It looked like the first drop of rain in the desert of drugs policy. Lastweek Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UN Office on Drugs andCrime, said what millions of liberal-minded people have been waiting to hear."Law enforcement should shift its focus from drug users to drug traffickers… people who take drugs need medical help, not criminal retribution"(1).Drugs production should remain illegal, possession and use should bedecriminalised. Guardian readers toasted him with bumpers of pepperminttea, and, perhaps, a celebratory spliff. I didn’t.
I believe that informed adults should be allowed to inflict whatever sufferingthey wish - on themselves. But we are not entitled to harm other people. I knowpeople who drink fair trade tea and coffee, shop locally and take cocaine atparties. They are revolting hypocrites.
Every year cocaine causes some 20,000 deaths in Colombia(2) and displacesseveral hundred thousand people from their homes(3). Children are blown up bylandmines; indigenous people are enslaved, villagers are tortured and killed,rainforests are razed(4). You’d cause less human suffering if instead ofdiscreetly retiring to the toilet at a media drinks party you went into thestreet and mugged someone. But the counter-cultural association appears toinsulate people from ethical questions. If commissioning murder, torture,slavery, civil war, corruption and deforestation is not a crime, what is?
I am talking about elective drug use, not addiction. I cannot find comparativefigures for the United Kingdom, but in the US casual users of cocaine outnumberaddicts by around 12 to one(5). I agree that addicts should be helped, notprosecuted. I would like to see a revival of the British programme that waskilled by a tabloid witch-hunt in 1971: until then all heroin addicts wereentitled to clean, legal supplies administered by doctors(6). Cocaine addictsshould be offered residential detox. But, at the risk of alienating most of thereadership of this newspaper, I maintain that while cocaine remains illegal,casual users should remain subject to criminal law. Decriminalisation of theproducts of crime expands the market for this criminal trade.
We have a choice of two consistent policies. The first is to sustain globalprohibition, while helping addicts and prosecuting casual users. This means thatthe drugs trade will remain the preserve of criminal gangs. It will keepspreading crime and instability around the world, and ensure that narcotics arestill cut with contaminants. As Nick Davies argued during his investigation ofdrugs policy for the Guardian, major seizures raise the price ofdrugs(7). Demand among addicts is inelastic, so higher prices mean that theymust find more money to buy them. The more drugs the police capture and destroy,the more robberies and muggings addicts will commit.
The other possible policy is to legalise and regulate the global trade. Thiswould undercut the criminal networks and guarantee unadulterated supplies toconsumers. There might even be a market for certified fairtrade cocaine.
Mr Costa’s new report begins by rejecting this option. If it did otherwise, hewould no longer be executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. Thereport argues that "any reduction in the cost of drug control … will beoffset by much higher expenditure on public health (due to the surge of drugconsumption)"(8). It admits that tobacco and alcohol kill more people thanillegal drugs, but claims that this is only because fewer illegal drugs areconsumed(9). Strangely however, it fails to supply any evidence to support theclaim that narcotics are dangerous. Nor does it distinguish between the effectsof the drugs themselves and the effects of the adulteration and disease causedby their prohibition.
Why not? Perhaps because the evidence would torpedo the rest of the report. Acouple of weeks ago, Ben Goldacre drew attention to the largest study on cocaineever undertaken, completed by the World Health Organisation in 1995(10). I’vejust read it, and this is what it says. "Health problems from the use of legalsubstances, particularly alcohol and tobacco, are greater than health problemsfrom cocaine use. Few experts describe cocaine as invariably harmful to health.Cocaine-related problems are widely perceived to be more common and more severefor intensive, high-dosage users and very rare and much less severe foroccasional, low-dosage users … occasional cocaine use does not typically leadto severe or even minor physical or social problems"(11). This study wassuppressed by the WHO after threats of an economic embargo by the Clintongovernment. Drugs policy in most nations is a matter of religion, not science.
The same goes for heroin. The biggest study of opiate use ever conducted (atPhiladelphia general hospital) found that addicts suffered no physical harm,even though some of them had been taking heroin for 20 years(12). Thedevastating health effects of heroin use are caused by adulterants and thelifestyles of people forced to live outside the law. Like cocaine, heroin isaddictive, but unlike cocaine the only consequence of its addiction appears tobe … addiction.
Costa’s half-measure, in other words, gives us the worst of both worlds: moremurder, more destruction, more muggings, more adulteration. Another way ofputting it is this: you will, if Mr Costa’s proposal is adopted, be permittedwithout fear of prosecution to inject yourself with heroin cut with draincleaner and brick dust, sold illegally and soaked in blood; but not with cleanand legal supplies.
His report does raise one good argument, however. At present the Class A drugstrade is concentrated in the rich nations. If it were legalised, we could cope.The use of drugs is likely to rise, but governments could use the extra taxes tohelp people tackle addiction. But because the wholesale price would collapsewith legalisation, these drugs would for the first time become widely availablein poorer nations, which are easier for companies to exploit (as tobacco andalcohol firms have found) and which are less able to regulate, raise taxes orpick up the pieces. The widespread use of cocaine or heroin in the poor worldcould cause serious social problems: I’ve seen, for example, how a weaker drug– khat – seems to dominate life in Somali-speaking regions of Africa. "Theuniversal ban on illicit drugs," the UN argues, "provides a great deal ofprotection to developing countries"(13).
So Mr Costa’s office has produced a study comparing the global costs ofprohibition with the global costs of legalisation, allowing us to see whetherthe current policy (murder, corruption, war, adulteration) causes less miserythan the alternative (widespread addiction in poorer nations)? The hell it has.Even to raise the possibility of such research would be to invite the testericsin Congress to shut off the UN’s funding. The drugs charity Transform hasaddressed this question, but only for the UK, where the results are clear-cut:prohibition is the worse option(14). As far as I can discover, no one hasattempted a global study. Until that happens, Mr Costa’s opinions on thisissue are worth as much as mine or anyone else’s: nothing at all.
www.monbiot.com
References:
1. Antonio Maria Costa, 2009. Preface to the World Drug Report 2009. UnitedNations Office on Drugs and Crime.
2. Antony Barnett, 13th February 2005. Price of cocaine paid with blood. TheObserver.
3. Rory Carroll, Sibylla Brodzinsky and Andrés Schipani, 9th March 2009.Spreading fear: how the new cartels deliver chaos to four continents. TheGuardian.
4. Editorial, 19th November 2008. This is our problem too. TheIndependent.
5. Ian Sample, 24th October 2005. Health timebomb as rising cocaine usethreatens heart problems in young. TheGuardian.
6. Nick Davies, 15th June 2001. Demonising druggies wins votes. That’s allthat counts. TheGuardian.
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7. Nick Davies, 23rd May 2003. National plan that only fuels the fire. TheGuardian.
8. Antonio Maria Costa, ibid.
9. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2009. WorldDrug Report 2009, p164.
10. Ben Goldacre, 13th June 2009. Cocaine study that got up the nose of the US. TheGuardian.
11. World Health Organization, 2005. CocaineProject: Summary Papers.
12. Cited by Nick Davies, 14th June 2001. Make heroin legal. TheGuardian.
13. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, ibid, p165.
14. Transform Drug Policy Foundation, April 2009. AComparison of the Cost-effectiveness of the Prohibition and Regulation of Drugs.
