GOVERNMENTS URGED TO END IDEOLOGICAL WAR ON DRUGS

Report blames prohibition for violence and spread of disease

Two Vancouver-based health policy groups have partnered with the
International AIDS Society to release a report today calling on the
world's governments and policy-makers to abandon the criminalization
of drug use.

The report, entitled the Vienna Declaration, argues that criminalizing
drug users spreads violence and infectious diseases like HIV/ AIDS.

The BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS and the International Centre
for Science in Drug Policy were instrumental in drafting the official
declaration of the 2010 AIDS conference scheduled for Vienna next month.

Dr. Evan Wood, an author of the declaration and the founder of the
Centre for Science in Drug Policy, said the paper urges political
leaders to put ideology aside and treat drug-use as a public health
crisis rather than a law enforcement issue.

"It makes the case quite forcefully that not only has drug-law
enforcement failed to achieve its stated objectives in terms of
reducing drug supply ... but there is also a range of unintended
consequences," said Wood. "If you look at countries that rely more on
law enforcement to deal with drugs, you also see higher HIV rates
among drug users."

Wood said HIV rates increase as intravenous drug users are forced into
the shadows, where they are increasingly difficult to reach with
public health education and social services.

While Wood and his fellow researchers named in the declaration are
hesitant to call their public health model "legalization," they
advocate regulation of the drug trade and the decriminalization of the
drug user, he said.

"I don't think your average person knows that marijuana is more
accessible to young people than alcohol," said Wood, noting that
Portugal has the lowest rate of marijuana use of all European Union
countries after decriminalizing all drug use in 2001.

"Maybe all this emphasis on law enforcement just serves to glamorize
these drugs ... but, if we deal with this as a health issue, like we
have with alcohol and tobacco, maybe we can have an impact on this
problem."

Wood and his colleagues plan to track what influence the declaration
has on world drug policy in preparation for next year's global AIDS
conference in the United States