ELEVEN years ago, the UN pledged to win the war on drugs within a decade. It has failed.
At this year鈥檚 meeting of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, held in Vienna in March, there was a two-day session to evaluate the progress since 1998. In his opening remarks, the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, claimed 鈥渕easurable progress鈥�. The drug problem has been 鈥渃ontained鈥�, he said, and drug use has 鈥渟tabilised鈥�.
Costa鈥檚 position flies in the face of the evidence, and by the end of the meeting he was on the defensive. But he said the goal remains the same, and he reiterated the UN鈥檚 position: that the choice for the world鈥檚 nations is either to apply strict prohibition or concede to total legalisation.
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Soon after the meeting, the US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, acknowledged the failure to stamp out poppy farming in Afghanistan. Of the US expenditure of over $800 million a year on counter-narcotics, Holbrooke said: 鈥淲e have gotten nothing out of it, nothing.鈥�
Those in charge of the world鈥檚 drug control system seem more committed to maintaining the existing policy than to addressing its failures. International discussions on the subject have become absurd, and nowhere is this more apparent than with cannabis. Although cannabis amounts to perhaps 80 per cent of total global illicit drug use, there was scarcely any mention of it in Vienna.
International prohibition of cannabis was established in 1961 under the UN鈥檚 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, a document drafted in a wholly different era when cannabis use was confined largely to small subcultures. Though huge changes since then have rendered it outdated, the status of cannabis remains unchanged and is apparently not up for negotiation.
In Vienna, the only action on cannabis was a resolution from ultra-prohibitionist Japan on cannabis seeds. Its aim was to clamp down on the growing trend of cannabis cultivation in private homes, which Japan claimed was 鈥渁 global threat鈥�.
It doesn鈥檛 have to be this way. Last year, the UK-based Beckley Foundation published its , of which I was an author. The report sets out how countries might move to fairer and more effective systems of cannabis control. It offers tools for policy-makers to break the stalemate, such as decriminalisation and depenalisation, and evidence on what happens if they are adopted.As the report points out, 鈥渢hat which is prohibited cannot easily be regulated鈥�.
A regulated cannabis market offers more options than prohibition for acting to limit harms from use. We need to move beyond the deadlock on drug policy, to transcend the polarisation, and to give serious consideration to the options for change. Cannabis would be a good place to start.
