At the occasion of the United Nations International Day Against Drug Abuse

26 June has been proclaimed "International Day Against Drug Abuse" by the United Nations. But there is nothing to celebrate, according to ENCOD.

On 25 June, from 11.00 o’clock onwards, the European NGO Council on Drug Policy (ENCOD) will organise a press conference in the office of "Enhedslisten", Studiestraede 24, 1.sal, Copenhagen, Denmark.

The occasion is the fact that 26 June has been proclaimed "International Day Against Drug Abuse" by the United Nations. But there is nothing to celebrate, according to ENCOD. The current worldwide prohibition of drugs that is promoted by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), has proved to be completely ineffective and counterproductive.

Drug prohibition hands a monopoly of these substances or services to provide them to criminal groups who are greedy by nature and avoid accountability and responsibility. Much like legal enterprises, they benefit from the conditions offered in both the poorest and richest parts of the world. In drug producer countries in the developing world, farmers are faced with sheer poverty, armed conflicts and a repressive state. Their answer is destroy large areas of tropical forests in order to produce coca leaves, cannabis or opium, selling their harvest to middlemen for a price that is lower than 1 procent of the street value of the end products in the industrialised world.

Drug prohibition does not lead to a decrease in drug consumption. Today, drugs are freely available to anyone, including children. They even enter prisons, also in Europe and the United States, where control systems are expected to be full proof. The UNODC estimates global profits of the illegal drugs industry at approx. 400 billion euro a year, or 12.500 euro a second. Most of this money is used to finance other criminal activities, or even terrorism, as we have seen recently. But thanks to the recent reforms of the international financial markets, which facilitate the circulation and recycling of dirty money in the international banking system, a large part of this money enters normal financial and business operations as well as the organs of state power in many countries of the world.

Drug prohibition does not lead to a decrease in drug production either. In countries like Colombia, the United States imposed "war on drugs" has focused on the lowest, most vulnerable rung of the drug ladder: the coca growers. The indiscriminate use of defoliants in the erradication of coca leaves has caused an environmental disaster, but it has not been able to establish a substantial decrease in coca leaf production. On the other hand, aside from destroying the country’s economy without providing alternatives, the war on drugs has led to a greatly increased military presence and social violence.

Drug prohibition leads to a huge waste of public money. According to the European Monitoring Centre on Drugs and Drug Addiction, in the decade of the 1990s the amount of drugs-related public expenditure in just 11 EU countries was 5,2 billion EURO per year. Of this amount, 70 procent went to law enforcement and 30 procent to health care. This means that every day, 10 million EURO was spent to pay the wages of people working for police, customs, prisons and the legal apparatus in drug-related tasks, not counting the expenditure on health care.

Drug prohibition generates problems. Under prohibition, consumers of illicit drugs are criminalized, marginalized, deprived of their freedom, their social status, their sources of income and their personal dignity. Under these conditions, it is very likely that drug consumption takes place under unsafe conditions and in irresponsable ways. Meanwhile, experiences with so-called harm reduction policies in many European countries have shown during the past decade that it is very well possible to reduce drug-related problems. A basic condition for these policies is that drug consumption is accepted as a phenomenon like any other riskful operation, and that risks could be reduced if consumers and their surroundings are well informed.

Finally, drug prohibition leads to absurd situations, such as the one we witness in Copenhagen today. Throughout the years, Christiania has become one of Copenhagens most successful tourist attractions, not least because of the open air cannabis market that had been installed in the heart of the area. For many years, this Pusher Street was more or less tolerated by the authorities, which led to a Danish variety of the so-called "coffeeshop-solution" that has been known in the Netherlands since the end of the 1970s. The police raid on Pusherstreet in March of this year has ended this atmosphere of tolerance, but the result is not that the environment has become more safe, on the contrary.

The disappearance of Pusherstreet contributes to an extending environment of illegality in and around Christiania, where people are forced to buy and sell drugs without a chance to check the quality, amounts etc. Meanwhile, maintaining the constant presence of policemen in order to control the imaginary "drug market free status" of the Freetown costs the Danish taxpayers at least 30.000 kroner an hour.

ENCOD proposes legal regulation of the drugs market as the only clever way to reduce drugs-related problems. Regulation will act to counter the intervention of unscrupulous middlemen with measures that protect the interests of drug producers and drug consumers. It will also lead to a considerable budget cut in public expenditure that can be used for other purposes in the areas of social policies, education and prevention.

"The United Nations", says ENCOD co-ordinator Joep Oomen, "should start to design another strategy to control the drug phenomenon. A strategy that is built on local experiences and scientific evidence, not on moral principles that are completely out of sink with reality. As citizens of the world who are affected and concerned by the drug issue in many ways, we urge the United Nations to stop this war and start looking for effective and rational alternatives".