pdf

  6. Production: 3 GLOBAL CANNABIS HERB PRODUCTION1998/99-2004/05Source: Figures prepared for the UN World Drug Report 2006, Office on Drugs and Crime; Costa Storti C & De Grauwe P, Globalisation and the Price Decline of Illicit Drugs, CESifo Working Paper 1990, 2007; Fig 6.http://www.cesifo-group.de/pls/guestci/download/CESifo%20Working%20Papers%202007/CESifo%20Working%20Papers%20May%202007/cesifo1_wp1990.pdf

  7. Availability: Heroin availability Australia 2000-2007

  8. Cocaine availability Australia 2000-2007 Availability: 2

  9. Availability: 3 Methamphetamine powder Australia 2000-2007

  10. Prices:Reuter, Trautmann ‘Global Illicit Drugs Markets 1981-2002’European Commission, 2009

  11. USA heroin price, purity 1980-1999:

  12. RETAIL PRICE MAJOR DRUG TYPES EUROPEAN UNION 2001-2006Source: European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (2008); State of the Drugs Problem; Drug availability and drug markets: price and purity information (PPP); Fig PPP-1. http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/html.cfm/index53151EN.html

  13. RETAIL PRICE HEROIN USA & EUROPE 1990-2005Source: Figures prepared for the UN World Drug Report 2006, Office on Drugs and Crime; Costa Storti C & De Grauwe P, Globalisation and the Price Decline of Illicit Drugs, CESifo Working Paper 1990, 2007; Fig 2.http://www.cesifo-group.de/pls/guestci/download/CESifo%20Working%20Papers%202007/CESifo%20Working%20Papers%20May%202007/cesifo1_wp1990.pdf

  14. RETAIL PRICE COCAINE USA & EUROPE 1990-2005Source: Figures prepared for the UN World Drug Report 2006, Office on Drugs and Crime; Costa Storti C & De Grauwe P, Globalisation and the Price Decline of Illicit Drugs, CESifo Working Paper 1990, 2007; Fig 1.http://www.cesifo-group.de/pls/guestci/download/CESifo%20Working%20Papers%202007/CESifo%20Working%20Papers%20May%202007/cesifo1_wp1990.pdf

  15. Price/incarceration: # INCARCERATED DRUG OFFENDERS RETAIL PRICE HEROIN, COCAINE UNITED STATES 1981-2003Source: Figures prepared for the Office of the National Drug Control Policy; Washington Office on Latin America; 2003http://www.wola.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=viewp&id=397

  16. Price/expenditure: US SPENDING OVERSEAS SUPPLY CONTROL VS HEROIN, COCAINE WHOLESALE PRICESource: Figures prepared for the Office of the National Drug Control Policy; Washington Office on Latin America; 2003http://www.wola.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=viewp&id=397

  17. Adequate supply drugs medicines: • 15% world’s population 1999 accounted 87% global morphine consumption • USA 4.7% global population: accounted 49% global morphine, 99% sustained release oxycodone • Only 10 million / 20 million new global cancer cases/year receive adequate pain relief

  18. Benefits of prohibition: • Global last 40 years • Brief USA heroin shortage 1970s • NZ heroin shortage > 1981 • Sweden? • Australia heroin shortage > 2000?

  19. Adverse effects: ‘Global drug control efforts have had a dramatic unintended consequence: a criminal black market of staggering proportions. Organized crime is a threat to security. Criminal organizations have the power to destabilize society and Governments. The illicit drug business is worth billions of dollars a year, part of which is used to corrupt government officials and to poison economies. Drug cartels are spreading violence in Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean. West Africa is under attack from narco-trafficking. Collusion between insurgents and criminal groups threatens the stability of West Asia, the Andes and parts of Africa, fuelling the trade in smuggled weapons, the plunder of natural resources and piracy’ UNODC website

  20. Narco-states: • Afghanistan • Pakistan • Burma • Colombia • Peru • Bolivia • Mexico

  21. Narco-terrorism: • Known terrorist organizations trafficking drugs fund operations, gain recruits, expertise • Colombia • Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) • United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia (AUC) • Peru • Afghanistan, Pakistan - Taliban

  22. Mexico, Pakistan: ‘In terms of worst-case scenarios for the Joint Force and indeed the world, two large and important states bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse: Pakistan and Mexico. The Mexican … government, its politicians, police, and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug cartels’ The Joint Operating Environment United States Joint Forces Command November 2008

  23. Pakistan, Afghanistan • Pakistan • Nuclear armed • Unstable • Afghanistan • International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) • Taliban military funded (in part) opium/heroin • 93% world opium • 70% Helmund, Kandahar provinces

  24. What do experts think? ‘It is very doubtful if such prohibition has lessened to an extent the amount which is brought in to Australia’… ‘owing to total prohibition, the price of opium has risen enormously … the Commonwealth gladly gave up about £ 60,000 revenue with a view to a suppression of the evil, but the result has not been what has been hoped for. What now appears to be the effect of total prohibition is that, while we have lost the duty, the opium is still imported pretty freely’ H.N.P. Wollaston, Commonwealth Comptroller-General of Customs Annual report Commonwealth Parliament 1908

  25. Expert opinion Australia ‘All the evidence shows, however, not only that our law enforcement agencies have not succeeded in preventing the supply of illegal drugs to Australian markets but that it is unrealistic to expect them to do so’ Parliamentary Joint Committee on the National Crime Authority 1989

  26. Expert opinion USA ‘It seems to me we're not really going to get anywhere until we can take the criminality out of the drug business and the incentives for criminality out of it. Frankly, the only way I can think of to accomplish this is to make it possible for addicts to buy drugs at some regulated place at a price that approximates their cost... We need at least to consider and examine forms of controlled legalization of drugs...’ George Shultz, former US Secretary of State, 1989

  27. Expert opinion USA ‘The United States alone is spending over $800 million a year on counter-narcotics. We have gotten nothing out of it, nothing. It is the most wasteful and ineffective programme I have seen in 40 years’ Richard Holbrooke US envoy to Afghanistan & Pakistan 2009

  28. Expert opinion USA ‘Drugs are a tragedy for addicts. But criminalizing their use converts that tragedy into a disaster for society, for users and nonusers alike. Our experience with the prohibition of drugs is a replay of our experience with the prohibition of alcoholic beverages’ Milton Friedman Nobel Prize Economics

  29. Expert opinion USA ‘As long as there is a demand for drugs in this country, some crook is gonna figure out how to get 'em here’ President George W. Bush 2002

  30. Expert opinion UK ‘Politicians attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator by posturing with tough policies and calling for crackdown after crackdown. Drugs policy has been failing for decades’ David Cameron Leader, Conservative Party, United Kingdom 2,005

  31. Expert opinion UK ‘If there is any single lesson from the experience of the last 30 years, it is that policies based wholly or mainly on enforcement are destined to fail. It remains an unhappy fact that the best efforts of police and Customs have had little, if any, impact on the availability of illegal drugs and this is reflected in the prices on the street which are as low as they have ever been’ Select Committee on Home Affairs House of Commons, UK, 2002

  32. Expert opinion UK ‘Attempts to combat illegal drugs by means of law enforcement have proved so manifestly unsuccessful that it is difficult to argue for the status quo’ Chris Mullin Chairman Select Committee on Home Affairs House of Commons, UK, 2002

  33. Expert opinion UK ‘A sustained seizure rate of over 60% is required to put a successful trafficker out of business – anecdotal evidence suggests that seizure rates as high as 80% may be needed in some cases. Sustained successful interventions on this scale have never been achieved’ Strategy Unit, Whitehall, UK, 2003

  34. Expert opinion UK ‘Over the past 10-15 years, despite interventions at every point in the supply chain, cocaine and heroin consumption have been rising, prices falling and drugs have continued to reach users. Government interventions against the drug business are a cost of doing business, rather than a substantive threat to the industry’s viability’ Strategy Unit, Whitehall, UK, 2003

  35. Expert opinion UN ‘…Many countries impose criminal sanctions for same-sex sex, commercial sex and drug injection. Such laws constitute major barriers to reaching key populations with HIV services. Those behaviours should be decriminalized, and people addicted to drugs should receive health services for the treatment of their addiction’ UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon 7 May 2009

  36. The beginning of the end: January: • President Obama took office • 3rd US President in row admit cannabis • ‘War on drugs is an utter failure' • [I believe in] 'shifting the paradigm, shifting the model, so that we focus more on a public health approach.' • Campaign commitments: • overcome ban Federal funding NSPs • stop Federal interventions if states permitted medical use cannabis

  37. Beginning of the end: February • Latin American drug policy commission • Fernando Henrique Cardoso (Brasil) • César Gaviria (Colombia) • Ernesto Zedillo (Mexico) • ‘Drug War is a failure’ • ‘Break taboo on open debate including about cannabis decriminalization’

  38. Beginning of the end: March • Meeting CND Vienna • Political Declaration excluded ‘harm reduction’- caused major split • 26 countries (including Australia) demanded support for harm reduction in footnote

  39. Beginning of the end: May • Governor California: ‘Well, I think it’s not time for [legalization], but I think it’s time for a debate’ • Former President Vicente Fox, Mexico:  ‘I am not yet convinced that that’s the solution’ but ‘why not discuss it?’  • Current Vice President Colombia Franciso Santos Calderón: ‘the only way you can really solve the problem [is] if you legalize it totally. Anything…different than that...will not work’

  40. Beginning of the end: May (cont’d) • New US drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske - don’t use term ‘War on Drugs’ • Germany 63% vote Bundestag allow heroin prescription treatment • UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon: ‘drug injection … should be decriminalized’

  41. Opinion polls USA cannabis: • Should marijuana be legal, taxed and regulated? Yes – 52% National, 58% California Zogby,April 2009 • Do you favour ‘legalizing small amounts of marijuana for personal use’ – Yes 46%, > double level 1997 National, ABC News/Washington Post, April 2009 • Do you support legalizing marijuana for recreational use and taxing its proceeds – Yes 56% California,The Field Poll, April 2009 • Should cannabis be legal for adults – Yes 54% Should it be taxed at same rate as alcohol – Yes- 50% California, Oaksterdam University, March 2009

  42. The Debate: ‘But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy’ Sir Richard Dearlove Head of MI6 War Cabinet, 10 Downing Street 23 July 2002

  43. Why does prohibition persist? • ‘The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary’ H. L. Mencken • Effective drug policies are unpopular, but popular drug policies are ineffective

  44. What are the alternatives? • Regard illicit drugs as primarily a health & social issue • Increase funding health, social interventions to level of drug law enforcement • Base policy on evidence, get best return on investment • Reduce, eliminate penalties drug possession, consumption

  45. Alternatives? 2 • Treatment drug users • Expand capacity • Improve quality • Broaden range options • Tax, regulate cannabis • Possibly allow dilute, small quantity recreational sale some drugs • <1906 edible opium taxed and sold • <1913 cocaine in Coca Cola

  46. Conclusions: • Global drug prohibition began 100 years ago • Has not: • Reduced recreational use illicit drugs • Ensured adequate supplies drugs medical purposes • Drug prohibition has failed comprehensively • Cannot be made to work • Now increasingly recognised • Political elites know prohibition does not work

  47. Conclusions: 2 • Adverse effects serious, include threats to security • Drug law reform is now politically feasible • Need to consider alternatives: regard primarily as health, social problem • Reduce economic inequality to reduce illicit drug use • Worst way to use illicit drugs is for political purposes

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