GLOBAL REFORMERS SAY IT'S TIME FOR CHANGE ON DRUGS

Forty years after United States President Richard Nixon launched his
War on Drugs, a conflict that far eclipses the War on Terror, the
struggle to contain, let alone end, illicit drug abuse is far from
over, spewing violence, corruption and addiction into new markets,
brutal capitalism at its most malignant. But, finally, there is a
glimmer of hope.

Yesterday, an extraordinary alliance of the great and good presented
their recommendations on how to tackle this worldwide scourge to
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon in New York. Moral
hysteria was noticeably absent.

The Global Commission on Drug Reform, formed in January, declared the
War on Drugs a resounding failure, and suggested radical measures
must be taken if the global narco culture was to ever be defeated.

"Fundamental reforms in national and global control policies are
urgently needed," said Brazil's ex-president, Fernando Henrique
Cardosa, who heads the commission.

"Let's start by treating drug addiction as a health issue, reducing
drug demand through proven educational initiatives and legally
regulating rather than criminalising cannabis."

Besides Cardosa, the august body included former UN Secretary-General
Kofi Annan, Cesar Gaviria and Ernesto Zedillo, the ex-presidents of
Columbia and Mexico, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, former
US Secretary of State George Shultz, Paul Volcker, the ex-chairman of
the US Federal Reserve, Javier Solana, the ex-EU High Representative,
and Virgin tycoon Sir Richard Branson.

They blasted drug policies, driven by "ideology and political
convenience", that have criminalised "tens of millions", lower-end
couriers, dealers or farmers who grow opium, coca or marijuana to
escape poverty, because they are addicts or because they are intimidated.

Such policies, said the commission, have not reduced "the
availability of illicit drugs or the power of criminal organisations".

Ban Ki Moon was handed four recommendations. Drug users who "do no
harm to others" should be decriminalised. Legal regulation should
wrestle control from criminals. Treatment programmes, used in Europe
and Canada, should be adopted. And states must respect the rights of
people - addicts, dealers and farmers - found at the lower ends of the trade.

By yanking the debate on the War on Drugs firmly away from
hysteria-based rhetoric that has bedevilled both reform and any hope
that the war could be won, the report echoed earlier conclusions.
These include the 2010 UN World Drug Report, which emphasises public
health, economic development, security and human rights, and the 2009
Latin American Drug Commission, which favours decriminalisation.

The major shift is the call for legal regulation, which Danny
Kushlick, external affairs chief for Transform Drug Policy
Foundation, a British lobby group, calls a game changer.

Three factors give the commission's recommendations traction, says
Kushlick. The global recession makes costly and failed drug policies
unsustainable. Unintended consequences, such as the more than 35,000
dead in Mexico's savage battle with narco-cartels, compared to an
"insurgency" by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, have taken the
War on Drugs to America's doorstep.

And President Obama's less "bullish" attitude towards the war makes
it politically acceptable for US allies, such as Mexico and Colombia,
to publicly raise decriminalisation and legal regulation.

The sense that change is in the air is echoed by the work of the Law
Commission in New Zealand, which tabled its findings into the Misuse
of Drugs Act 1975 in April.

"It advocates a shift in policy process, away from criminal law
towards public health," says Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei, a
stance long held by the Greens. Moral judgments, says Turei, skew
costs, interfere with rational debate and mean that drug policy is
not evidence based.

The commission's report was accompanied by a public petition - with
562,000 signatures and counting at press time - collected by internet
advocacy group Avaaz, which has nine million members. The linkage
between online activism and old-school political lobbying is a very
21st century phenomenon. The alliance wants a paradigm shift.

The report and Avaaz's campaign were bolstered by a letter, published
in yesterday's Guardian newspaper, calling for all illicit drugs to
be decriminalisation in Britain. Signatories, including Sting,
Branson, Dame Judi Bench, Mike Leigh, Julie Christie, three former
chief constables, and an ex-drugs minister, argued that:
"Criminalising people who use drugs leads to greater social exclusion
and stigmatisation making it much more difficult for them to gain
employment and to play a productive role in society. It creates a
society full of wasted resources." Both the British and US
governments refused to bow to reformers, but the no-punches tone of
the report - "that repressive strategies will not solve the problem"
- - indicates patience with drug war nostrums is waning and public
debate growing.

The War on Drugs has been fed by specious justifications that,
despite much evidence to the contrary, just-say-no zero tolerance
works. Drug warriors emphasise drug seizures, arrests, declining use
of specific drugs and so forth.

This fantasy is bluntly rejected by commission members.

"The War on Drugs has failed to cut drug use, but has filled our
jails, cost millions in taxpayer dollars, fuelled organised crime and
caused thousands of deaths," said Branson. "We need a new approach,
one that takes the power out of the hands of organised crime and
treats people with addiction problems like patients, not criminals."

Given this downside, it is hard to ignore parallels with the failed
US experiment on alcohol prohibition in the 1920s, which hugely
benefited nascent organised crime.

"In the grand scheme, it has not been successful," Gil Kerlikowske,
the US "drug czar" told the Associated Press last year. "Forty years
later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything,
magnified, intensified."

The AP estimated the total cost of the drug war since 1971 at US$1
trillion ($1.2 trillion). But, in truth, it is hard to arrive at an
accurate figure, especially if "cost" only weights up budgets to
fight crime but ignores the social wreckage, whether from diseases
such as HIV/Aids or hepatitis, or even the cost of home insurance in
areas plagued by drug crime.

Certainly, the war is fed by huge, arguably unsustainable, budgets.
The US Drug Policy Alliance, which supports the commission's calls,
says the US spends US$1 billion a year.

Branson urged political and business leaders to consider
"alternative, fact-based approaches" to countering illicit drug
abuse. "The one thing we cannot do is to go on pretending the War on
Drugs is working."

The war's emphasis on policing, military intervention and
incarceration has reached its apogee in Mexico. Despite claims
interdiction cuts the supply of drugs - one explanation for the
Mexican war's savagery - world demand has grown. Last year's UN
report says illicit drug use has exploded in developing nations -
from Africa and Latin America, to Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
The once Western problem is now a global nightmare.

Historians seeking the heart of darkness in the drug war might ponder
Brazil, where oxi, or oxiana, a cocaine-derived hallucinogenic,
reputedly twice as powerful as crack cocaine at a fifth of the price,
plagues city streets. A social worker was quoted as saying most
first-time users fast become zombie-like addicts.

Reformers say the state must push aside criminal gangs and take over
the production and supply of drugs. Given the UN estimate that
between 155 and 250 million people use illegal drugs [129 to 190
million using cannabis], it indicates a tax bonanza.

Relaxing drug laws has been flirted with. Britain reclassified
cannabis, from a Class B to a Class C drug, in 2004 - first
recommended in 1979 - only to shift it back to Class B in 2009.
Sixteen US states have legalised medical marijuana and five,
including California, have ballot initiatives to legalise and
regulate the drug.

A Californian law change would put the US in an awkward position in
its relations with Mexico, where the US is supporting the bloody
crackdown on the cartels that ferry drugs, including cannabis, to US users.

But the test case is Portugal, which decriminalised all illicit drugs
in 2001, providing evidence-based analysis to weigh the results.

A paper published in the British Journal of Criminology last November
said: "Portuguese decriminalisation did not lead to major increases
in drug use. Indeed, evidence indicates reductions in problematic
use, drug-related harms and criminal justice overcrowding."

Meanwhile, a big push towards decriminalisation and legal regulation
has come from Latin America, arguably one of the biggest losers in
the American-led War on Drugs.

Last year Mexico's President Felipe Calderon, faced with public
revulsion at escalating drug war violence, suggested legalising
drugs. Last month former President Vicente Fox, speaking in Texas,
said the US should legalise drugs.

The cries of anguish south of the border are no surprise given the
havoc and misery drugs have wrought, from Cold War conflicts - such
as the CIA's use of cocaine to fund the Contras against Nicaraguan
Sandinistas in the 1980s - to terrorism, violence, addiction and
pervasive corruption.

"We can no longer ignore the extent to which drug-related violence,
crime and corruption in Latin America are the results of failed drug
policies," said Gaviria.

"Now is the time to break the taboo on discussion of all drug policy
options, including alternatives to drug prohibition."

Kushlick says decriminalisation alone is "a gift to organised crime".

The only way to control production and supply is via legal
regulation. Politicians will have to step up, something many are
loath to do because of fears of being branded "soft on drugs" by opponents.

But once drug hysteria is removed from the equation, the cold, hard
numbers and public-health benefits of regulating illicit drugs make
shattering the old taboos very attractive.

Ultimately, says Kushlick, ending prohibition would force Governments
to face societal issues that contribute to drug abuse.

"Criminalisation is a smokescreen. The issue is not whether to
legalise or prohibit drugs.

"But how do you make societies better?

"That's hard to do if you're being duped by politicians into
supporting policies that create harm."