Category: International

Thinking outside the box in Mexico City

“There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”

Leonard Cohen

That is how I started my presentation at the most amazing drug policy reform conference in Mexico City, organized by Mexico Unido Contra la Delincuencia (Mexico United Against Crime) February 12 – 14^th, 2012. I played a song from Canada’s most famous poet, Leonard Cohen, which included the words, “There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” Mexico is certainly in need of some light. The long dark tunnel that is their present war on drug cartels continues to see death and despair permeate their news on a daily basis.

Gillian Maxwell, CDPC’s Executive Committee member and I attended this important drug policy dialogue together in Mexico. The conference brought some of the leading thinkers in drug policy reform globally, NGOs from Mexico, academics from Mexican universities and members of the business community from Monterrey and Mexico City.

The organizers were determined to “think outside the box,” and search for alternatives to the war on drugs that their government is waging on the cartels that is literally killing thousands of people in their country.

Over 53,000 have died since 2006, others put the figure closer to 60,000.

Held in the magnificent Museo Nacional de Antropología the conference had an historic air to it. Surrounded by thousands of years of Mexican history the intractable problem currently facing the country was put into perspective by centuries of history, energy and artifacts in the Museo. One can feel the frustration with the continuing violence of the drug war. But Mexico is at a tipping point. The country may be getting close to breaking away from its historic path and taking a major leadership role in charting a new way forward with its Latin American allies.

Those who attended the conference heard many reasons to take a new direction and consider alternative approaches to drug policy in Mexico. Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director at the Drug Policy Alliance in the US, urged Mexican participants to do what is best for Mexico and not to wait for the United States to change its direction. He spoke of the historic leadership position that Mexico has in the region and the opportunity to lead other Latin American countries as they question the prevailing ideology of the war on drugs. This was echoed by other speakers from the US including Jack Cole from Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and former Judge, James Gray from California.

As a citizen of a US border state I had to admit that Canadians often have the same discussion – how can we change any of our drug policies independently of the Americans? But in fact, it was our good sense that lit the way for the US to abandon alcohol prohibition in the 1930s. And I believe we can do it again by designing an exit strategy for the war on drugs.

Mexico is in the strongest of moral positions to call for an end to the drug war.

There is movement afoot. Two weeks before the conference in Mexico, Guatemalan President, Otto Perez Molina called for all Central American leaders to consider decriminalising drugs in an upcoming regional meeting. Cesar Gaviria, Colombia’s former President then presented at the conference and clearly called for legalization of drugs as a new way forward in the region.

Steve Rolles, from the Transform Drug Policy Foundation laid out Transforms’ prize winning strategy paper, A Blueprint for Regulation that is one of the most well thought-out arguments for moving to a legally regulated regime for all psychoactive drugs.

Nuno Capaz, a Sociologist at Instituto da Droga e da Toxicodepencia in Portugal outlined how Portugal decided to decriminalize all drugs for personal possession some 10 years ago and how that has been a success in terms of overdose prevention, HIV prevention and access to treatment. In addition, drug use itself has not increased and across many demographics has actually decreased.

The second morning of the conference, Javier Sicilia came into the room and was graciously received by the conference organizers. Sicilia, a poet and journalist who lost his son to drug war violence has been leading a movement for peace and dignity in Mexico convening marches in the street and calling for the Mexican population to join him to protest the violence that is the daily reality in Mexico today.

Sicilia attended the conference to learn how drug policy might have some answers to his questions. We met and hugged each other and conversed with rudimentary bits and pieces of language and many gestures and agreed to meet again to work on a plan for peace. Very cool!

There were many other speakers from the Netherlands, Australia, the US, and the indefatigable Senator Larry Campbell from Canada. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime also gave an incredibly uninspiring, formulaic presentation that could only be called “maintain the status quo propaganda” and actually defended the drug war effort with its collateral damage of 50,000+ deaths.

At the end of the three days in the Anthropology Museum, the directors of the MUCD pronounced the conclusions of the conference from their perspective. They were indeed a radical departure from the status quo.

Among the eight key points, they called for Mexico to take a public health approach to drugs, and they asserted that countries must be allowed to take a sovereign approach to addressing drug problems that are in the best interests of their people. They also called for Mexico to move gradually towards a model of regulation and control of currently illegal drugs. Sound familiar? This is the same discussion that many Canadians and Americans are having.

The movement for change is growing. If countries like Mexico can begin to move towards their own made-in-Mexico plan then surely Canadians can figure out a way out of the war on drugs. As with alcohol prohibition, perhaps the US needs Canadian ingenuity and leadership once again to lead the way. Let’s be those leaders.

March 15, 2012
Challenging prohibition: a missing perspective

Tonight the Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional affairs heard from a huge variety of witnesses, from researchers at the Canadian Center on Substance Abuse to Chief Ron Evans of the Norway House First Nation to representatives of the RCMP.

In all, ten witnesses were called. Nearly every witness—including those representing law enforcement—made it clear that a variety of approaches are required to stem drug-related crime, not just enforcement.

However, not a single witness dared question the efficacy of drug prohibition itself. This important framework was in fact almost entirely missing from the discussion. And with the Senate declining to hear from the Canadian Drug Policy Coalition’s Director, Donald Macpherson, it is unclear if such a perspective will be raised in the hearings to come.

Witness after witness in today’s hearings sung the praises of harsher sentencing for drug crimes, even though there is no evidence that this approach works to either deter or rehabilitate individuals. What we do know is that prohibition continues to fill the coffers of organized criminals.

Gwendolyne Landolt, Vice President of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, went so far as to claim that prohibition was indeed a successful policy given that alcohol consumption decreased during the prohibition era in the United States from 1920 to 1933. However, as evidenced by a recent report from the Health Officers Council of British Columbia, this is actually like comparing apples to oranges.

During prohibition, there may have been a decrease in alcohol consumption, but there was in fact a marked increase in organized crime.

After prohibition, alcohol was not only legalized, but drinking was heavily promoted by the alcohol industry.  Senator Joyal came closest to questioning this failed prohibition approach when he brought up the open letter recently signed by four former BC attorneys general.

In that letter, the attorneys general compare the violence and bloodshed during prohibition to the current situation in British Columbia, where organized crime turns a healthy profit through marijuana and synthetic drugs.  Despite the misinformation put forward by witnesses such as Ms. Landolt, who claimed that young people who use drugs can never hope to participate in society, the fact is that substance use takes place on a spectrum, ranging from beneficial, through recreational, to problematic. The majority of Canadians who use or have used drugs do not suffer from problematic effects or harmful abuse. Perhaps it’s time our lawmakers took these facts into consideration, and produced policy based on health, regulation and human rights.

February 16, 2012
Book Review-The Political Economy of Narcotics: Production, Consumption and Global Markets

by Craig Jones Former Executive Director, The John Howard Society of Canada.

The Political Economy of Narcotics: Production, Consumption and Global Markets
By Julia Buxton, PhD
Zed Books, 2007,

Julia Buxton sets herself two purposes: first, to explain how the “balloon effect” undermines even the best executed drug prohibition policies conceived according to the logic of supply suppression and, second, to lay the blame for all the evils associated with global drug prohibition at the feet of the United States. In both purposes she succeeds through the mobilization of abundant evidence – for the first purpose – and historical argument for the second.

The book is organized into sixteen chapters starting with the history of intoxicating substances and ending with a short but pointed review of how the global prohibitionist regime has deprived humanity of one of nature’s most flexible and useful products: hemp. Throughout, Buxton weaves historical narrative into a discussion of the political interests and personalities which shaped the ideology of supply suppression that came to be embodied in the institutions of international drug control through the United Nations Conventions. Missing from this account, however, is the public choice story of how specific institutions in the United States captured the drug control issue and turned it to the growth of their own mission, organizational ambit and resource base.

Though not unique to the United States, the political economy of American politics – particularly the outsized influence of specific individuals occupying particular offices – has given, and continues to give, the United States extraordinary influence over United Nations drug control conventions. Effectively, the United States has – with the compliance of most of the world’s major states – exported its own supply-side drug suppression preference to the rest of the planet through its control over the relevant United Nations institutions. This has resulted in these organs gaining extraordinary influence over the application of the drug conventions in member countries with the effect of limiting the range of the possible where harm reduction and non-prohibitionist alternatives are concerned. This, Buxton argues, has been a catastrophe – and not just for drug users.

For it is the irrefutable truth that drug prohibition cuts across and poisons every policy domain associated with the modern nation state. There is almost no issue area – as Buxton shows in chapter after chapter – that is not complicated or made more problematic by the aggressive criminality that supply-side drug prohibition unleashes. Nor does it have to be this way. But for the singular obsessive policy focus of American prohibitionists, much could have been done to address demand – and the harm that arises from demand – with considerable benefits for public health and the reduction of crime. Like others who have examined this issue, Buxton finds that drug prohibition, American-style, amounts to harm maximization.

Of the evils associated with global drug prohibition, she is nearly exhaustive – at least in itemizing the worst of them. A longer book could have gone into more detail on the pervasive corruption of authorities in countries which most vigorously enforce prohibition. Much of what is wrong with drug prohibition is explained at a high, though not too high, level of abstraction – and well referenced in the bibliography – making this a good choice for a university or college course on the harm and unintended consequences global drug prohibition.

Buxton spares no criticism for the mechanisms and methodologies of data collection employed by the international regimes responsible for prosecuting the global drug war. Anyone following this issue has already concluded that even the most reliable numbers and data leave much to be desired. From one annual UN World Drug Report to another the metrics change, trends are dropped or initiated and the reader comes away wondering whether there is a systematic effort to enable or inhibit critical scrutiny of what’s really going on. This, Buxton explains, arises from a preference for quantitative methodologies while ignoring qualitative data, methods and approaches that would create a more fleshed-out perspective of drugs and drug users.

Buxton is not the first, and won’t be the last, to argue that drug prohibition has been aided and abetted by the kind of science that is funded in its name. This too is an area that might have warranted deeper explanation. The political economy of research funding on drugs and their effects – much of it funded through the U.S. National Institutes of Health — is heavily skewed toward the production of negative findings, a feature of how the institutions which fund research into illicit drugs have been captured by the ideology and interests of supply-side strategies.

Students of drug prohibition have studied to the “balloon effect” since the debut of the war on drugs in the Nixon Administration. The phenomenon is easy to understand. Using a drug control strategy premised upon supply suppression – as distinct from demand reduction – initiates a pattern whereby eradication in one region produces a surge of production in another, much the way squeezing a balloon in one place causes it to expand elsewhere. This iterative model has been observed countless times, yet ideology and organizational interests combine to disable prohibitionists from learning any lesson except to do more of the same.

The second feature of the balloon effect that Buxton touches on, but not does fully develop, is the widely observed tendency for a process of natural selection to take hold with drug traffickers and suppliers. This takes the form of state authorities weeding out the week and inefficient trafficking networks through crackdown in one region which produces the unintended consequence of strengthening the survivors and reducing their competition. Drug prohibition, seen in this light, is a strategy for driving drug traffickers and producers toward more violent tactics and practices – such as we are currently seeing on the Mexico-United States border. Only the most innovative and ruthless producers survive, pushing the global drug war into a spiral of increasingly militarized violence as traffickers adopt the tactics and weapons of national armies with whom they are increasingly in direct combat.

For students of drug prohibition, there is little that is new here. Buxton puts the arguments together with good effect, showing how the execution of supply-side focused drug prohibition makes everything about drugs, and drug use, worse than it would otherwise be. My only quarrel is that she could have been more explicit in drawing out the political economy implications of her arguments for readers who ask “What’s this got to do with me?” Buxton could have been more explicit in showing how the crusading pursuit of an unachievable utopia bends the energies and resources of the state, and its enforcement apparatus, to undemocratic and militaristic ends while enriching and enlarging the power and violence of organized crime. We all have a dog in this fight. We are all collateral damage in the war on drugs.
–
Craig Jones, PhD
Kingston ON

January 17, 2012
Sir Richard Branson: ‘Time to end the war on drugs’

Ten years ago the Portuguese Government responded to widespread public concern over drugs by rejecting a “war on drugs” approach and instead decriminalized drug possession and use. It further rebuffed convention by placing the responsibility for decreasing drug demand as well as managing dependency under the Ministry of Health rather than the Ministry of Justice. With this, the official response towards drug-dependent persons shifted from viewing them as criminals to treating them as patients.

Now with a decade of experience Portugal provides a valuable case study of how decriminalization coupled with evidence-based strategies can reduce drug consumption, dependence, recidivism and HIV infection and create safer communities for all.

I will set out clearly what I learned from my visit to Portugal and would urge other countries to study this:

In 2001 Portugal became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines.

Jail time was replaced with offer of therapy. (The argument was that the fear of prison drives addicts underground and that incarceration is much more expensive than treatment).

Under Portugal’s new regime, people found guilty of possessing small amounts of drugs are sent to a panel consisting of a psychologist, social worker, and legal adviser for appropriate treatment (which may be refused without criminal punishment), instead of jail.

Critics in the poor, socially conservative and largely Catholic nation said decriminalizing drug possession would open the country to “drug tourists” and exacerbate Portugal’s drug problem; the country has some of the highest levels of hard-drug use in Europe. The recently realised results of a report commissioned by the Cato Institute, suggest otherwise.

The paper, published by Cato in April 2011, found that in the five years after personal possession was decriminalized, illegal drug use among teens in Portugal declined and rates of new HIV infections caused by sharing of dirty needles dropped, while the number of people seeking treatment for drug addiction more than doubled.

It has enabled the Portuguese government to manage and control the problem far better than virtually every other Western country does.

Compared to the European Union and the US, Portugal drug use numbers are impressive.

Following decriminalization, Portugal has the lowest rate of lifetime marijuana use in people over 15 in the EU: 10%. The most comparable figure in America is in people over 12: 39.8%, Proportionally, more Americans have used cocaine than Portuguese have used marijuana.

The Cato paper reports that between 2001 and 2006 in Portugal, rates of lifetime use of any illegal drug among seventh through ninth graders fell from 14.1% to 10.6%. Drug use in older teens also declined. Life time heroin use among 16-18 year olds fell from 2.5% to 1.8%.

New HIV infections in drug users fell by 17% between 1999 and 2003.

Death related to heroin and similar drugs were cut by more than half.

The number of people on methadone and buprenorphine treatment for drug addiction rose to 14,877 from 6,040, after decriminalization, and the considerable money saved on enforcement allowed for increase funding of drug – free treatment as well.

Property theft has dropped dramatically (50% – 80% of all property theft worldwide is caused by drug users).

America has the highest rates of cocaine and marijuana use in the world, and while most of the EU (including Holland) has more liberal drug laws than the US, it also has less drug use.

Current policy debate is that it’s based on “speculation and fear mongering”, rather than empirical evidence on the effect of more lenient drug policies. In Portugal, the effect was to neutralize what had become the country’s number one public health problem.

Decriminalization does not result in increased drug use.

Portugal’s 10 year experiment shows clearly that enough is enough. It is time to end the war on drugs worldwide. We must stop criminalising drug users. Health and treatment should be offered to drug users – not prison. Bad drugs policies affect literally hundreds of thousands of individuals and communities across the world. We need to provide medical help to those that have problematic use – not criminal retribution.

READ THIS POST ON RICHARD”S BLOG >>

For more info on Drug Policy in Portugal, take a look at the report issued by the Open Society Institute last August.
Drug Policy in Portugal: The Benefits of Decriminalizing Drug Use >>

December 19, 2011
World AIDS Day

UNAIDS has a new five year strategy for Getting to Zero.

Zero transmission and zero new HIV infections globally. This is an incredible challenge considering there are 34 million people living with HIV in the world. Yet, there are indicators of success and glimmers of hope that suggest that there is chance of getting to see the end of AIDS. This years UNAIDS world AIDS day report gives an overview of the challenges ahead.

GETTING TO ZERO:FASTER. BETTER. STRONGER

We are at a pivotal moment in addressing new HIV infections globally.

Economic fallouts, unstable environments and shifting political agendas threaten the progress that has been made. World AIDS day provides a focal point for us to call upon our leaders to take on the hard issues and honor their commitments to end HIV and AIDS.

“Drug users now account for a third of all HIV infections outside of sub-Saharan Africa; their devastation is compounded by perverse, punitive, destructive government policies.” Stephen Lewis

Here in Canada it is disconcerting that the Canadian Federal government is moving towards increased criminalization as a mode of drug crime prevention. The evidence is clear , imposing punitive measures on people who do not hurt others in their drug use is unproductive and harmful. It’s difficult to understand why change has not come faster.The war on drugs has not succeeded and the race to end AIDS requires that we act wisely and prudently. Let us look to the evidence to guide us, honor human rights and promote healthy lifestyles. The Canadian Drug Policy Coalition partners have many campaigns for health, human rights and change.

The week of November 24 to December 1 marks Canadian HIV/AIDS Awareness Week.

Check out whats going on in your area.
Coalition Partners in Change:

The Canadian AIDS Society is commemorating it 25th anniversary this year and has chosen this years theme to be DO Something. They have a video contest with a winner to be announced shortly and a number of poster and list of resources and events happening throughout Canada.

The Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network

Overall, the HIV infection rate for Aboriginal people (First Nations, Métis and Inuit) was about 3.6 times higher than among other Canadians. This year the Aboriginal Aids Awareness week will provide an opportunity to reach out to national Aboriginal organizations, government partners, health care providers, and community leaders to support change through their own action and by supporting the actions of others.

Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network has been working on a number of fronts to challenge unproductive and punitive drug laws.They have recently developed a toolkit for dealing with HIV and criminalization. In another more recent report the Legal Network has called for pragmatic strategies to reducing harms such as HIV based on principals of humane and human rights-based addiction treatment.

November 29, 2011
Global Commission on Drug Policy
New York: 06/02/11

A high level Global Commission on Drug Policy is challenging governments around the world to stop the so-called “war on drugs” and to infuse drug policies with a human rights and public health approach.

In a report released on June 2nd, 2011 the Commission called on political leaders and public figures to find the “courage to articulate publicly what many of them acknowledge privately: that the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that repressive strategies will not solve the drug problem, and that the war on drugs has not, and cannot, be won”.

Members of the Commission, which include the former presidents of Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Switzerland, the current Prime Minister of Greece, the former US Secretary of State George Shultz, as well as former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, say that the four decades long “global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world”.

This call for a new drug policy paradigm comes at an extremely crucial time in Canadian drug policy development. The new Conservative Canadian Government is expected to table a broad ranging crime bill this month that will, on a number of fronts, fly in the face of the Commission’s recommendations. Drawing momentum from a “tough on crime” election campaign the Conservative government plans to roll together a number of previously tabled bills into one large omnibus crime bill. The bill would likely include a new law requiring mandatory minimum sentences for drug crimes, including cannabis related offenses.

Having spent immense amounts of money, time and resources on repressive measures and criminalisation, many governments around the world have failed to curtail supply or consumption of drugs. The US for example spent 15 billion dollars in 2010 on drug control.

Despite these efforts the supply and use of drugs is actually significantly up. The Commission’s report cited U.N. estimates that opiate use increased 34.5 per cent worldwide and cocaine 27 per cent from 1998 to 2008, while the use of marijuana was up 8.5 per cent.

The Canadian Conservative government’s determination to push forward repressive drug laws seems ideologically motivated and unconnected to sound evidence and global trends. Even the US policy epicenter of the ‘war on drugs’, with it’s overflowing population of non-violent drug related prisoners, is beginning to back away from harsh measures such as mandatory minimum sentencing and are considering moving towards alternative harm reduction models.

The evidence presented in the Commission’s report also shows that criminalising drug use and punishing users can significantly undermine public health efforts to stop the spread of HIV, prevent overdose fatalities and to mitigate other negative health consequences of drug use. The report points to the example of countries such as Thailand and Russia which have relied on repressive drug policies and discrimination and shows that these countries face far higher rates of HIV infection among injection drug users than other countries that have implemented harm reduction approaches.

The Commission report argues that, years of criminalisation, incarceration and supply reduction strategies have further offset more cost-effective and evidence-based investments in harm reduction. The treatment of drug users as patients rather than criminals is at the cornerstone of a public health approach that has “demonstrated positive results in crime reduction, health improvement, and overcoming dependence.”

The report does not advocate for a blanket legalization of drugs but rather that governments need to understand a public health approach and to base their drug policies on human rights and sound evidence.

Specific recommendations by the Commission include the following:
- End the criminalisation, marginalization and stigmatization of people who use drugs but who do no harm to others.
- Encourage experimentation by governments with models of legal regulation of drugs (especially cannabis) to undermine the power of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their citizens.
- Ensure that a variety of treatment modalities are available – including not just methadone and buprenorphine treatment but also the heroin-assisted treatment programs that have proven successful in many European countries and Canada.
- Apply human rights and harm reduction principles and policies both to people who use drugs as well as those involved in the lower ends of illegal drug markets such as farmers, couriers and petty sellers.
The Global Commission on Drug policy report is available here.

Here is statement made by a broad coalition of Canadian NGOs that support the report.
June 5, 2011