What War On Drugs?

February 15, 2005 (Press Release) -- The war on drugs and the general effort to contain the global spread of drugs has taken a new twist. The vast sums of money spent every year in an attempt to interdict trafficking from Latin America, Asia and North Africa, into Europe and North America, are being effectively countered by the prevalence of locally made and thus locally available products.

Methamphetamine is fast becoming a drug of choice and it does not have to be imported from some far-off place. Speed, crank or crystal as it is invariably known, is being increasingly synthesized in amateur labs, many of them mobile. This of course automatically changes the stakes for all involved. A drug that does not have to be imported from abroad and has ready access to its markets, improves consumer access while simultaneously decreases the ability of the security forces to halt its supply lines.

Even more alarming for those trying to demolish the drugs trade, the use of synthetic substances such as ecstasy, amphetamines and methamphetamines or ATS (amphetamine type substances) as they are collectively known, now far exceeds the use of imported cocaine and heroin combined. Although there are many small producers, the really bad news is that organized criminal gangs are now engaged in large-scale production of ATS drugs and for them it is another great source of income. Corporate executives must be green with envy. Imagine running a business where the risks have suddenly been reduced, there is no need to advertise and your customers are right at your doorstep.

For the police and security services, of course the trend is not so encouraging. In the recently released Catania Report, the EU has more or less agreed that the current war on narcotics is almost futile. Yet, we maintain that narcotics must remain illegal, although this report seems to be one very good reason why things should actually change. Another very good reason for a rethink of the whole approach to drugs is the 1920s legacy of Prohibition. Prohibition taught us one thing – illegal trades create wealthy criminal gangs and corrupt societies; police officers, lawyers, judges, bureaucrats, politicians and anyone in public life for that matter. The damage can reach far beyond the illegal trade itself.

This weekend a practicing Christian friend of my wife visited the house and the subject of drugs and legalization came up. Therefore, you can imagine the furore when I advised that more people had died as a result of religion than would ever die from taking drugs. Emotions were raised. I maintained that it is precisely because we have made ourselves prisoners to our emotions why we are unable to see the issue as clearly as we should. More disconcertingly, it is this same emotional attachment, a presumed electoral imperative disguised as morality, which allows politicians to play games with the issue of drugs.

We do however have some very interesting numbers that make the true extent of this hypocrisy readily apparent.

Last year in the EU, under 10,000 people died from overdosing on illegal drugs. In the US it was even less, somewhere in the region of 6,000. In Colombia, a country with a fraction of the population of the US and Europe, on average more than 25,000 people are murdered each year as a result of the war on drugs. A few more thousands are murdered in other parts of Latin America. So proportionately, the poor farmers who turned to coca because US and EU subsidies wiped out their markets for legal products, are the ones who are really suffering.

Researchers at the University of Toronto unearthed another interesting statistic. In one year, more than 100,000 Americans died as a result of adverse reactions to prescription drugs and another 2.1 million suffered serious injuries. Given the reports that we are now hearing about the FDA, its lack of objectivity and its cozy relationship with the big pharmaceutical companies, why are they not waging a war on drugs on the FDA? Why not wage war on the pharmaceutical companies for falsifying their test results?

Then there is tobacco. As I noted in last week’s article What Civilization?, tobacco has proved to be far more dangerous to people’s health than all drugs and alcohol combined. Hundreds of thousands die each year because of tobacco related illnesses. Yet the US and the UK in particular, far from making it illegal, positively encourage its export to the developing world.

We need to look at this problem without emotional attachments. The US spends some US$40 billion a year on the war against drugs, the EU many billions more and that is only the direct costs. Additionally, a high proportion of crimes occurs as a result of addicts trying to satisfy their addiction; that is immensely costly in terms of policing, courts and the penal services. The emotional attachment to legalization grows less affordable and more ridiculous with each minute that we continue to kid ourselves of its benefits.

For the record I am personally against and would strongly advise anyone against the use of drugs. What I would like to see is the war on drugs being waged in a far more enlightened way. We should use the billions currently wasted to improve the education of youngsters; not just on the dangers of drug use, but generally to make them more useful contributors to society. We should also use some of those billions to develop rehabilitation centers. It is well know that this is a much better way of treating addicts than sending them to jail, where if the empirical evidence is to be believed, drug use is rife and inmates use their time to acquire more nefarious skill sets – meaning more trouble for society when they leave.

Legalizing drugs does not mean an end to efforts to decrease its use. On the contrary, legalization should mean an intensification of the efforts to reduce consumption.

What we now have is a war waged on small farmers in developing countries, whose markets for legitimate products have been sabotaged by EU and US farm subsidies. That is the adding of injury to injury. We have a war on drugs waged on vulnerable youngsters in inner cities, many or most of who should be in school. We have a war on drugs that is disproportionately waged on the poor and minorities – just look at the profile of the prison population. “Show me your prisons and I will tell you what kind of society you are”, Churchill once said.

The war on drugs is anything but. It is really hypocrisy and injustice of historic proportions. There is no immediate change in sight. Unfortunately, for all concerned, we are stuck with political leaders who believe that the deaths of more than 100,000 in Iraq are worth the fulfillment of their political objectives.