This is the image of the most senior drugs official in the United Nations, Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
He was persuaded to write a response to the slew of Observer articles in favour of reforming the UN's ancient and obsolete drug control laws. His opening line underlined his mastery of obfuscation, deflection and deceit.
"The debate between those who dream of a world without drugs and those who hope for a world of free drugs has been raging for years. " The simple truth is, no such debate exists between these two utopian positions.
A world without drugs is an impossible goal because mankind has always sought some degree of intoxication and always will. It is not a dream but an illusion. It should not be the starting point of discussion when it has no place in reality.
Equally misleading his Costa's characterisation of reformers as people who would like a free-for-all on drugs where anyone is able to get as blitzed as they wish anytime. The drug reform lobby may hold differing opinions on the appropriate levels of controls but the shared objective is to reduce the harm from drugs. No serious organisation advocates abandoning all control and regulation.
So Costa's initial premise is wrong and what follows is a path through tortuous logic, with highly partial use of statistics and general points about human nature which defy all sense. Costa argues reforms would "unleash an epidemic of addiction". He asserts cocaine production over the last 10 years has stabilised omitting to mention 28,000 murders in the cocaine trade in Mexico in the last four years.
Recently in UK, there have been some encouraging signs from establishment figures like Sir Ian Gilmore and media outlets (Independent) who have declared an end to the fallacy of 'controlling' drugs as anything other than a disaster. Unfortunately the Government's latest thinking on a Drugs Strategy is as idealogical as the UN with great emphasis on abstinence not treatment. They even suggest "whole family intervention" where all the relatives of a drug user arrive at a pre-arranged place and surround him. No doubt it will be God's love that doth save his soul.
One big problem with Costa's and IDS's perspective is the assumption taking drugs is all about addiction. Most drug use does not involve dependence. Ten million people in Britain have tried cannabis but levels of addiction are present in only a few thousand. Ecstasy is not addictive, even most cocaine users can take it or leave it.
There seems to have most anxiety, in recent years, about cannabis in the country prompting cross party support for increasing penalties on a drug Gordon Brown called "lethal." It is perverse that cannabis use has plummetted since 1998 falling by 45%. It seems astonishing the long line of drug Ministers have not sought to trumpet this success. But this war on drugs is more like the perpetual war in Oceania in Orwell's 1984. For the war to continue Governments must continue to fight and fail.
1 comment:
A lot of difficult mas is to relapse, because the addition anyone who is, call addition to the drugs, to the alcohol, or the addition to the pills it is to have a willpower very powerful, there are a lot of people who manages to overcome his additions but who after a time relapse when having a problem again or to lguna frustration, I believe that everyone am inclined to the addition and we are all addicted to something, but for it we have to can control our emotions, the important mas is not to win to the addition, but overcome the addition of oneself, who is much more difficult.
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