International drug policy and development (original) (raw)
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The International journal on drug policy, 2008
Locating development efforts within the context of globalism and global drug capitalism, this article examines the significant health and social impact both legal and illegal drugs have on international development efforts. The paper takes on an issue that is generally overlooked in the development debate and is not much addressed in the current international development standard, the Millennium Development Goals, and yet is one that places serious constraints on the ability of underdeveloped nations to achieve improvement. The relationship between psychotropic or "mind/mood altering" drugs and sustainable development is rooted in the contribution that the legal and illegal drug trade makes to a set of barriers to development, including: (1) interpersonal crime and community violence; (2) the corruption of public servants and the disintegration of social institutions; (3) the emergence of new or enhanced health problems; (4) the lowering of worker productivity; (5) the ens...
Why illicit drugs cannot be ignored in the post-2015 development agenda
Proceedings of the Eight Annual Conference of the International Society for the Study of Drug Policy, 2015
The complex, but undeniable interrelationships between illicit drug markets and development are well-recognized. Yet, the drug policy and development communities have tended to work in isolation. Drug policies are focused on controlling substance abuse, rather than necessarily addressing the human dimension behind it; whereas development programmes tend, with limited exceptions, not to recognize the drug issue as an explicit priority. Since the 1960s the United States has deployed foreign aid as an instrument in the global war on drugs and attempted to enroll other DAC donors in narcotics control and alternative development programmes with modest results. Consequently in recent years while the drug problem worsens in many parts of the developing world, aid committed to address these issues has collapsed. This paper surveys the evidence on the interconnections between drugs and development complemented with the aid and drug policy discussions, both historical and contemporary. The paper outlines ways in which aid could be used more effectively to tackle the drug problem in developing countries, and suggests a possible way forward to enhance cooperation between these two policy communities in their respective post 2015 and 2016 agendas. In particular we argue that drugs should not be forgotten in the post 2015 development agenda and the international community should take seriously emerging drug problems particularly in Africa, which will constitute a major threat to development in the next 15 years.
2014
In May 2014 the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) hosted a workshop, cofunded by NOREF and Christian Aid, designed to facilitate dialogue between scholars working on the political economy of drugs, conflict and development in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The workshop explored how political economy perspectives, derived from long-term empirical research on drugs-affected regions, can enhance understanding of, and policy responses to, drug production and trafficking. This approach, rather than seeing drugs as “exceptional” and “criminal”, seeks to situate the role of illicit economies within broader processes of state formation and agrarian change.
Among the first of the health and social problems to be associated with cross-frontier trade, and to be the focus of trans-national policies, were those associated with the use of psychoactive substances like opium and its derivatives. This chapter outlines the scale of illicit drug use world wide, before reviewing the historical and socio-cultural literature on the impact of globalization on patterns of drug use. It proposes that there was a direct relationship between the development of world markets and the trade in addictive substances, and a relationship between globalization and both the demand-side and the supply-side of the drug market. The chapter then details the way in which trans-national policies were developed to counter these problems. The effectiveness of the current international drug control policy is examined, and the possibility of future developments explored.
Critical policy frontiers: The drugs-development-peacebuilding trilemma
International Journal of Drug Policy, 2021
Recent years have seen the emergence of a policy consensus around the need for fundamental reforms of global drug policies. This is reflected in the call for 'development-oriented drug policies' that align and integrate drug policies with development and peacebuilding objectives, as captured in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These calls have been important in acknowledging the damage caused by the war on drugs and in drawing attention to how drugs are inextricably linked to wider development and peacebuilding challenges. Yet there is surprisingly limited academic research that looks critically at the drugs-development-peace nexus and which asks whether the goals of a 'drug-free world', 'sustainable development' and 'the promotion of peace' are commensurate with one another, can be pursued simultaneously, or are indeed achievable. This articles studies these policy fields and policy-making processes from the geographical margins of the statefrontiers and borderland regionsbecause they offer a privileged vantage point for studying the contested nature of policymaking in relation to the drugs-development-peace nexus. We set out a historical political economy framework to critically assess the assumptions underlying the integrationist agenda, as well as the evidence base to support it. By developing the notion of a policy trilemma we are critical of the dominant policy narrative that 'all good things come together', showing instead the fundamental tensions and trade-offs between these policy fields. In exploring the interactions between these policy fields, we aim to advance discussion and debate on how to engage with the tensions and tradeoffs that this integrationist agenda reveals, but which have to date been largely ignored.
Modernising Drug Law Enforcement Report 6 Drug markets , security and foreign aid
2013
• Through the delivery of aid, some countries have tried to export their preferred drug control policies and have leveraged the recipients' need for aid to influence their policy approach. • The approaches adopted in many aid agreements seem to be insulated from the advances in the global debate about alternative drug policies and harm reduction and remains heavily focused on law enforcement. • Counter-narcotics aid can become a tool to divert attention from ineffective domestic strategies, and to refocus international attention towards the challenges faced by drug producer and transit countries. • Even if aid projects benefitting drug law enforcement were continuously effective, it would not prevent a shift or adaptation of the drug market, and it would not decrease demand in consumer countries. • The negative consequences of the aid investment in traditional drug policies, such as displacement (the so-called the balloon effect), the fragmentation of drug trafficking organisations, and turf wars, have increased levels of violence in some countries, while not substantially affecting drug supply. • The investment in foreign aid for fighting the drug market and reducing violence in other countries is, at times, a difficult measure to explain to voters: the line between an investment in security and reckless spending is a fine one in the public eye. • Policy makers need to go beyond their focus on drug law enforcement and consider holistic approaches to supply reduction policies, particularly in the realms of social policy, public health, and justice. • To increase the effectiveness of aid, donors should improve the absorption of funds by carefully selecting appropriate recipients and strengthening aid distribution structures in the recipient country.
Impact of drug Abuse on the economic development of a country
Usage and addiction of dangerous drugs which has been identified as Narcotics, Depressants, Stimulants, hallucinogens and Cannabis (Dharmapriya, 2001 ), in various countries has been a common trend in both developed and developing countries specially among the youth. They get adverse effect on physical and mental conditions through continued usage of drug. Throughout the human history, people have been using some kind of stimulants in the form of alcohol or drugs for one or other reasons. However, in the resent past with the introduction of narcotics it has been spread throughout the world very fast and millions of people and their families have made suffered. In Zambia, historical reports say that even in Colonial rule, Colonialists had to impose laws to prohibit trafficking of Cannabis and Cocaine (proclamation in 1675). During the colonial time alcoholism and drug addiction among Zambian people gradually developed (CSO, 1969). During the last two decades drug addiction has been a growing phenomenon in Zambia and other countries due to a multitude of factors. On the other hand, the illegal economy of the drug trade not only drug production and trafficking but also other related criminal activities causes market distortions and damages a society’s overall capacity to produce. The drug economy results in losses for governments. It generates no tax revenues, and anti-drug policies significantly increase public expenditures(education, police, courts, prisons, health care systems). This issue is not just an academic exercise. The numbers play a significant role in the implementation of drug and crime control policies and regulations, both nationally as well as globally. All anti-drug supporters and adversaries of the current drug abuse control regime use the billions of money for the global drug abuse reduction, although nobody really knows if the number of addicts will ever reduce and this has been the question of centuries. It is indeed imperative to find out and explore the impact of drug addiction in communities especially among the youth, with reference to the economic development of the country.
International Drug Policy in Context
2020
This chapter explores the norms and assumptions that frame and sustain international drug policy and the international drug control regime. Drug policy is conceptualised as a ‘policy fiasco’ that persists despite extensive evidence of goal failure. The absence of effective monitoring and evaluation, impact assessment, stakeholder participation and mainstreaming of rights-based approaches, conflict sensitivity and gender sensitivity is emphasised, substantiating the argument that drug policy is a case study of ‘institutional path dependence’. Drug policy has repeatedly missed targets for achievement of a ‘drug free world’. This is explained through reference to the counterproductive and ‘unintended consequences’ of a drug policy approach of criminalisation. The impacts of drug policy enforcement are shown to be negative, pernicious and disproportionately born by the poor, by vulnerable communities and those subject to discrimination on account of race, gender and class.