Ending Drug Prohibition with a Hangover? Global Perspectives (original) (raw)
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Ending Drug Prohibition - With a Hangover
FULL DOWNLOAD HERE: http://www.cjp.org.uk/bjcj/volume-13-issue-1/ After three decades of working in the drugs field (as a probation officer, researcher and academic) and seeing little change in a drug policy largely driven by prohibition, it is encouraging to finally see the emergence of a paradigm shift, towards drug decriminalisation and regulation. Globally, there are a growing number of countries, agencies and individuals exploring drug law reform, albeit, largely related to cannabis. These are critical and important times, but after the debacle of prohibition, we should be careful not to get over-excited and simply lurch uncritically towards any reform that’s proposed. We need to be rigorous and well informed when considering and assessing appropriate drug policy change, otherwise we will fail to address the fundamental problem – the decades of damage caused by drug policy abuse. In this paper I shall clarify why drug law reform change is urgently needed, explore lessons from drug policy changes in other countries, highlight risks inherent within drug reform, and establish some guiding principles for change.
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.
The UN Drug Control Conventions: The Limits of Latitude
Legislative Reform of Drug Policies, 2012
ABSTRACT Faced with a complex range of drug related problems, a growing number of nations are exploring the development of nationally appropriate policies that shift away from the prohibition-oriented approach that has long dominated the field but is losing more and more legitimacy. In so doing, such countries must pay close attention to the UN based global drug control framework of which practically all nations are a part.This briefing paper outlines the international legal drug control obligations, the room for manoeuvre the regime leaves open to national policy makers and the clear limits of latitude that cannot be crossed without violating the treaties. It also covers the vast grey area lying between the latitude and limitations, including the legal ambiguities that are subject to judicial interpretation and political contestation.The paper applies the traffic light analogy to drug law reform in order to divide ongoing policy changes and emerging proposals into three categories regarding their legal tenability: red - stop or challenge the conventions; orange - proceed with caution; and green - please proceed.The present system of worldwide drug control is based upon three international conventions. These are the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, as amended by the 1972 Protocol, the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances and the 1988 Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.While the substance of the drug control conventions is complex, their function is simple. They provide the legal structure for an international system of drug control by defining control measures to be maintained within each state party to these conventions and by prescribing rules to be obeyed by these Parties in their relations with each other. These rules can be categorized by two principal methods of achieving drug control. These are commodity control (the definition and regulation of the licit production, supply and consumption of drugs) and penal control (the suppression through criminal law of illicit production, supply and consumption.)The conventions therefore operate with the intention of creating an appropriate balance between penal sanctions, the degree of real and/or potential harm associated with specific drugs and their therapeutic usefulness.The overarching concern for the ‘health and welfare of mankind’ expressed within the conventions’ preambles, required a dual goal: reducing the availability of drugs to prevent abuse and addiction that ‘constitutes a serious evil for the individual and is fraught with social and economic danger to mankind’, while at the same time ensuring adequate availability because their medical use is ‘indispensable for the relief of pain and suffering’.The global control system, established with that twin purpose, effectively ended the large-scale diversion of narcotic drugs like cocaine and heroin from pharmaceutical sources to illicit channels. However, it was unable to prevent the resulting rapid expansion of illicit production that began supplying the non-medical market instead.The tensions resulting from the inherent duality exacerbated as the system evolved based on the implicit principle that reducing availability for illicit purposes could only be achieved through the penal enforcement of predominantly prohibition oriented supply-side measures.The tightening of drug laws, escalation of law enforcement efforts and an actual ‘war on drugs’ against the illicit market, over time distorted the balance at the expense of the other side of the coin.Key Points: Decriminalization of possession, purchase and cultivation for personal use operates reasonably comfortably inside the confines of the UN drug control conventions; Harm reduction services, including drug consumption rooms, can operate lawfully under the drug control treaty system; There is greater scope to provide health care or social support instead of punishment for people caught up in minor offences related to personal use or socio-economic necessity; All controlled drugs can be used for medical purposes, including heroin prescription and ‘medical marijuana’; what constitutes medical use is left to the discretion of the parties; The INCB often increases tensions around interpretations instead of resolving them, though the Board should be guided ‘by a spirit of co-operation rather than by a narrow view of the letter of the law’; There are limits of latitude; a legal regulated market for non-medical use of cannabis or any other scheduled drug is not permissible within the treaty framework; Legal tensions exist with other international legal obligations such as those stemming from human rights or indigenous rights; Growing doubts and inherent inconsistencies and ambiguities provide legitimate ground for demanding more space for experimentation with alternative control models than the current systems allows.
FULL OPEN ACCESS DOWNLOAD FROM SAGE WEBSITE http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1748895816633274 It appears to be a time of turbulence within the global drug policy landscape. The historically dominant model of drug prohibition endures, yet a number of alternative models of legalization, decriminalization and regulation are emerging across the world. While critics have asserted that prohibition and the ensuing ‘war on drugs’ lack both an evidence base and legitimacy, reformers are embracing these alternatives as indicators of progressive change. This article, however, argues that such reforms adhere to the same arbitrary notions, moral dogma and fallacious evidence base as their predecessor. As such they represent the ‘metamorphosis of prohibition’, whereby the structure of drug policy changes, yet the underpinning principles remain unchanged. Consequentially, these reforms should not be considered ‘progressive’ as they risk further consolidating the underlying inconsistencies and contradictions that have formed the basis of drug prohibition.