Mid-term review of UNGASS 2003

In April 2003, there is to be a mid-term review of the outcomes of the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on the World Drug problem in 1998. The UNGASS was originally called for to evaluate the effectiveness of the global drug control regime. However, during the preparatory phase at the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) the effort at evaluation backfired and the UNGASS was reoriented towards an affirmation of the existing repressive drug control framework, despite the obvious failure to achieve results. The General Assembly in their Political Declaration gave the UN International Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) the mandate "...to develop strategies with a view to eliminating or significantly reducing the illicit cultivation of the coca bush, the cannabis plant and the opium poppy by the year 2008". The same year was targeted for "achieving significant and measurable results in the field of demand reduction".

Halfway to the target date, one can only conclude that the unrealistic deadlines set at the 1998 UNGASS will –once again– fail. The April 2003 mid-term review potentially provides another global moment for open-minded reflection and genuine evaluation, an opportunity the international community should not lose again. As was recently concluded on the basis of a British parliamentary enquiry, "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."

Trends in Drug Control

The big trends in drug control over the past decade reveal two opposing tendencies: one tends towards tolerance and pragmatism while the other gets tough and tries to reinvigorate a zero-tolerance
mentality. These diverging trends begin from a shared recognition that all combined efforts thus far –eradication, alternative development, drug seizures, disruption of trafficking groups, demand reduction– have failed in terms of global impact. There may be a wealth of good practices on the local level, but there is barely any measurable reduction in either supply or demand for illicit drugs.

In Europe and several like-minded countries like Canada, Australia and New Zealand, a pragmatic approach has gained ground in domestic drug policy-making, taking a step back from indiscriminate repression and zero-tolerance. In these countries, the Harm Reduction concept has rapidly spread in recent years and has now become the basis for a rational and pragmatic drug policy. Practices like the decriminalisation of consumption, law enforcement leniency towards cannabis and possession for personal use, and needle exchange programmes are commonplace nowadays. The more controversial steps further along the path of leniency, like "coffee shops", heroin prescription programmes, ecstasy testing, etc, have received acceptance beyond the pioneer countries, Switzerland and The Netherlands, and are under consideration or in preparation in several other countries. Europe has advanced rapidly on these issues. The trend towards more leniency has become irreversible and rational thinking is gradually replacing the dogmas of the past.

There is no question that sooner or later the tolerance trend guided by the Harm Reduction philosophy will run up against the limitations of the UN Drug Conventions. It
already touches the very edges of the letter and spirit of some articles. Although all steps taken thus far are more or less defendable in that they seem to adhere to the 1961 Single Convention, as well as most of the stricter obligations agreed to in the 1988 Vienna Convention, the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) attacks the more liberal-minded countries every year on their lenient policies in its annual report. At the March 2002 CND session the INCB orchestrated an outright attack on lenient drug policies. (See: European Cannabis Policies Under Attack) If the countries committed to the search for pragmatic solutions want to advance any further, it is becoming urgent that they begin to question openly the straitjacket of the conventions.

This European trend is only one part of the global picture. The other part reveals a trend in the opposite direction: an escalation in the US-driven War on Drugs, seeing mass imprisonment for drug related offences and an increased and militarised forced eradication of drug-linked crops in many countries. Around the same period as the 1998 UNGASS, a "re-affirmation" push took place in the United States. Pressure increased to intensify the chemical eradication of illicit cultivation of drug crops worldwide, while the US Congress allocated resources for the promotion of a biological fungus to destroy coca bush, cannabis and opium poppy.

The target date of the year 2008 to eliminate or significantly reduce the illicit cultivation of drug crops set by UNGASS blended with the aggressive nature of the Western Hemisphere Drug Elimination Act (approved by US Congress in October 1998) into grand master plans for the Andean region. The offensive focused on Bolivia and on Colombia, with massive aerial spraying operations under the aegis of Plan Colombia and the Andean Regional Initiative. After the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington the illicit drug industry became a major focus in the global war on terrorism. The assumptionbeing that revenues of the drug trade are being used to finance so-called ‘narco-terrorists’ in Afghanistan and Colombia.

The new found link between drugs and terrorism will be used to justify an escalation of the War on Drugs as a proxy in the one against terrorism. The fact that the present illegal nature of the drugs trade is making the situation worse, is scarcely noted in the present commotion on terrorism. The linkage of drugs and terrorism can lead to scary scenarios and will seriously hamper attempts to find pragmatic and rational solutions for the global drug problem.

Polarisation and Paralysis

The past decade has thus shown an increasing polarisation between two diverging trends in global drug policies. At the UN level, this polarisation has caused paralysis. The UNDCP has actively promoted a discourse to re-affirm political commitment, oppose any tolerance, close ranks behind a "get-serious" approach and set deadlines, "A drug free world – We can do it!". The agency went through a deep crisis these past years under the leadership of Executive Director Pino Arlacchi, suffocating attempts to open up the debate, censoring critical remarks in its own publications, trumpeting doubtful success stories, and punishing dissenting views among its staff. The UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) was called in to investigate mismanagement, donors lost confidence and Executive Director Pino Arlacchi had to step down in December 2001. The combination of a strong zero-tolerance position and bad management has meant that UNDCP has not been able to play a moderating role amidst the growing polarisation.

The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) has maintained a very strict interpretation of the UN Conventions and regularly appears to overstep its limited mandate by passing judgement on sovereign states whose policies take a slightly different direction. The INCB is exercising pressure on them to get back in line. As for the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), it is clear the more
liberal-minded countries are taking a low profile. Careful not to fuel tensions that might endanger carefully conquered ground for experimentation, they opt to keep the debate as general and diplomatic as possible, avoiding open controversy in the CND over their policy directions.

The wisdom of the UN Drug Conventions is increasingly being questioned. Recently, in May 2002, the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee in the United Kingdom released an interesting report: The Governments Drugs Policy: Is It Working?. The report concluded: "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. The best that can be said, and the evidence for this is shaky, is that we have succeeded in containing the problem." Chris Mullin, the chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, added "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."

Open Debate About the Conventions

Until now, the UN Drug Conventions have been sacrosanct, blocking any attempt to move further along the path of pragmatic solutions. The Home Affairs Select Committee concluded that modifications in UK drug policy towards a more lenient approach "...could be implemented without breaching the treaties or requiring their renegotiation. In the long term, however, we believe the time has come for the international treaties to be reconsidered. We recommend that the Government initiates a discussion within the Commission on Narcotic Drugs of alternative ways - including the possibility of legalisation and regulation - to
tackle the global drugs dilemma."

The report of the Home Affairs Select Committee will no doubt be the target of the crossfire between prohibitionists and legalisers, the two opposing sides in the drug debate. The Committee rejected the concept of legalisation and regulation of drugs. They acknowledged there are some attractive
arguments for it, but called it a "step into the unknown... to tread where no other society has yet trod... to gamble the undoubted potential gains against the inevitability of a significant increase in the number of users." But while one can argue about the conclusions and recommendations, the report is an important contribution to efforts at taking the debate beyond the current polarisation between prohibitionists and legalisers who have been dominant for so long, paralysing the discussions in endless trench warfare.

The stalemate between prohibition and legalisation is confusing public opinion and paralysing the policy debate. For the prohibitionist camp the UN Conventions are cast in stone. The Conventions represent the ultimate line of defence against the flood of evil drugs. Many legalisers delude
themselves that all the problems could be solved simply by scrapping the Conventions. (See: Time for Breakthrough – Polarisation and Paralysis in Global Drug Policy)

True, the Conventions still stand as a major obstacle to the introduction of pragmatic policies at a national level. Further progress for tolerant approaches will only be possible through either some sort of change in or defection from the global regime. Any such move would certainly encounter considerable hostility. As its staunchest defender, it is the United States that maintains the regime’s
disciplinary framework. Pressure from Washington has long supplemented the moral legitimacy bestowed upon the doctrine of prohibition by the UN. This has produced a formidable source of inertia. (See: Habits of a Hegemon – The United States and the Future of the Global Drug Prohibition Regime)

A viable drug policy reform strategy has to take into account the many realities created by the prohibition regime, think in terms of realistic and pragmatic steps forward, consider the impacts of any policy change for the whole drug production chain from producer to consumer, and focus on creating more space for national policy diversity. The ultimate outcome of such a process will be discovered along the way through experimentation, evaluation and learning from each others best practices. Questioning the wisdom of the conventions as they stand today should be an acceptable and normal dimension of such a debate. One can only hope that the international community and the UN will follow the lead of the UK Home Affairs Select Committee and initiate a serious evaluation with a view to the development of more humane, just and effective drug policies.

Harm Reduction for Production

The Home Affairs Select Committee also concluded that "... harm reduction rather than retribution should be the primary focus of policy towards users of illegal drugs." Unfortunately, the Committee restricted its suggestions to drug consumption, and omitted harm reduction measures for drug cultivation. In so doing, it fails to address the growing imbalance in the current direction of drug control policy. While on the consumption side, there is a clear tendency –at least in most European Union countries and others like Australia, New Zealand, and Canada– towards more lenient, rational and pragmatic drug policies; on the production side, to the contrary, there is an escalation of repressive approaches. The last decade was marked by an increase in chemical crop spraying in Colombia, an attempt to develop mycoherbicides to start a biological front in the War on Drugs, increased military involvement especially in Latin America and Central and South-East Asia under US leadership.

There is a contradiction between liberalisation on the consumption side while maintaining or even increasing international pressure to eradicate drugs crops in traditional production regions of developing countries in the South, where thousands of peasants depend on illicit crops simply to survive. These Southern countries are allowed much less political space to re-assess their own national policy and enter a path towards pragmatic solutions.

The UN Drug Conventions leave little "room for manoeuvre" regarding cultivation of drug-linked crops. Fundamental problems do exist with regard to the legal status of the cultivation of natural drugs in the conventions, while none of the three Drug Conventions insist on the establishment of drug consumption per se as a punishable offence. Only the 1988 Convention clearly requires parties to establish as criminal offences under law the possession, purchase or cultivation of controlled drugs for the purpose of non-medical, personal consumption, but there is the exemption that parties constitutional principles and basic concepts of their legal systems could allow leniency. At the production side there is no such loophole. Any change resulting from a re-scheduling of cannabis in the 1961 Convention, for example, would not include provisions concerning cultivation, since prohibition of cultivation is entrenched in specific articles of the 1961 legislation. Re-scheduling of plants containing psychoactive substances thus only applies to their consumption.Any leniency regarding
their cultivation can only be obtained through amendments of the conventions themselves, not through changes in the attached schedules.

The weakest links in the illicit drugs chain (drug consumers and rural populations involved in the cultivation of illicit drug crops) have suffered disproportionate negative consequences of drugs control policies. Control efforts in drug producing countries has harmed society at large, intensifying
internal conflicts, corruption, human rights violations and environmental degradation. A harm reduction policy at that level is urgently required. There is a need for a common harm reduction strategy at a consumption and cultivation level. Without this, a broad international coalition for reform of the UN Conventions will be weakened. Thus risking an increase in the existing imbalance in drug control, leaving developing nations to bear the negative consequences.

UNDCP Reform Process

Being the leading multilateral agency for drugs issues, the functioning of the UNDCP in all these matters is crucial. The agency not only implements projects and advises many countries on drug policy matters, it also functions as the secretariat for the CND. The recommendations of the OIOS triggered a reform process in mid-2001 at the UNDCP’s Vienna headquarters and several organisational improvements are now well underway. But the question remains as to whether the UNDCP will also be able to move away from its
politicised position, become more of a centre of expertise able to reflect the different views on drug policy nowadays and play a constructive moderating role in the growing tensions between them.

The suffocating political culture of UNDCP - apart from the peculiarities of Arlacchi's management style - is also under heavy constraint by its conventions-bound mandate, the directives established by the consensus-driven CND as its governing body and the strong influence of its country donors. Given the precarious financial situation, agency officials don't want to risk any confrontation with the major donors – the group of countries largely determining UNDCP's room for manoeuvre. For instance, the words "harm reduction" are off limits at Vienna headquarters because they would displease the United States. Whenever someone dares to use those words the US is threatening to withdraw funding. Moreover, operating under the umbrella of the UN Office of Drug Control and Crime Prevention (ODCCP) the UNDCP is too narrowly focused on law enforcement. Health and development – issues that are essential aspects of drug policy –
have been made subordinate to drugs-and-crime related law enforcement goals. Cooperation with other UN
agencies like the World Health Organisation (WHO), UNAIDS and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) is insufficient. This results in conflicting views and policies on the drug issue within the UN community. The embedding of the cross-cutting drugs issue within the overall UN system desperately needs to be revised.

Former Executive Director Mr Arlacchi – who ran the UNDCP from 1997-2001– claimed successes on the drugs front "beyond the limits of credibility" – concluded the OIOS. He also dragged the
agency into highly questionable projects that caused considerable damage to the political credibility of the
organisation. It was not only his managerial style or the lack of transparency around projects that was problematic, but also the policy direction in which he took the agency. The much-criticised World Drug Report 2000 was a case in point, demonstrating how out of touch the agency was with shifting opinions on international drug control. All this contributed to an erosion of confidence among donors, and even more strongly amongst the NGO and academic communities working on drugs issues.

In May 2002, Antonio Maria Costa arrived in Vienna as the new Executive Director of the ODCCP, an acronym he simplified in October 2002 to ODC, Office on Drugs and Crime. In his very first speech
to the staff upon his arrival in Vienna in May, Mr Costa mentioned the need to be "tough in imposing upon ourselves the sort of efficient monitoring and evaluation of our work needed to restore Member States’ confidence." He promised to make the values of "fairness, transparency and accountability (..) a fundamental part of our culture".

The UNGASS mid-term review in April 2003 will present Mr Costa with a high-level political opportunity to convince the world of his commitment to take UNDCP in a more rational direction, to say farewell to the years of crisis, to restore donor confidence and to open up the debate. The new Executive Director’s main task would be to guide the ongoing process of internal reform and open up to challenging views outside the agency. Hopefully a group of like-minded countries will now have the courage to bring the debate within the UN system to the level of a rational evaluation on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis of current anti-drug policies, shifting the attention from illusionary global pledges to best practices and lessons learnt.