EUROPEANS LEAD SHIFT IN INTERNATIONAL FOCUS ON DRUGS POLICY

Governments Are Reassessing How to Tackle the Mainstream Problem of
Illicit Narcotics, Bill Bush Writes

In Shanghai a hundred years ago, the world's most far-reaching
international regime was conceived.

Hyperbole? What other international regime is intimately connected
with failed states and the suspension of a Canberra schoolchild; with
destabilising rifts within NATO strategy in Afghanistan and
over-stretched hospital emergency rooms; with a woman in the Andes
picking leaves to make a stimulant tea that her ancestors have always
made and the New South Wales budgetary crisis; with yet another crazy
small business hold-up and the $12 billion that the head of the
Australian Crime Commission says is flowing out of Australia each year?

The centenarian is the international drugs regime.

The conference in February 1909 was that of the Shanghai Opium
Commission. The United States was in the driving seat then and has
remained so since.

In the lead up to a meeting this week of the UN Commission on
Narcotic Drugs, there are signs of a European challenge to that pre-eminence.

There is a disconnect between the perception and actuality of the
regime's importance. It is barely studied in courses on international
law and relations.

It is not considered by those struggling to help "clients with
complex needs", mostly code for those in trouble with illicit drugs.

Does the ACT Government connect the regime with its political pain
over its new prison? Drug policy deserves recognition as the
mainstream issue that it is.

The scandal in 1909 of the opium trade, supported for fiscal reasons
by colonial governments, demanded action.

Just what action has always been contested.

For the United States, the commitment to suppression by other parties
has never been strong enough.

From the 1960s, developing countries which were sources of the drugs
complained the burden of suppression was unfairly placed on them.
"Stop the demand" they insisted of the likes of the United States
even though the United States led the world in the vigour of its law
enforcement efforts to do just that. From this perspective, the
"addict" came to be seen as the keystone of the evil trade.

Conclusion: suppress the drug user. That the United States has the
highest imprisonment rate in the world with more than 2 million of
its citizens behind bars is a fruit of that reasoning.

There is the impression that the treaties underpinning the drug
regime leave little discretion for parties.

This is another disconnect with reality.

The treaty institutions certainly provide a platform to promote
rigorous, uniform measures but the texts accord parties room to manoeuvre.

As an example, heroin which is prohibited across the board in
Australia, is not prohibited in the United Kingdom. The drug treaties
permit its use for medical purposes.

As it used to be in Australia, heroin is widely prescribed in Britain
as an analgesic and also, to some extent, as a maintenance drug for
dependent users.

This is consistent with the drug treaties.

So was the heroin trial the previous Australian Prime Minister blocked.

It was in 1953, following international pressure, that Australia
started departing from British practice: the Commonwealth banned the
import of the drug but hospitals with stocks continued to use it into
the 1970s.

Research into assumptions that underpin the system is yet another
disconnect. The preamble of the 1988 Convention on Illicit Traffic
catalogues the havoc caused by the drug trade and associated crime.
They "undermine the legitimate economies and threaten the stability,
security and sovereignty of States". The trade draws in children.
Why, in the words of the 1988 convention, are drugs still making
"steadily increasing inroads"? Is the system part of the problem?

This is why the cause of Australia's heroin drought in 2001 remains
so important.

Our criminal intelligence people forecast the drought and said it
would be accompanied by a flood of methamphetamines. This is what happened.

Intelligence even picked up that syndicates saw a bigger market for
pills than injected heroin.

An officially funded study did not dispute any of this but assessed
that Australian law enforcement "probably" motivated the decision of
syndicates. Since then the study's assumptions have been cogently
criticised. Whatever the study's merits, the heroin drought shows how
an enormously important area of public policy can balance on a knife
edge of insubstantiality. Questioning research unfettered by
assumptions in favour of the status quo is vital.

Within the UN system there is questioning. The UN Office for Drug
Control and Crime Prevention whose former director reckoned we would
have a drug free world by 2008 has become a strong advocate of
sterile syringes even in prisons.

The consistency of the drug regime with human rights conventions is
under question.

But it is the Europeans who are leading.

Many European countries have moved well beyond what the United States
has wanted.

What is more, there is movement within the United States itself.

The Europeans and others want international endorsement of "harm
minimisation" Australia's proclaimed policy.

The US is coming around to this but is still bucking at the use of the term.

As we know from an Australian context, "harm minimisation" itself
brings its own troubles.

Its three pillars of supply reduction, demand reduction and harm
reduction are not effectively integrated, allowing different agencies
to do their own thing without regard to the policy's competing
objectives. Rigorous questioning is just as necessary in the board
and conference rooms of Australian organisations and governments as
in Vienna. Drug policy is of mainstream importance.