The global war on drugs:
has the end game started?
15 July 2009, Sydney
Lowy Institute
Dr Alex Wodak
St. Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney
1
Aims global drug prohibition:
• Minimise availability, use specified
prohibited drugs recreational purposes
• Ensure adequate availability drugs
medical, scientific purposes
• Indicators drug prohibition working:
– Low availability drugs
– High prices, low purity
– Reducing consumption
– Benefits > adverse effects
2
Has drug prohibition worked?
• Drugs still readily available
• Prices falling dramatically, purity
increasing
• Production, consumption increasing
• Benefits hard to identify
• Adverse effects multiple, severe,
serious, obvious
3
Production:
GLOBAL ILLICIT OPIUM PRODUCTION 1990 - 2007
Source: UN World Drug Report 2008, Office on Drugs and Crime.
http://www.unodc.org/documents/wdr/WDR_2008/Executive%20Summary.pdf
4
Production: 2
GLOBAL COCAINE PRODUCTION 1990 - 2007
Source: UN World Drug Report 2008, Office on Drugs and Crime.
http://www.unodc.org/documents/wdr/WDR_2008/Executive%20Summary.pdf
5
Production: 3
GLOBAL CANNABIS HERB PRODUCTION 1998/99-2004/05
Source: Figures prepared for the UN World Drug Report 2006, Office on Drugs and Crime; Costa Storti C & De
Grauwe P, Globalisation and the Price Decline of Illicit Drugs, CESifo Working Paper 1990, 2007; Fig 6.
http://www.cesifo-group.de/pls/guestci/download/CESifo%20Working%20Papers%202007/CESifo%20Working%20Papers%20May%202007/cesifo1_wp1990.pdf
6
Availability:
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Very easy
Easy
Difficult
Very difficult
Don't know
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
Heroin availability Australia 2000-2007
7
Availability: 2
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Very easy
Easy
Difficult
Very difficult
Don't know
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
Cocaine availability Australia 2000-2007
8
Availability: 3
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Very easy
Easy
Difficult
Very difficult
Don't know
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
Methamphetamine powder Australia 2000-2007
9
Prices:
Reuter, Trautmann ‘Global Illicit Drugs Markets 1981-2002’
European Commission, 2009
10
USA heroin price, purity 1980-1999:
11
RETAIL PRICE MAJOR DRUG TYPES EUROPEAN UNION 2001-2006
Source: European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (2008);
State of the Drugs Problem; Drug availability and drug markets:
price and purity information (PPP); Fig PPP-1.
http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/html.cfm/index53151EN.html
12
RETAIL PRICE HEROIN USA & EUROPE 1990-2005
Source: Figures prepared for the UN World Drug Report 2006, Office on Drugs and Crime; Costa Storti C & De
Grauwe P, Globalisation and the Price Decline of Illicit Drugs, CESifo Working Paper 1990, 2007; Fig 2.
http://www.cesifo-group.de/pls/guestci/download/CESifo%20Working%20Papers%202007/CESifo%20Working%20Papers%20May%202007/cesifo1_wp1990.pdf
13
RETAIL PRICE COCAINE USA & EUROPE 1990-2005
Source: Figures prepared for the UN World Drug Report 2006, Office on Drugs and Crime; Costa Storti C & De
Grauwe P, Globalisation and the Price Decline of Illicit Drugs, CESifo Working Paper 1990, 2007; Fig 1.
http://www.cesifo-group.de/pls/guestci/download/CESifo%20Working%20Papers%202007/CESifo%20Working%20Papers%20May%202007/cesifo1_wp1990.pdf
14
Price/incarceration:
# INCARCERATED DRUG OFFENDERS RETAIL PRICE HEROIN,
COCAINE UNITED STATES 1981-2003
Source: Figures prepared for the Office of the National Drug Control Policy; Washington Office
on Latin America; 2003
15
http://www.wola.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=viewp&id=397
Price/expenditure:
US SPENDING OVERSEAS SUPPLY CONTROL
VS HEROIN, COCAINE WHOLESALE PRICE
Source: Figures prepared for the Office of the National Drug Control Policy; Washington Office
on Latin America; 2003
http://www.wola.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=viewp&id=397
16
Adequate supply drugs medicines:
• 15% world’s population 1999 accounted
87% global morphine consumption
• USA 4.7% global population: accounted
49% global morphine, 99% sustained
release oxycodone
• Only 10 million / 20 million new global
cancer cases/year receive adequate
pain relief
17
Benefits of prohibition:
• Global last 40 years
– Brief USA heroin shortage 1970s
– NZ heroin shortage > 1981
– Sweden?
– Australia heroin shortage > 2000?
18
Adverse effects:
‘Global drug control efforts have had a dramatic unintended
consequence: a criminal black market of staggering
proportions. Organized crime is a threat to security. Criminal
organizations have the power to destabilize society and
Governments. The illicit drug business is worth billions of
dollars a year, part of which is used to corrupt government
officials and to poison economies.
Drug cartels are spreading violence in Central America, Mexico
and the Caribbean. West Africa is under attack from narcotrafficking. Collusion between insurgents and criminal groups
threatens the stability of West Asia, the Andes and parts of
Africa, fuelling the trade in smuggled weapons, the plunder of
natural resources and piracy’
UNODC website
19
Narco-states:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Afghanistan
Pakistan
Burma
Colombia
Peru
Bolivia
Mexico
20
Narco-terrorism:
• Known terrorist organizations
trafficking drugs fund operations, gain
recruits, expertise
• Colombia
– Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)
– United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia (AUC)
• Peru
• Afghanistan, Pakistan - Taliban
21
Mexico, Pakistan:
‘In terms of worst-case scenarios for the Joint Force
and indeed the world, two large and important states
bear consideration for a rapid and sudden collapse:
Pakistan and Mexico.
The Mexican … government, its politicians, police,
and judicial infrastructure are all under sustained
assault and pressure by criminal gangs and drug
cartels’
The Joint Operating Environment
United States Joint Forces Command
November 2008
22
Pakistan, Afghanistan
• Pakistan
– Nuclear armed
– Unstable
• Afghanistan
– International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)
– Taliban military funded (in part) opium/heroin
– 93% world opium
– 70% Helmund, Kandahar provinces
23
What do experts think?
‘It is very doubtful if such prohibition has lessened
to an extent the amount which is brought in to
Australia’… ‘owing to total prohibition, the price of
opium has risen enormously … the Commonwealth
gladly gave up about £ 60,000 revenue with a view to
a suppression of the evil, but the result has not been
what has been hoped for. What now appears to be
the effect of total prohibition is that, while we have
lost the duty, the opium is still imported pretty freely’
H.N.P. Wollaston, Commonwealth ComptrollerGeneral of Customs
Annual report Commonwealth Parliament 1908
24
Expert opinion Australia
‘All the evidence shows, however, not
only that our law enforcement agencies
have not succeeded in preventing the
supply of illegal drugs to Australian
markets but that it is unrealistic to
expect them to do so’
Parliamentary Joint Committee on the
National Crime Authority 1989
25
Expert opinion USA
‘It seems to me we're not really going to get
anywhere until we can take the criminality
out of the drug business and the incentives
for criminality out of it. Frankly, the only way
I can think of to accomplish this is to make it
possible for addicts to buy drugs at some
regulated place at a price that approximates
their cost... We need at least to consider and
examine forms of controlled legalization of
drugs...’
George Shultz, former US Secretary of State, 1989
26
Expert opinion USA
‘The United States alone is spending
over $800 million a year on counternarcotics. We have gotten nothing out
of it, nothing. It is the most wasteful
and ineffective programme I have seen
in 40 years’
Richard Holbrooke
US envoy to Afghanistan & Pakistan
2009
27
Expert opinion USA
‘Drugs are a tragedy for addicts. But
criminalizing their use converts that
tragedy into a disaster for society, for
users and nonusers alike. Our
experience with the prohibition of
drugs is a replay of our experience with
the prohibition of alcoholic beverages’
Milton Friedman
Nobel Prize Economics
28
Expert opinion USA
‘As long as there is a demand for drugs
in this country, some crook is gonna
figure out how to get 'em here’
President George W. Bush 2002
29
Expert opinion UK
‘Politicians attempt to appeal to the
lowest common denominator by
posturing with tough policies and
calling for crackdown after crackdown.
Drugs policy has been failing for
decades’
David Cameron
Leader, Conservative Party,
United Kingdom 2,005
30
Expert opinion UK
‘If there is any single lesson from the
experience of the last 30 years, it is that
policies based wholly or mainly on
enforcement are destined to fail. It remains
an unhappy fact that the best efforts of
police and Customs have had little, if any,
impact on the availability of illegal drugs and
this is reflected in the prices on the street
which are as low as they have ever been’
Select Committee on Home Affairs
House of Commons, UK, 2002
31
Expert opinion UK
‘Attempts to combat illegal drugs by
means of law enforcement have proved
so manifestly unsuccessful that it is
difficult to argue for the status quo’
Chris Mullin
Chairman
Select Committee on Home Affairs
House of Commons, UK, 2002
32
Expert opinion UK
‘A sustained seizure rate of over 60% is
required to put a successful trafficker
out of business – anecdotal evidence
suggests that seizure rates as high as
80% may be needed in some cases.
Sustained successful interventions on
this scale have never been achieved’
Strategy Unit, Whitehall, UK, 2003
33
Expert opinion UK
‘Over the past 10-15 years, despite
interventions at every point in the supply
chain, cocaine and heroin consumption have
been rising, prices falling and drugs have
continued to reach users. Government
interventions against the drug business are a
cost of doing business, rather than a
substantive threat to the industry’s viability’
Strategy Unit, Whitehall, UK, 2003
34
Expert opinion UN
‘…Many countries impose criminal sanctions
for same-sex sex, commercial sex and drug
injection. Such laws constitute major barriers
to reaching key populations with HIV
services. Those behaviours should be
decriminalized, and people addicted to drugs
should receive health services for the
treatment of their addiction’
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon
7 May 2009
35
The beginning of the end:
January:
• President Obama took office
• 3rd US President in row admit cannabis
• ‘War on drugs is an utter failure'
• [I believe in] 'shifting the paradigm, shifting
the model, so that we focus more on a public
health approach.'
• Campaign commitments:
– overcome ban Federal funding NSPs
– stop Federal interventions if states permitted
medical use cannabis
36
Beginning of the end:
February
• Latin American drug policy commission
– Fernando Henrique Cardoso (Brasil)
– César Gaviria (Colombia)
– Ernesto Zedillo (Mexico)
• ‘Drug War is a failure’
• ‘Break taboo on open debate including
about cannabis decriminalization’
37
Beginning of the end:
March
• Meeting CND Vienna
• Political Declaration excluded ‘harm
reduction’- caused major split
• 26 countries (including Australia)
demanded support for harm reduction
in footnote
38
Beginning of the end:
May
• Governor California: ‘Well, I think it’s not
time for [legalization], but I think it’s time for
a debate’
• Former President Vicente Fox, Mexico: ‘I am
not yet convinced that that’s the solution’ but
‘why not discuss it?’
• Current Vice President Colombia Franciso
Santos Calderón: ‘the only way you can
really solve the problem [is] if you legalize it
totally. Anything…different than that...will not
work’
39
Beginning of the end:
May (cont’d)
• New US drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske don’t use term ‘War on Drugs’
• Germany 63% vote Bundestag allow
heroin prescription treatment
• UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon:
‘drug injection … should be
decriminalized’
40
Opinion polls USA cannabis:
• Should marijuana be legal, taxed and regulated?
Yes – 52% National, 58% California
Zogby, April 2009
• Do you favour ‘legalizing small amounts of
marijuana for personal use’ – Yes 46%, > double
level 1997
National, ABC News/Washington Post, April 2009
• Do you support legalizing marijuana for recreational
use and taxing its proceeds – Yes 56%
California, The Field Poll, April 2009
• Should cannabis be legal for adults – Yes 54%
Should it be taxed at same rate as alcohol – Yes50%
California, Oaksterdam University, March 2009
41
42
The Debate:
‘But the intelligence and facts were
being fixed around the policy’
Sir Richard Dearlove
Head of MI6
War Cabinet, 10 Downing Street
23 July 2002
43
Why does prohibition persist?
• ‘The whole aim of practical politics is to keep
the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous
to be led to safety) by menacing it with an
endless series of hobgoblins, all of them
imaginary’
H. L. Mencken
• Effective drug policies are unpopular, but
popular drug policies are ineffective
44
What are the alternatives?
• Regard illicit drugs as primarily a
health & social issue
• Increase funding health, social
interventions to level of drug law
enforcement
• Base policy on evidence, get best
return on investment
• Reduce, eliminate penalties drug
possession, consumption
45
Alternatives? 2
• Treatment drug users
– Expand capacity
– Improve quality
– Broaden range options
• Tax, regulate cannabis
• Possibly allow dilute, small quantity
recreational sale some drugs
• <1906 edible opium taxed and sold
• <1913 cocaine in Coca Cola
46
Conclusions:
• Global drug prohibition began 100 years ago
• Has not:
– Reduced recreational use illicit drugs
– Ensured adequate supplies drugs medical
purposes
•
•
•
•
Drug prohibition has failed comprehensively
Cannot be made to work
Now increasingly recognised
Political elites know prohibition does not
work
47
Conclusions: 2
• Adverse effects serious, include threats to
security
• Drug law reform is now politically feasible
• Need to consider alternatives: regard
primarily as health, social problem
• Reduce economic inequality to reduce illicit
drug use
• Worst way to use illicit drugs is for political
purposes
48