World drug report: four years waited in vain

On 26 June, on the occasion of the "International Day against Drugs", the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) issued its 2004 World Drug Report signaling a decrease in the abuse of narcotics to 3% on the world population (185 million people) and how, especially in the last few months, there has been a steady decrease in the production of coca as well as an increase in the seizures of all illicit substances all over the world.

In presenting the report, UNODC Director, Antonio Maria Costa, emphasized the necessity to promote the treatment of addicts, who should be re-integrated within society, and invoked the active participation of "civil society" in the fight against drugs.

Statement by Marco Perduca, Executive Director of the International Antiprohibitionist League and UN Representative of the Transnational Radical Party:
"After for years of waiting, and the change in the UNODC leadership, one would have expected something more significant that the mere repetition of what produced over the last months; but most of all, one would have "deserved" a study that, in addition to compiling data and statistics tainted by the usual necessity to provide the compatible answers to the institutional questions, (an increase in seizures is always assumed as evidence of a decreased in drug presence in the world; Ecuador and Venezuela are not considered countries with coca production; Marijuana is always presented as an abused substance, etc.), would have evaluated what at the UN is known as "drug control system" but which in reality is a set of failing prohibitionist laws and policies in dramatic expansion.

This system of hyper-controls is always presented as a humanitarian endeavor to save millions of people on the verge of drugs, alcohol or tobacco addiction. In 1997, the Report attempted a more comprehensive study that included also the various original and "un-conventional" approaches to drug-related questions. Having abandoned that precious work, is an act of negligence that Mr. Costa and his colleagues should be confronted with it. The UNODC cannot continue to portray itself only as a "guarantor" of the UN Conventions, as the mandate of the United Nations is to work towards international peace and security, rather that being the gendarme of dogmas and ideologies.