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UK: High stakes
Alan Travis The Guardian
Wednesday 16 Apr 2003 Britain is this week playing a key role in a European challenge to the UN's "war on drugs". And, unlike dispositions in events elsewhere, it is the French who are lining up behind the aggressive policies of the Americans. The struggle is being played out behind the scenes at the UN drugs "summit" in Vienna, which will end tomorrow by delivering an upbeat half-term verdict on the UN's 10-year strategy to "eliminate or significantly reduce" world production of the coca bush, the cannabis plant and the opium poppy by 2008. UN secretary general Kofi Annan endorsed that ambitious aim at a special UN assembly on drugs in 1998 under the banner: "A drugs-free world - we can do it." This, in turn, reaffirmed the 1988 UN convention against illicit traffic in narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances - a convention drawn up under the influence of the American war on drugs pushed by presidents Reagan and Bush senior, based on a "just say no" strategy of abstinence. The strategy is supposed to deliver falling levels of production, trafficking and drug misuse across the world. Instead, it is drug prices that have fallen, and the ready availability of drugs and the growing levels of use - especially of cannabis - stand in mocking testimony to the unrealistic nature of those aims. In the face of this, many European governments, including Britain, have decided that prohibition on its own is not enough and that ways are needed of reducing the harm that drug abusers do themselves and society. But those ministers meeting in Vienna at the UN's commission on narcotic drugs have been surprised to find just how little national control they have over their own domestic drugs policies. Under the 1988 convention, for instance, all 166 signatory countries must make the possession of illicit drugs for personal consumption a criminal offence under their own law. This is no academic point, as home secretary David Blunkett found out two months ago when his policy of reclassifying cannabis received a stinging rebuke from the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) - the UN body charged with policing enforcement of the conventions. The INCB's president, Philip Emafo, warned that the decision to relax Britain's cannabis laws would have "dangerous, worldwide repercussions", including undermining African attempts to curb cultivation of the illicit plant. The INCB's British delegate, Hamid Ghodse, professor of psychiatry at St George's hospital, south London, joined the attack, claiming that Blunkett's decision would within 10 to 20 years fill Britain's psychiatric hospitals with people with cannabis problems. Britain's drug minister, Bob Ainsworth, has told the British delegation at Vienna to "intervene to correct the extremely misleading picture" the INCB report painted. In a combative official reply to Emafo, Britain has accused him of using "alarmist language" and charged that his attack lacked any scientific basis. Britain has not been alone in being criticised by the INCB for its introduction of "harm reduction" measures. The Dutch, Swiss and Australians have been attacked in similar terms. Spain, Portugal, Austria and Greece, which holds the current EU presidency, have all gone down a similar road. For once, when it comes to the politics of the UN, Britain will find itself lined up with most of the rest of Europe in opposition to a prohibitionist America. The US's only European allies are France and Sweden. Ainsworth says that Britain's approach to the drugs summit acknowledges the need to maintain the balance of needs of producer, transit and consumer countries. "We will therefore not be prepared to support the wholesale review of the UN drugs conventions and strategies aimed at radical changes such as legalisation or decriminalisation of any drug. But we may be prepared to lend support to moves aimed at establishing the legitimate pursuit of evidence-based harm reduction measures more easily within the constraints of the conventions. Much will depend on the precise wording of the proposals. We want to inject some straight, open thinking into this area." Ainsworth has made clear that he does not expect any radical departure in Vienna and the British are not going to lead a charge to break the current international consensus. As the INCB pointed out to Blunkett: "No government should take unilateral measures without considering the consequences for an entire system that took governments almost a century to establish." It is not just that any country withdrawing from the UN conventions would be treated as a pariah "narco-state". As Antonio Costa, the new executive director of the UN office on drugs and crime, has made plain at the Vienna meeting, there is plenty of official hostility towards national experiments in harm reduction measures. In one session at the summit, Costa claimed that some countries were seeing the spread of a "permissive culture favouring the right to abuse drugs" and claimed that this "laissez-faire in self-destruction" seemed at odds with efforts to promote nicotine abstinence. Those who promoted harm reduction measures were guilty of perpetuating an increasingly unhelpful debate that had turned into a "battlefield of recrimination", Costa said. Despite this hostile atmosphere, there is an attempt to incorporate support for harm reduction programmes in the final resolution. Part of this effort is being led by Cheryl Kernot, a former Australian politician working for Forward Thinking on Drugs, an international initiative of British drugs charity Release. The initiative's supporters include John Grieve, former head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorism branch, and Dame Ruth Runciman, who chaired the influential Police Foundation inquiry into drugs. Kernot's aims are modest. She wants the UN summit to conduct an honest review of the effectiveness of current global drugs policy and allow individual countries to implement responsible harm-reduction measures without being censured by the INCB. To support the case, UN delegates have been given the first comprehensive global review of the evidence for what works in reducing harm. It concludes that needle and syringe exchanges, and methadone and other replacement therapies, definitely work and should be adopted where they are not available. Heroin prescribing, reduced penalties for possession, pill-testing facilities and "shooting galleries" or drug consumption rooms are recommended as showing promise, but requiring caution in expansion. Drug reformers argue that there is enough room for manoeuvre within the international drug laws for all these activities to be legal. British ministers have already gone some way down this road, but have stopped short of endorsing "shooting galleries" on grounds that they breach the conventions. Kernot argues that countries that want to pursue harm-reduction measures, where the evidence warrants it, should be allowed to do so without censure. "It will be a giant lost opportunity if this meeting congratulates itself that real progress is being made, when an honest assessment of the evidence shows that is highly questionable," says Kernot. "It would be a great pity to waste another five years of this 10-year strategy pursuing unclear goals. The least we should be able to hope for from this important gathering is that they set the course for a more honest and constructive next five years on drugs." On the eve of final negotiations, the likely outcome does not look too promising. Many of the European countries say, like Britain, that they will support a review and harm-reduction approachs if somebody else puts their head above the parapet first. But at present, nobody looks willing to upset the American-dominated consensus. Progress report Heroin UN: Abuse stabilised at about 13 million users worldwide and about 4,400 tons of opium produced each year. The challenge in Afghanistan is "formidable". In eastern Europe, Russia and central Asia, the growth of injecting-drug abuse threatens an HIV/Aids public health disaster. Independent experts*: Afghan opium production back to "normal" levels. Cocaine UN: Colombian coca production down 37% since 2000 and cocaine abuse declining in America. Experts: Colombian production has fallen, but unlikely to have long-term impact on global trends. Amphetamines UN: Trends are worrying. Less buoyant demand in western Europe has led to shift of production to eastern Europe. Consumption declining in US and western Europe, but ecstasy abuse accelerating in Asia. Experts: Unprecedented rise in methamphetamine use in east and south-east Asia, with tragic social consequences. Cannabis UN: Most widely produced, trafficked and consumed drug. Rising levels of seizures and consumption suggest output is growing, but high school consumption in US down 10% since 1997. Experts: Consumption in Britain and US shows slow continued growth in 1990s. Overall verdict UN: Signs of progress include stabilisation/decline of heroin and cocaine abuse. Trends in synthetic drugs are worrying and consumption of cannabis on the rise. Public health crisis looming from eastern Europe to the north Pacific over spread of injecting. Experts: Picture of either stability or increasing problems. Chances of UN achieving its goals by 2008 appear remote. *Experts' review undertaken for Forward Thinking on Drugs.
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