JUST SAY NO TO A DRUGS POLICY THAT DOESN'T WORK

UN and American attempts to enforce total prohibition are sheer folly. 'A
drugs-free world - we can do it!" That is the official slogan of the UN's
current 10-year war-on-drugs strategy. A drugs summit marking the halfway
point in that 10-year plan ended in Vienna last week - and it has all been
a triumphant success. Or so said the director of the UN office on drugs and
crime in his breezy opening address. "Does drug control policy work?" he
asked rhetorically. "This question can be answered in the affirmative and
unanimously." Yes, the UN programme is "on target to reach its goals" - to
eradicate drug abuse and the cultivation of coca, cannabis and opium by the
year 2008. Yes, really.

It was a Comical Ali moment, a breathtaking lie which everyone in the hall
knew was nonsense - and he knew they knew it. Out there, drug prices are
still falling and drug use is generally thought to be increasing. A few
optimistic experts say it has stabilised - but few believe it. In Britain,
the national treatment agency says addiction is rising by 7% a year. Drugs
continue to cause political disintegration in poor producer countries at
the hands of international crime, while causing social mayhem among the
poor in rich consumer countries.

In the corridors of the Vienna conference, delegates agreed that the
message from the platform might have emanated from some drug-induced
nirvana. But the only permissible line decreed in three UN conventions is a
"Just Say No" policy. All countries signing the conventions must enforce
total prohibition laws, so no delegate could question whether it works.
Afghanistan's crop this year will be back up to pre-Taliban levels -
providing 90% of heroin: the country has no other export and the growers
are far beyond the reach of Kabul's feeble authority. Colombia's US-imposed
crackdown on coca has lead to huge planting in Bolivia and Peru instead.

America's strong arm reaches deep into the interstices of every policy. It
is America's war-on-drugs policy, pushed by Ronald Reagan and George Bush
Sr, that imposes rigid prohibition on the rest of the world. No softening
of internal laws is permitted. For poor countries, the penalties for
failing to follow US/UN dictates on absolute prohibition - hunting down
growers, traffickers and users - leads to heavy punishment in aid and
trade. Richer countries can afford to be a little more independent in
following their own policies, but not much without heavy censure.

Astonishingly, Britain was severely admonished just before this conference,
for daring to slightly soften its stance on cannabis by reclassifying it
from class B to class C. A sharp reprimand from the international narcotics
control board, the UN body charged with policing enforcement of the
conventions, said that Britain's decision would have "dangerous, worldwide
repercussions". The INCB's British delegate even went so far as to say that
this minor change would fill British psychiatric wards with cannabis
victims in 10 years' time. Bob Ainsworth, Britain's drug minister, gave a
robust riposte: he was not proposing a radical change in policy, only a
sensible flexibility in response to "what works" evidence. "We want to
inject some straight, open thinking," he said.

Most of Europe came under attack. The Swiss are to legalise cannabis in the
next couple of years, Dutch cannabis cafes turn a blind eye, Portugal has
decriminalised possession, Spain has downgraded possession to a civil
offence, Austria and Greece are taking similar paths. In most of Europe,
cannabis policy is hardly controversial. (Only Sweden and France, alas,
take the same US prohibition line.)

What really matters is how governments deal with the drugs that cause
social havoc and high crime. Britain is extending its programme for
prescribing methadone as part of treatment: currently around 40,000 are
receiving prescriptions, if need be for life, to stop them committing
crimes to feed their habit. Other European countries are shifting their
hard drug policies increasingly away from law enforcement into health
agencies. Some countries have needle-exchange schemes to reduce Aids risk;
some have "shooting galleries" where addicts can take drugs safely,
methadone programmes, or heroin-prescribing and pill-testing facilities.
All these are proving successful in reducing harm, amid a growing sense
that prohibition has been a calamitous failure. Yet a moderate attempt by a
large group of NGOs failed to get the conference even to "review the
effectiveness of the present UN strategy": presumably a study of the
evidence would be too politically dangerous.

In Britain the government has moved with caution, not through any liberal
instinct but under the sheer pressure of failure. The official guesstimate
of the cost of drug addiction is somewhere between UKP10bn and UKP18bn a
year - mostly in crime and its consequences: each addict is estimated to
steal UKP13,000 a year to survive. Policy now centres on the 250,000 hard
drug users reckoned to cause most of the crime. The government has greatly
expanded treatment programmes: by 2008 most will have treatment. Yet still
only half the addicts in prison get treatment - which is a mad false
economy. Drug treatment pays for itself three to four times over.

Comparisons between countries are tricky. The Netherlands has had
phenomenal success, with heroin addiction falling. Addicts are a shrinking
and ageing group, well supervised and under control. Is that due to a good,
well-financed, rational treatment programme? More likely it is due to the
structure of Dutch life, a far more equal society with an absence of gross
poverty. Those western societies such as Britain and the US, with the
greatest wealth gap and the most poverty, have the worst drug problems: it
is an affliction of poverty among affluence. In Britain hard drugs are a
minor irritant to the middle classes and a relatively small risk to their
children, compared with the devastation on housing estates with high
unemployment. Drugs are a disease that fills the void in vacant lives,
dragging down depressed are! as into disaster zones of crack houses, drug
crime, guns and prostitution. Ending poverty would be the best cure, among
both the western consumers and the third world growers.

But second best would be an end to a global policy that turns drugs from a
manageable disease of the few into a widescale social calamity. Prohibition
has followed the same predictable course as the US experiment in banning
alcohol: it breeds crime. If methadone or heroin were prescribed by doctors
globally to all addicts, drug-fuelled crime would fall.

But US politics reduce all difficult issues to TV attack soundbites, making
it impossible for politicians to debate what works: anything but "Just Say
No", is a sure-fire election loser. So, yet again, US policies are imposed,
and the crude deficiencies of American democracy are played out globally.