DRUG POLICY FAILURES

Many experts see drugs seen as a convenient scapegoat to hide political
shortcomings

Have those people in London gone crazy? In May more than 20,000 marched in
London calling for the legalisation of cannabis. Several similar
demonstrations have been held in Britain in recent years.

A powerful popular movement has arisen in the country, calling for a more
liberal drug policy. The quality newspaper, The Independent on Sunday,
backs the legalisation of cannabis, and has organised demonstrations
itself. The respected economic journal The Economist would allow the use
and sale of all drugs.

And what must the Portuguese been thinking a year ago when they radically
changed their drug legislation? The law continues to forbid the use of
drugs, but there are no punishments.

So aren't drugs society's worst enemy after all? Aren't they a threat that
must be fought using any means possible?

Drugs are behind many difficult social problems, but according to a group
of international experts who wrote to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in
1998, these problems are more the result of today's drug policies than the
drugs themselves. In their opinion today's war against drugs only makes the
problem worse.

For nearly 100 years, drug policy in the West has been based on
prohibitions and control. The goal has been a drug-free society, which has
been pursued by meting out punishments.

In 1966 Finland became the first Nordic Country to pass a law banning the
possession and use of psychoactive drugs. The decision was preceded by
intense debate.

On the one hand, drug users were seen primarily as victims. The reason for
making the use of drugs illegal was to underscore the negative view taken
by society. Like other Western countries, Finland punishes dealers more
severely than users.

In about 20 years the use of drugs has increased in Europe so much that
police usually turn a blind eye to use, while concentrating on fighting
smuggling and trade.

Last year Finnish police and customs officials confiscated 589 kilos of
cannabis and 139 kilos of amphetamine. According to international
estimates, authorities seize only about five to ten percent of the illegal
drugs on the market.

The United States spends more than any other country in the world in the
fight against drugs - 40 billion dollars a year. The USA has also tried to
reduce the supply of illegal drugs by destroying drug crops in Mexico,
Peru, Bolivia, and Colombia.

Nobel Prize winner, economist Milton Friedman has wondered what sense there
is in dumping huge amounts of money on a policy that has proven to be
ineffective. The United States - a country with five percent of the
population of the world, and a quarter of its prisoners - spends great
amounts of money on prison construction, for instance.

Over the years the drug police in Finland have been given more money and
authority. The police can now wiretap telephones, pose as drug buyers, and
soon they will be allowed to bug the homes of suspected dealers.

Drug crime has increased in spite of more efficient policing. Dealers are
not deterred even by harsh punishments, because the profits are simply too
great.

The increase in drug crime can be seen in prisons. In Sweden nearly one in
every three prisoners incarcerated in 2000 said that they had suffered from
a drug problem when they were put behind bars. More than half of all
prisoners said that they had used illegal drugs at least two times a week
at some time in their lives.

Finnish prisons are also crowded. Increasing numbers of prisoners have been
sentenced for a drug crime, or for property crime motivated by a need to
buy drugs.

Britain's former Minister of Northern Ireland affairs, Mo Mowlam, said in a
recent interview with The Independent, that the best way to reduce the harm
caused by drugs would be to legalise them all, including the hard drugs.

Supporters of legalisation would impose a tax on drugs, and use the
revenues to offset some of the costs of treatment.

The UN has calculated that the drug trade is worth 404 billion euros a
year, which is equivalent to about eight percent of all world trade. All of
this is tax-free income for organised crime.

According to British estimates the legalisation of drugs would lower their
price to about five percent of the present level and would lead to a 70%
decline in theft.

Supporters of legalisation also cite humanitarian considerations: in the
view of The Economist, punishing drug users hurts those who are the worst off.

In the United States, police often interfere with street sales conducted by
members of racial minorities, while those who are well off sniff their
cocaine at home, out of sight of the police. In Finland, the Ministry of
Social Affairs and Health fears that habitual drug users are repeatedly
given fines instead of treatment.

Being arrested for drug use tends to lead to further marginalisation. In
the United States convicted drug users can find it difficult to gett a
driving licence, and even a study loan.

Present-day drug policy has its origins in efforts to regulate the opium
trade. Religious groups in 19th century Britain promoted international
treaties which would end Britain's opium trade with China.

Later the League of Nations and the United Nations drafted drug treaties
which defined which substances should be banned. Nearly all intoxicants
that were not in common use in Europe and North America were put on the list.

The banned substances were chosen in quite an arbitrary manner. United
States took the drugs favoured by Chinese and Mexican immigrants: opium and
marijuana. The white upper class did not ban its own drugs of choice -
alcohol, tobacco, and coffee.

But why is Europe's drug policy changing only now, even though the critics
have been pointing out its shortcomings for years? Critical voices have
generally been silenced, both in politics and in the media.

Australian researcher Desmond Manderson has explained the one-sided
opinions on drugs in terms of cultural history. According to this
explanation, Western societies are very systematic and rational. Even the
slightest threat to a society based on reason is met with furious resistance.

Taking the hard line on drugs also provides politicians with an easy
scapegoat for the failures of society.

Two Nordic experts, Norwegian criminologist Professor Nils Christie and the
late Finnish alcohol researcher Kettil Bruun wrote in their classic book on
drug policy that illegal drugs are a "good enemy" for society, and that the
most dangerous type of drug abuse is the political abuse of drugs.

Although drugs may be a good enemy for those who oppose them, prohibition
does not seem to reduce the use of drugs. No matter what legislators do,
there will always be some people who use drugs, although only a small
percentage of experimenters or occasional users ever develop any real
problems with them.

Many European countries have moved toward a drug policy aimed primarily at
minimising the harm caused by drugs. in this approach, users are not
punished, while efforts are made to improve the treatment system and drug
education.

For instance, in Spain the use of cannabis, cocaine, and ecstasy is so
common that the police would not have the time to go after people for the
possession of small amounts for personal use.

Even those who advocate the legalisation of drugs do not want to give
people unrestricted access to them. In The Netherlands cannabis is
available only in special coffee shops, and in Switzerland heroin has been
distributed to hard-core addicts from special service points.

Drugs do cause serious health problems. According to Dr. Tapani Sarvanti,
an official at the Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health, drug
abuse treatment needs to be improved.

For instance, the treatment of heroin addiction with other drugs has helped
addicts improve their quality of life, while deaths by overdose and HIV
infections have declined.

Sarvanti also believes in the effectiveness of drug education, as long as
it is based on fact.

"Previously educators have lied and painted images of horror that do not
correspond to the experiences of the young people themselves. The
credibility of drug educators has suffered quite a blow", Sarvanti says.

The relaxing of controls has not led to uncontrolled growth in the use of
drugs. In The Netherlands cannabis is used less frequently than in Britain,
where simple use can theoretically still lead to rather severe punishment.

The World Health Organisation and the European Union financed a study on
the results of new legislation in The Czech Republic imposing tougher
punishments for users. The study showed that punishing users was actually
harmful, and the policy was later changed.

British Home Secretary David Blunkett has proposed that cannabis be
classified in the same category as medicines which affect the central
nervous system. He bases his views on studies according to which cannabis
does not cause any more damage than the legal drugs tobacco and alcohol.

It is likely that the legalisation of drugs would lead to an increase in
their use, and of serious cases of addiction. How much is anyone's guess,
as there are no experiences to go on.

Olavi Kaukonen, a civil servant at the Ministry of Social Affairs and
Health, has said that although illegal drugs may be easier to acquire in
Central Europe than in Finland, experimentation with drugs is about as
frequent everywhere. On the other hand, he says that the
intoxication-seeking drinking culture that prevails in Finland could mean
that drugs would also be used in a similar manner, and in combination with
alcohol.

But even in more liberal countries it is possible to tighten drug policy.
In The Netherlands the maximum amount of cannabis that the coffee shops are
allowed to sell a customer at one time was reduced a few years back.

Wim Buisman, the head of the Jellineck Foundation, which organises
treatment for drug abusers, says that he does not expect that the country's
drug policy would change much in the coming years. However, the new
right-of-centre Government wants to reduce crime in areas with large
immigrant populations. Buisman says that it could mean that immigrants
would increasingly get their drug treatment in prison.

Tapani Sarvanti believes that Finland will follow the rest of Europe in
drug policy questions. "This will happen no matter how excessively
optimistic some try to be here."

It will take time. "Experts cannot mould the world to their liking. We need
to live according to the dictates of fears and prejudices."