NEW YORK - The U.N. conference on drugs this week put too much emphasis on
law enforcement and criminalization and not enough focus on medical
treatments for drug abuse, say critics of the global war on drugs.

Critics ranging from public health advocates and scientists to police
officers and the author of a new book on the drug war said it was time for
the United States in particular to realise the eradication of drugs was an
unrealistic goal, both economically and in terms of its effect on people.

Dr. Ethan Nadelmann, director of the New York-based Lindesmith Centre Drug
Policy Research Institute, described the June 8 to 10 U.N. gathering as
``the biggest pep rally in history for the global war on drugs, with lots of
platitudes and laudatory speeches.''

Nadelmann complained that unlike U.N. conferences on the environment,
population and women's rights in recent years, nongovernmental groups were
kept out. Advocacy groups held their own meetings on the fringes of the main
event.

Critics of the gathering said medical issues they believed important to
tackling drug abuse were excluded for political reasons.

They included expanding methadone treatment for heroin addicts, debate about
heroin maintenance treatment programmes for chronic addicts, needle exchange
programmes to reduce the HIV rate among intravenous drug users and the use
of marijuana as medicine.

``We need to make a distinction between the problems of drug abuse and the
harm it causes, black markets, crime, corruption and violence and the need
to focus not just on reducing drug abuse but on reducing the negative
consequences of our policies,'' Nadelmann said.

At the U.N. conference, more than 150 countries promised to curb heroin and
cocaine production within 10 years, reduce the demand for drugs, cooperate
on trafficking and money-laundering and rehabilitate addicts.

But Raymond Kendall, head of the international criminal police organisation
INTERPOL, said that treatment rather than punishment for drug users would
leave law enforcement ``a reasonable chance to deal with the drug barons.''

Nadelmann scoffed at the U.N goal to create a drug-free world and said
``science and evidence and even public health concerns are not on the agenda.''

In a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the institute gathered the
signatures of 500 international leaders saying the war on drugs was causing
more harm than drug abuse itself.

It urged the United Nations to study alternative approaches that have shown
successful results in rehabilitation and crime reduction in programmes in
Switzerland, Holland and Australia.

``This is a medical problem. We should never have made this a law
enforcement problem. It corrupted law enforcement and it corrupted us,''
said author Mike Gray, whose book ``Drug Crazy -- How We Got Into This Mess
and We Can Get Out'' comes out this month.

Gray's book charts the history of drugs and the similarities between the
contemporary drug scene and the alcohol Prohibition era in the United States.

One Washington-based group that advocates medicinal use of marijuana for
patients with diseases such as cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis and
epilepsy, said arresting patients for smoking marijuana was inhumane.

``The drug war is devoid of humanity, devoid of compassion, devoid of
humanitarian principles. It is all about self-righteous, punitive
self-aggrandizing policies,'' said Chuck Thomas of the Marijuana Policy Project.


Checked-by: Melodi Cornett