The current state of drug policy debate

Trends in the last decade in the European Union and United Nations

 

I. Initial considerations

Drug control originates from a desire to protect human well-being. The international community, concerned about the impact of drugs on public health, began to prohibit a series of substances and establish measures to eliminate their production, distribution and consumption. The initial phrase of the first UN treaty on drug control, 1961, speaks of a concern for the health and welfare of mankind. Since then, the illegal drug economy has grown at an exponential rate, achieving a certain market stability around the beginning of the nineteen nineties. The strategy to combat drugs led to a large-scale war, with extreme actions such as military operations against small farmers of illegal plants, chemical fumigation of illegal drug crops, wholesale imprisonment of users and small distributors, and even the death penalty for those who break the law relating to drugs in some countries. The prohibition of illegal drugs places the markets of this lucrative trade in the hands of criminal organizations, and creates enormous illegal funds which stimulate armed conflicts throughout the world.

This document offers an overview of the current trends in the search for possible alternative policies, particularly in the scope of the European Union and the United Nations. When speaking of alternative policies, it is easy to fall into the trap of over-simplifying the difference between prohibition and legalization. However, thinking in terms of this dichotomy is of little use when searching for strategies for change. At an abstract level, in the conceptual debate, bringing to the discussion the concept of legalization might be useful for questioning the current system. But legalization is not necessarily the answer, or the solution, for all the problems related to the existence of the illegal drugs economy. Just as extremely repressive methods used to control drugs can have harmful effects, so the absence of certain control measures can also have a negative effect on public health.

In terms of measures to control psychoactive substances, there is currently a wide diversity worldwide, and also vast differences in the administrative and criminal sanctions applied in each country. The UN conventions establish global norms in this respect: The Single Convention of 1961, with its lists of narcotics, the Convention on Psychotropic Substances; 1971, the Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, 1988, with its lists of precursors; and more recently, the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, 2003. The norms established by the United Nations have little logic, and have been shown to be full of inconsistencies from the very outset.

Instead of reducing the debate to the dichotomy mentioned above, it would be more useful to take as an image, a scheme which represents a continuum of different models and forms of control, and which can be divided under four main headings:

	I	II	III	IV
	War on drugs	UN Treaties to prohibit drugs	Regulation of legal substances	Free trade
Characteristics	- Extreme repression - Militarization	- Worldwide norms - Prohibition based on zero tolerance - Medical prescription	- Administrative controls - Big differences between countries	Use and distribution without international control
Examples of practices	- Fumigation - Mass imprisonment - Death penalty	- Penal sanctions for possession, trafficking - System of licenses for legal uses	- Licenses for production and sale, restriction for minors, etc. - Tobacco: WHO convention on control	- Control of mushrooms, khat and ephedrine in various countries. - Alkaloids of some treaties
Substances	Coca/cocaine Opium/Heroin Cannabis, ATS	More than 200 substances on the lists of the 1961 and 1971 Treaties	Alcohol, Tobacco	Coffee, khat, kava, ephedrine, mushrooms hallucinogens, etc.

The UN Treaties on drug control, which form the backbone of the prohibition regime, are just part of the problem in relation to the damage that is generated by some of their articles. There is not a single article in the conventions, for example, which obliges the signatory nations to imprison drug users or fumigate fields of illegal crops with herbicides. These control measures are carried out outside the norms established by the UN. Thus, as certain Islamic countries have decided to maintain the prohibition of alcohol and give criminal sanction to its consumption outside the worldwide norms, a large part of the true anti-drug war which falls under the first heading of the scheme is carried out at the margins of the established norms.

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