Somewhat depressing

I have been prompted by the newsletter published by DANA (see reference 1) to think about our world's policies regarding what are loosely called drugs, mind altering substances. In which context we usually exclude alcohol, caffeine and nicotine, but usually include marijuana, cocaine and heroin.

It seems that the UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs (UNGASS) held in April 2016 prompted the establishment of the Johns Hopkins–Lancet Commission on Drug Policy and Health, which published its report in April 2016, in time for UNGASS.

The publicly available commission report (54 pages, reference 2) documents all kinds of things terribly wrong with the world's current approach to drugs, mostly involving severe (and mostly ineffective) criminalisation of both possession and supply - and while recognising that not many more legislatures are going to decriminalise drugs any time soon (both Portugal and the Czech Republic did so some years ago, with good results), it does recommend a much softer approach. The management summary at the front is reasonably accessible, while the body of the report smells of committees and bureaucracy. And some of the statistical charts therein are a bit tricky.

While the publicly available UNGASS report (24 pages, reference 3), the top of the first page of which is snapped above, is completely impenetrable, although it does manage to give the impression that it is not recommending any substantial or significant change in the current stance on these matters. I suppose it is inevitable that the written results of a large multi-national quango such as the UN are going to be rather heavy going, but they might have done a bit more to ease the way for the concerned citizen.

I have no idea whether the UNGASS people read the commission report and I don't recall seeing any coverage of all this in the media at the time, but that might just be my memory. But I do share a few snippets, mostly lifted from from the commission report via the DANA newsletter.

There is a pain killer out there called OxyContin widely promoted by its manufacturer Purdue Pharma as a safe alternative to opioid painkillers. Prescribed, at least in the US, on a massive scale, probably relieving quite a lot of pain, but probably also resulting in much addiction, either to the drug itself or to the rather cheaper opioid alternatives, this despite the legality of the one and the illegality of the other.

'The pursuit of drug prohibition has generated a parallel economy run by criminal networks. Both these networks, which resort to violence to protect their markets, and the police and sometimes military or paramilitary forces that pursue them contribute to violence and insecurity in communities affected by drug transit and sales. In Mexico, the striking increase in homicides since the government decided to use military forces against drug traffickers in 2006 has been so great that it reduced life expectancy in the country'.

'One of the greatest impacts of pursuit of drug prohibition identified by the Commission with respect to infectious disease is the excessive use of incarceration as a drug-control measure'.

Black citizens of the US are five times more likely to be put in prison for drug offences than white citizens, although the propensity to consume drugs is much the same in both communities.

While women do worse than men, probably because they tend to be lower down the drug hierarchies and so are not in a good position to cut a deal with their captors.

Nearly half the huge number of people in jail in the US are there for drugs offences, and 80% of those are to do with possession rather than supply.

A lot of countries allow their police to crack down on the possession of paraphernalia, particularly syringes, even when such possession is not in itself an offence. Some crack down on the customers of support centres in an effort to boost arrest rates. All of which results in a lot more unsafe needle use and the avoidable spread of disease.

Policy remains focussed on eradicating drugs, despite the fact that people have been doing them for thousands of years, for most of this time without recourse to criminal justice. Even reindeer do it. That said, let's not forget that these drugs are addictive and, in the round, do a great deal of damage to those addicted - and to those near them.

PS: no mention here, but let's not forget also the vested interest in current policies of all the enforcement and incarceration people who make a living out of them.

Reference 1: http://www.dana.org/.

Reference 2: http://thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)00619-X/fulltext.

Reference 3: http://idpc.net/policy-advocacy/the-un-general-assembly-special-session-on-drugs-ungass-2016.