POLITICS: Illicit Drug Crops Still Soaring

Nergui Manalsuren

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 26 2008 (IPS) – Recent major increases in supply from Afghanistan and Colombia threaten a recent stabilisation in the world s illicit drug market, according to the U.N. s World Drug Report 2008 launched Thursday.
The report says Afganistan had a record opium harvest in 2007 that resulted in doubling of the world s illegal opium production since 2005, and Colombia had an increase of 27 percent in coca cultivation in 2007.

The report says that most cultivation 80 percent took place in five southern Afghan provinces, where Taliban insurgents profit from drugs.

Antonio Mario Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), said that in Columbia, just like in Afganistan, the regions where most coca is grown are under the control of insurgents.

The report also warns that Afganistan has become a major producer of cannabis resin, exceeding Morocco.

UNODC reports that this year about 208 million people aged 15-64 worldwide, or one in every 20, had tried illicit drugs at least once in the past 12 months, and identified about 26 million as dependent, problem drug users.
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The report also examines at the international drug control system that has been constructed over the last century, starting from a commission created in 1909 in Shanghai to control the opium trade.

UNODC reports that compared to 100 years ago, global opium production is some 70 percent lower, even though the global population quadrupled over the same period.

Drug statistics show that the drug problem was dramatically reduced over the past century, and has stabilised over the past 10 years, said Costa.

However, Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, the leading organisation in the United States promoting alternatives to the war on drugs, calls the UNODC report a half-hearted effort to rewrite the history of interantional drug control, and try to rationalise its other failures over the past decade, and even the past century.

It makes a silly effort to rewrite the history of opium use and abuse in China, grossly exaggerating its danger at the time. It falsely atributes the reduction in global opium production to the international drug control system, and it largely avoids acknowledging the extent to which the current drug policies are responsible for so much drug-related violence, corruption around the world, Nadelmann told IPS.

The Netherlands-based Transnational Institute (TNI), one of the the leading non-governmental research institutes on drugs policy, said that the WDR used twisted logic to fabricate comparisons with higher opium production a century ago in China.

TNI argues that this 100-year success story cannot by attributed to the multilateral drug control regime, but instead was primarily related to specific developments in China, and to new pharmaceutical products replacing the medicinal use of opium.

In spite of claims made in the report released today, the world is not any closer to achieving the 10-year targets set by the 1998 U.N. General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on drugs, said TNI.

The goals set by UNGASS included eliminating or significantly reducing the illicit cultivation of coca, cannabis and the opium poppy by this year.

Instead, global production of opium and cocaine has significantly increased over the last 10 years, said TNI.

Martin Jelsma, coordinator of the TNI Drugs and Democracy Programme, says that there is overwhelming evidence that the current approach to drug control has failed, and instead of setting unrealistic targets, we need to introduce a more rational, pragmatic and humane approach to the drugs phenomenon.

The Netherlands-based institution agrees that the regulatory aspects of the early agreements may have helped to bring totally unrestricted legal production and trade under control and to reduce some of its negative consequences.

However, the three currently existing conventions have pushed restrictions and sanctions so far, have lowered access to essential medicines under their control to irresponsible levels, and can definitely not claim to have curbed the illicit market, said TNI.

Drug control policies should be based on evidence, fully respect human rights and take a harm reduction approach, said Jelsma. Otherwise, we will see another 10 years of failure.

Nadelmann suggest that the UNODC should adopt an approach that aims much more systematically to reduce not just drug abuse around the world, but also the negative consequences of drug control policies.

Is is also important to address the spread of HIV/AIDS by and among injecting drug users. And that is not something that has been done well by UNODC and its public policies. It crucially important to address the reduction of prohibition related violence in Mexico, Carribean, and throughout South America and Asia, he continued.

Ultimately, we need more honest reports. We need the one that is fundamentally grounded in science, the one that is more accurate and honest about the nature and history of drug control policies, Nadelmann told IPS.