In April 2003 the UN Commission for Narcotic Drugs (CND) concluded its annual meeting and Ministerial Conference of member states to mark the half way point in the ten year UN strategy: “a drug free
In April 2003 the UN Commission for Narcotic Drugs (CND) concluded its annual meeting
and Ministerial Conference of member states to mark the half way point in the ten year UN
strategy: “a drug free world, we can do it!”. Devised at the 1998 UN General Assembly
Special Session (UNGASS) in New York, world leaders put their faith in the elimination or
significant reduction in poppy, coca and cannabis cultivation. Despite the positive spin to
emerge from the CND gathering, it is impossible to disguise the failings of this strategy.
Neither did the ministerial endorsement of the ten-year plan, and vague recommendations to
enhance drug control strategies, mask the crisis in international drugs policy. The UK Home
Affairs Select Committee had called for a discussion of alternatives at the conference,
“including the possibility of legalisation and regulation to tackle the global drugs dilemma”;
the CND ministers subsequently expressed:
grave concern about policies and activities in favour of the legalization of
illicit narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances that were not in
accordance with the international drug control treaties and that might
jeopardize the international drug control regime (1)
Losing the war on drugs
The UK is a signatory (along with almost all UN member states) to three UN drug control
treaties (1961, 1971, 1988) that enshrine the basic tenets of prohibition: the criminalisation of
production, supply, and possession of specific drugs into domestic law. After four decades of
the ‘war on drugs’ and untold billions spent on co-ordinated international drug control and
enforcement, the market for illegal drugs continues to expand (estimates for the size of the
international drug trade now range from £100-£300 billion a year, putting it on a par with the
oil and arms trade). The negative consequences of these illegal markets expand accordingly,
exacting a terrible toll across the world from producer countries such as Colombia and
Afghanistan, to the deprived crime ridden inner cities of Western Europe. This crisis has
essentially been precipitated by the collision of rising illegal drug use with prohibitionist policies
formulated in an era when patterns of use were unrecognisable from those of today.
Unintended consequences
For the first time ever the UK updated drugs strategy 2002 refers to “maintaining prohibition”
(as a deterrent for young people) (3). What the strategy excludes is the potential to address
the unintended negative consequences of a prohibitionist approach. Just as with alcohol in
1920’s and 30’s USA, violent and deregulated illegal markets are inevitable when a policy of
prohibition collides with a continued or growing demand for prohibited substances.
Significantly, the negative impacts of prohibition in the UK, and globally, have expanded in
proportion to the ballooning demand for illegal drugs over the past three decades.
The price of illegal drugs is artificially high. The price of a kilo of cocaine in Colombia is
£1,000. In the UK it is £30 000 (4). This 3,000% profit margin not only attracts organised
crime, it also makes street prices far higher than they would be in a legal market, leading to
high levels of property crime and street prostitution amongst problematic users. That heroin
use in the UK has increased by over 1000% since 1971 illustrates the extent to which the
policy-making environment has shifted (5). This change has presented problems that could
hardly have been imagined when the original UN drug control treaties were drafted, with
some of the text dating back to the late 1940’s.
Market forces
At the global scale the inflated prices of illegal drugs provide an extraordinary profit