LEGALISE DRUGS AND A WORLDWIDE EPIDEMIC OF ADDICTION WILL FOLLOW

Those Who Argue We Should Decriminalise the Trade in Narcotics Are
Blind to the Catastrophic Consequences

The debate between those who dream of a world free of drugs and those
who hope for a world of free drugs has been raging for years. I
believe the dispute between prohibition and legalisation would be
more fruitful if it focused on the appropriate degree of regulation
for addictive substances (drugs, but also alcohol and tobacco) and
how to attain such regulation.

Current international agreements are hard to change. All nations,
with no exception, agree that illicit drugs are a threat to health
and that their production, trade and use should be regulated. In
fact, adherence to the UN's drug conventions is virtually universal
and no statutory changes are possible unless the majority of states
agree - quite unlikely, in the foreseeable future. Yet important
improvements to today's system are needed and achievable, especially
in areas where current controls have produced serious collateral damage.

Why such resistance to abolishing the controls? In part, because the
conventions' success in restraining both supply and demand of drugs
is undeniable.

Look first at production. Drug controls slashed global opium supply
dramatically: in 2007, it was one-third the level of 1907. What about
recent trends? Over the last 10 years, world output of cocaine,
amphetamines and ecstasy has stabilised, and in many instances
dropped. Cannabis output has declined since 2004. Since the mid-90s,
opium production moved from the Golden Triangle to Afghanistan where
it grew exponentially at first, but started to decline (since 2008).

My first point is factual: in the distant past as well as recently,
production controls have had measurable results. What about drug-use
levels? There are 25 million addicts (daily use) in the world, 0.6%
of the population. Ten times as many people (5% of the world's
population) take drugs at least once a year. As these amounts are
relatively small, statements such as "there are drugs everywhere" or
"everybody takes drugs" are nonsense. The drug numbers compare well
with those of tobacco, a legal drug used by 30% of the world's
population. Even more people consume alcohol. Tobacco causes 5
million deaths per year and alcohol 2 million, against the 200,000
killed by illicit drugs.

My second point is logical: in the absence of controls, it is not
fanciful to imagine drug addiction, and related deaths, as high as
those of tobacco and alcohol. What are recent drug-use trends? In
rich countries, addiction is high but declining. In North America and
Australia, it has declined in the past 10 years, especially among the
young. In Europe, opiates use has declined, offset by greater cocaine
sales; cannabis and amphetamines are stable or lower. In developing
countries, drug use is low, but growing. In South America and west
Africa, this applies to cannabis and cocaine; in Asia and southern
Africa to heroin.

My third point is intuitive: rich countries are addressing the drug
problem, while poor countries lack resources to do so. With the
building blocks of my reasoning in place (stability of the world drug
supply; alcohol and tobacco hurt more than drugs; the divergent drug
trends in poor and rich nations), I find it irrational to propose
policies that would increase the public health damage caused by drugs
by making them more freely available.

At the same time, drug controls are not working as they should. The
resulting collateral damage is the platform upon which critics build
the abolitionist argument.

Let's look at health, security and human rights. Health must be at
the centre of drug control, because drug addiction is a mix of
genetic, personal and social factors: gene variants (predisposition),
childhood (neglect), social conditions (poverty). The pharmacological
effects of drugs on health are independent of their legal status.
Drugs are not dangerous because they are illegal: they are illegal
because they are dangerous to health. Unfortunately, ideology has
displaced health from the mainstream of the drug debate and this has
happened on both sides of the prohibition versus legalisation dispute.

In the past half-century, drug control rhetoric by governments has
been right, but prevention and treatment programmes have lagged.
Priority was wrongly given to repression and criminalisation.
Similarly, those in favour of legalisation have lost sight of health
as the priority. They prioritise handing out condoms and clean
needles, while addicts need prevention, treatment and reintegration,
not only harm reduction gadgets. In short, the debate on drug policy
has turned into a political battle. But why? There are no ideological
debates about curing cancer, so why so much politics in dealing with
drug addiction?

But there is more. Drugs do harm to health, but they can also do
good. Greater use of opiates for palliative care would overcome the
socio-economic factors that deny a Nigerian suffering from Aids or a
Mexican cancer patient the morphine offered to Italian or American
counterparts. Yet such relief is not happening.

Next is the security question. Drugs pose a threat not only to
individuals. Entire regions - think of Central America, the Caribbean
and Africa - are caught in the crossfire of drug trafficking. In
Mexico, a bloody drug war has erupted among crime groups fighting for
the control of the US drug market. The legalisers' argument on
security is striking, though it leads to the wrong conclusion.
Prohibition causes crime by creating a black market for drugs, the
argument goes, so, legalise drugs to defeat organised crime. As an
economist, I agree. But this is not only an economic argument.
Legalisation would reduce crime profits, but it would also increase
the damage to health, as drug availability leads to drug abuse.

Drug policy does not have to choose between either protecting health,
through drug control, or ensuring law and order, by liberalising
drugs. Society must protect both health and safety.

In a world of free drugs, the privileged rich can afford expensive
treatment while poor people are condemned to a life of dependence.
Now extrapolate the problem on to a global scale and imagine the
impact of unregulated drug use in developing countries, with no
prevention or treatment available. Legalised drugs would unleash an
epidemic of addiction in the developing world.

Last but not least, there's the question of human rights. Around the
world, millions of people caught taking drugs are sent to jail. In
some countries, drug treatment amounts to the equivalent of torture.
People are sentenced to death for drug-related offences. Although
drugs kill, governments should not kill because of them. The
prohibition versus legalisation debate must stop being ideological
and look for the appropriate degree of controls. Drug control is not
the task of governments alone: it is a society-wide responsibility.
Are we ready to engage?