Drugged out

Tom Blickman quoted in an article of Time Magazine. Read the full article here.

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Losing the Fight

In 1998 the U.N. General Assembly held a special session on narcotics under the slogan "A drug-free world — We can do it!" It was later dropped. "I don't believe that degree of utopia is obtainable," says Lewis. "What we're trying to do is minimize the risk of expansion [of the drug trade]."

So why are politicians still vowing that the 10 countries belonging to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which includes Laos, Burma and Thailand, will be drug-free by 2015? "They probably know it won't happen, but that's the message they want to convey to their populations," says Tom Blickman of the Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute. People are sick of drug dealers and the havoc they wreak on families and communities. They want a quick fix, and politicians are always happy to promise them one."

Such unrealistic goals lead to repressive and usually counterproductive measures against drug users, who are often jailed rather than treated — just look at any of Asia's desperately overcrowded prisons. "Bringing demand down by repression has been tried for a couple of decades now," says Blickman. "It doesn't work."

Nor do drug-treatment facilities in many Asia-Pacific countries, which are underfunded and — although overwhelmed by increasing numbers of methamphetamine users — geared toward heroin and opium addicts. In Asia, most drug users are sent for compulsory treatment at military-style boot camps. Some are hellholes. Detainees at Cambodian facilities are subjected to torture and forced labor, said Human Rights Watch in 2010. The New York City — based group also found "inhumane treatment" at similar centers in China, where half a million users are confined at any given time, according to the Joint U.N. Programme on HIV/AIDS.

These boot camps are not just inhumane, but also ineffective. A 2009 report by the World Health Organization (WHO) put the relapse rates at compulsory treatment centers in China, Malaysia and Vietnam at between 60% and 95%. In Cambodia, the relapse rate was 100%.

The alternative? Focus on mitigating the health, social and economic impacts of narcotics with harm-reduction policies — for example, psychological counseling for methamphetamine addicts or needle-exchange programs for drug users in order to prevent the transmission of blood-borne diseases like HIV. Proponents, who include WHO and the UNODC, acknowledge that societies will always have drugs and drug users, something politicians are reluctant to publicly admit. Dependence is not a crime but a chronic illness, they argue. Harm reduction is safe and cost-effective — treating users is cheaper than jailing them — and based on evidence rather than wishful thinking.