The Vienna Declaration On HIV And International Drug Prohibition

This seems important, especially for all my influential friends who should sign it!!

In response to the health and social harms of illegal drugs, a large international drug prohibition regime has been developed under the umbrella of the United Nations. Decades of research provide a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of the global “War on Drugs” and, as thousands of individuals gather in Vienna at the XVIII International AIDS Conference, the international scientific community calls for an acknowledgement of the limits and harms of drug prohibition, and for drug policy reform to remove barriers to effective HIV prevention, treatment and care.

The evidence that law enforcement has failed to prevent the availability of illegal drugs, in communities where there is demand, is now unambiguous.2, 3Over the last several decades, national and international drug surveillance systems have demonstrated a general pattern of falling drug prices and increasing drug purity—despite massive investments in drug law enforcement.

Furthermore, there is no evidence that increasing the ferocity of law enforcement meaningfully reduces the prevalence of drug use.5 The data also clearly demonstrate that the number of countries in which people inject illegal drugs is growing, with women and children becoming increasingly affected.6 Outside of sub-Saharan Africa, injection drug use accounts for approximately one in three new cases of HIV.7, 8 In some areas where HIV is spreading most rapidly, such as Eastern Europe and Central Asia, HIV prevalence can be as high as 70% among people who inject drugs, and in some areas more than 80% of all HIV cases are among this group.

In the context of overwhelming evidence that drug law enforcement has failed to achieve its stated objectives, it is important that its harmful consequences be acknowledged and addressed. These consequences include but are not limited to:

-HIV epidemics fuelled by the criminalisation of people who use illicit drugs and by prohibitions on the provision of sterile needles and opioid substitution treatment.

-HIV outbreaks among incarcerated and institutionalised drug users as a result of punitive laws and policies and a lack of HIV prevention services in these settings.

-The undermining of public health systems when law enforcement drives drug users away from prevention and care services and into environments where the risk of infectious disease transmission (e.g., HIV, hepatitis C & B, and tuberculosis) and other harms is increased.

-A crisis in criminal justice systems as a result of record incarceration rates in a number of nations. This has negatively affected the social functioning of entire communities. While racial disparities in incarceration rates for drug offences are evident in countries all over the world, the impact has been particularly severe in the US, where approximately one in nine African-American males in the age group 20 to 34 is incarcerated on any given day, primarily as a result of drug law enforcement.

-Stigma towards people who use illicit drugs, which reinforces the political popularity of criminalising drug users and undermines HIV prevention and other health promotion efforts.

-Severe human rights violations, including torture, forced labour, inhuman and degrading treatment, and execution of drug offenders in a number of countries.

-A massive illicit market worth an estimated annual value of US$320 billion.4 These profits remain entirely outside the control of government. They fuel crime, violence and corruption in countless urban communities and have destabilised entire countries, such as Colombia, Mexico and Afghanistan.

-Billions of tax dollars wasted on a “War on Drugs” approach to drug control that does not achieve its stated objectives and, instead, directly or indirectly contributes to the above harms.

Unfortunately, evidence of the failure of drug prohibition to achieve its stated goals, as well as the severe negative consequences of these policies, is often denied by those with vested interests in maintaining the status quo.25This has created confusion among the public and has cost countless lives. Governments and international organisations have ethical and legal obligations to respond to this crisis and must seek to enact alternative evidence-based strategies that can effectively reduce the harms of drugs without creating harms of their own. We, the undersigned, call on governments and international organisations, including the United Nations, to:

-Undertake a transparent review of the effectiveness of current drug policies.

-Implement and evaluate a science-based public health approach to address the individual and community harms stemming from illicit drug use.

-Decriminalise drug users, scale up evidence-based drug dependence treatment options and abolish ineffective compulsory drug treatment centres that violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

-Unequivocally endorse and scale up funding for the implementation of the comprehensive package of HIV interventions spelled out in the WHO, UNODC and UNAIDS Target Setting Guide.

-Meaningfully involve members of the affected community in developing, monitoring and implementing services and policies that affect their lives.

We further call upon the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, to urgently implement measures to ensure that the United Nations system—including the International Narcotics Control Board—speaks with one voice to support the decriminalisation of drug users and the implementation of evidence-based approaches to drug control.28

Basing drug policies on scientific evidence will not eliminate drug use or the problems stemming from drug injecting. However, reorienting drug policies towards evidence-based approaches that respect, protect and fulfil human rights has the potential to reduce harms deriving from current policies and would allow for the redirection of the vast financial resources towards where they are needed most: implementing and evaluating evidence-based prevention, regulatory, treatment and harm reduction interventions.

Portugal: Land Of The Free

Sunday Cartoon Fun: Mutual Trouble Edition

The Drug War = Slavery

Here is an appalling statistic (You knew it was bad, but...):

There are more black men in US prisons today than there were slaves in 1840, and they are being used for the same purpose; working for private corporations at 16 to 20 cents an hour. Half the states have private, for-profit prisons whose lobbyists are demanding longer mandatory-minimum prison sentences. Indeed, American blacks are incarcerated at nearly eight times the level of South African blacks during the height of apartheid.

Read the whole thing:

The solution to the failed drug war
By Jack A. Cole

WAR AND RACE dominate the presidential campaign, but one nation-shaping war with profound racial consequences eludes the political radar: the drug war.

I was a frontline soldier in this self-perpetuating, ineffectual effort that has swallowed more than a trillion tax dollars and currently yields nearly 2 million arrests every year for nonviolent offenses. I helped incarcerate some 1,000 young people as part of this irredeemably wrongheaded attempt to arrest our way out of our drug problems. Those arrests will follow them to their graves.

I know they follow me.

But while no other country locks up as large a percentage of its citizens, the specific impact on minority families has been one step short of the reinstitution of slavery: from media portrayals of marijuana-crazed Mexicans, opium-crazed Asians, and cocaine-crazed blacks, this war has always been about race.

The 1980s produced a jump in the number of cocaine-related stories focused on minority use, yielding grave concern and a dramatic increase in the minority prison population. Many people, of course, assumed that minorities were disproportionately involved in drugs. Even a seemingly street-wise show like "The Wire," which correctly abandoned all hope for this war, supported that impression, portraying virtual swarms of drug-involved blacks.

In fact, according to Federal Household Surveys, whites, blacks, and Hispanics use drugs in direct proportion to their percentage of the population. So, for example, blacks, who are 13 percent of our population, account for 13 percent of our drug use. Yet, according to US Bureau of Justice Statistics, of convicted defendants, 33 percent of whites received a prison sentence and 51 percent of African-Americans received prison sentences. Moreover, the US Sentencing Commission found that black drug defendants receive considerably longer average prison terms than do whites for comparable crimes.

This is not a geographical fluke: a 2007 Justice Policy Institute study found that in Florida blacks were 75 times more likely to be stopped and searched for drugs while driving than whites; in 1991, blacks were 7 percent of St. Paul's population but 62 percent of those arrested on drug charges; and in Onondaga Country, Syracuse, N.Y., black people are currently 99 times more likely to go to prison for drugs than white people.

There are more black men in US prisons today than there were slaves in 1840, and they are being used for the same purpose; working for private corporations at 16 to 20 cents an hour. Half the states have private, for-profit prisons whose lobbyists are demanding longer mandatory-minimum prison sentences. Indeed, American blacks are incarcerated at nearly eight times the level of South African blacks during the height of apartheid.

Inner-city communities are devastated not by drug use but by the same turf-war street violence that accompanied alcohol prohibition and that dramatically decreased once that drug was legalized and regulated. Almost one in seven African-Americans are denied voting rights largely because of drug arrests, and countless minorities are denied intact families, college loans, driver's licenses, and jobs because of selective enforcement of a prohibition that, even fairly enforced, prevents no one from using drugs.

But things are changing, as resistance grows in precisely those communities hardest hit by this failed policy.

In 2006, the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators passed a resolution condemning the failed war on drugs and calling for treatment rather than incarceration. That resolution was echoed by a similar resolution passed unanimously by all 225 mayors at their national conference in 2007. And a national association of black police officers is expected to officially endorse the call for an end to drug prohibition.

I represent Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, an international organization of sworn antidrug warriors who know that we must end this prohibition in order to legalize and regulate all drugs, thus wresting control from the cartels and street thugs who prey on children.

Ending this prohibition is a singularly potent civil rights issue. It is a remarkable movement, led by both white and minority law enforcement officials.

In an election infused with racial overtones, we wonder which politicians will be brave enough to follow.

Jack A. Cole is executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.