The war on drugs cannot be won

Readers of a literary bent will have noted the inclusion of British author Jon McGregor’s wonderful novel Even The Dogs in the shortlist for the IMPAC award. Purists rightly celebrate the work for its literary mastery. But it’s equally worthy for its powerful evocation of the lives of a marginalised group of people, mainly drug abusers. It brilliantly captures the tedium, the grim routines and the awful monotony of their scrabbling passage through the streets.

Their doppelgängers fumble through Irish cities, and especially Dublin, in a similar way, clutching plastic bags and soda bottles and addressing urgent business in tones of high-pitched complaint. Does methadone tighten vocal chords? It sounds as though it does…
Internationally, there is a growing movement against the absurd waste, expense and ultimately the failure of the so-called ‘War on Drugs’. In Canada, for example, researchers have argued that drug abusers should have safe, supervised facilities at which to take their drugs. The research team was led by Drs Ahmed Bayoumi of St. Michael’s Hospital and Carol Strike of the University of Toronto. The latter is an expert in the study of health and social services for marginalised populations, in particular people who use drugs.
These authors say that such facilities would improve health and reduce harm among people who use drugs, and – of equal importance – could also reduce public drug use. They would also, as a beneficial side effect, disrupt the relationship between criminal gangs and users.
The report was funded by the Ontario HIV Treatment Network and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and is believed to be the broadest ever study of its kind.
The views expressed in the study relate closely to those quoted in ‘To Prohibit Or Not To Prohibit - That Is No Longer The Question’, an article by Brigid Pyke in the Spring 2012 edition of Drugnet Ireland, which is published by the Health Research Board. Unlike the Toronto report, this is a review of research rather than a report of new research. But it is no less fascinating for that.
Brigid Pyke notes that drug policy researchers have tried to move away from “the polarised and increasingly unproductive debate between those supporting the prohibition of psychoactive substances… and those arguing for legalisation or some form of decriminalisation.”
Pike cites Mark Kleiman’s view that, “Public policy toward drugs involves so many unknown, almost unknowable facts and so many complicated issues of value that any certainty about which of two alternative policies is the better is likely to be misplaced.”
Some experts now argue that a key attraction of the prohibitionist ideology is its fundamentalist simplicity. But being simplistic always leads to the wrong conclusions.
These experts argue, persuasively, that allegiance to ‘prevalence reduction’ – and the idea that the only defensible goal for drug policy is to reduce the number of users, hopefully to zero – has prevented two more moderate strategies from getting attention from the political mainstream: (a) quantity reduction (getting drug users to use less) and (b) harm reduction (reducing the harmful consequences of drug use). Many community activists agree.
This perspective fits with the view now being expressed very forcibly by the leaders of Latin American countries where most of the cocaine, much of the marijuana and some of the heroin sold into the US and European markets is produced.
They are clear that the “war on drugs” has failed and that prohibition hasn’t worked. Billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives have been wasted. Countries like Mexico, Colombia, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras and Peru have been blighted by the criminalisation of what otherwise would be an agricultural activity and the resulting creation of an armed and ruthless paramilitary gang culture around the drugs trade, into which hundreds of thousands are sucked and as a result of which many thousands die every year.
In a recent paper, one of these leaders, Otto Perez Molina, president of Guatemala, says that, “The prohibition paradigm that inspires mainstream global drug policy today is based on a false premise: that global drug markets can be eradicated.”
The Latin American leaders keep emphasising the need to base policies on facts. For example, Molina says: “The causes for drug consumption seem to multiply over time, as do the incentives for drug production. This is not a frustrating fact. It is just a fact.”
They identify various potential strands of an alternative policy, some to do with reducing demand, others with protection of social processes, and crucially the possibility of regulation, including “prohibition of sales to minors, prohibition of advertising in mass media, high selective consumption taxes for drugs etc.”
Molina concludes by saying that, while Guatemala – which is on the US so-called ‘drugs black-list’ – will not fail to honour any of its international commitments to fight drug trafficking, neither are they “willing to continue as dumb witnesses to a global self-deceit.”
It is a powerful statement. Behind it, we can suddenly see the contours of a new consensus between researchers and politicians in the “producer” countries.
Remember, we are talking of an industry that turns over tens of trillions of dollars every year. It is increasingly farcical that such a lucrative sector could continue to make billions for gangsters and none for the citizens or the economies of the countries where the drugs are consumed.
Nobody should think that there will be an easy transition from the prohibitionist status quo to one where drugs are regulated and taxed (and still deliverable at a fraction of the cost to users). For a start, there are some deeply evil people involved in the trade who have a vested interest in keeping things as they are. And besides, tobacco is highly regulated and excised, yet criminals are engaged in a thriving trade in illegal cigarettes, as the recent seizure in Dublin Port demonstrates.
But it can be done. Laying outmoded ideologies aside and focusing on the facts is a critical starting point. Bring it on.