Dealing with drugs

20 August 2001

Last month, Portugal decriminalised drug usage. Portugal is one of Europe’s most conservative countries, with a strong Catholic tradition. The legal change was not just a government decision, but reflected social revulsion against old-style drug policies. The police had stopped arresting users, and courts had stopped sentencing them. The head of Portugal’s drug programme explained: “America has spent billions on enforcement but it has got nowhere. We view drug users as people who need help and care.”

The US does indeed spend a lot—around US$40 billion a year (roughly double Thailand’s total government budget). Its policy has two main ideas. First, deter usage by imposing high penalties. Second, cut off the supply by suppressing production in other countries, and policing border entry points.

On the evidence of past decades, neither policy works. Despite the penalties, usage continues to rise. Despite massive efforts around the world, production continues to grow. Cultivation of coca leaves in Columbia probably doubled while the US was spending US$1.3 billion trying to suppress it.

These policies have social and political costs. The US government seems to be at war with its own people, especially young blacks and Hispanics. Half of all the inmates of federal jails are now drug offenders, and government is rushing to build more jails to accommodate the increase. Many of those jailed are young (over 200,000 a year). Blacks are 13 percent of drug users, and 74 percent of those jailed for drug offences. The police is becoming more militarised. Some units now have tanks.

These fierce policies were put in place in the 1980s. Conservative governments (especially Reagan) made drug suppression part of an emotional appeal to family values. European governments went the same way. But two things have since been different from the American trend. First, in many European countries strong civil societies have become horrified about the impact of drug policies on personal liberty and human rights. The refusal of the Portuguese police and courts to throw more young people in jail is one example. Last year a UK commission recommended relaxing drug laws. The government disowned the report for fear of public reaction. But the press and public supported the findings, and the government had to backtrack. A few weeks ago, The Economist (hardly a radical mag) ran an in-depth survey which strongly favoured relaxation.

Second, European countries have invested in research to understand drugs and drug usage. The findings overturn much of the conventional wisdom. Most drugs are not physically addictive. That includes cannabis and methamphetamines. By contrast nicotine, a drug still sold in large quantities by the Thai government, certainly is physically addictive. Users do not progress from soft to hard drugs. Jail is the best method to convert a casual, experimental young user into a habitual user or addict.

Research shows that there is a minority of heavy, self-destructive drug users who clearly need treatment. But the majority take drugs for fun. They take a few on weekends. They limit their intake. They avoid substances which are known to be dangerous. They use less or stop altogether when they get older. In other words, they are fairly rational consumers.

The research also shows why the policies to suppress the trade have not worked. The profit margin is simply too high. Some is invested in corruption to buy protection. Some is invested in technology to make distribution more efficient. There is an infinite supply of couriers and street-traders because the returns are so much higher than alternative employment opportunities.

Armed with such research, more European governments are making a key decision: stop treating drugs as a legal problem, and start treating them as a public health problem.

What this means in terms of policy is still at an experimental stage. Most countries are not prepared to take the Portuguese route of total decriminalisation because it has real risks. Usage will increase if prices drop and availability improves. Big companies will start applying marketing techniques. Drug tourism will spread.

But some experiments are under way to manage the compulsive minority segment of the market under the public health approach. In Switzerland, addicts can get free supplies through controlled clinics so they don’t have to steal, litter places with needles, and kill themselves with AIDS. In California (which is following the European trend), first-time drug offenders get treatment not jail.

Other countries are experimenting with ways to semi-legalise distribution of recreational drugs. Holland has legalised retail of soft drugs in a crazy but pragmatic way which encourages small businesses rather than big companies.

For historical reasons, the US has a strong influence on Thai drug policy. During the American presence in the Vietnam war era, Thailand and its neighbours became suppliers of heroin and cannabis to the US market. Since then, the American DEA has made Thailand a priority area. Thai drug policy follows the American mould of deterring usage and cutting off supply.

The current government’s “war on drugs” has intensified this effort. The result is an expansion of state violence. Executions have increased and have become semi-public in a return to medieval style. According to the Region 4 police chief, “killing teams” are carrying out extra-judicial executions (nobody firmly denied this). The security service from the cold war era has been revived. The level of violence on television has dramatically increased in series which show heroes in uniform vaporising drug dealers in both judicial and extra-judicial ways. The northern border is now a war zone.

In countries which have combatted drugs for 40 years, the learning is that these policies don’t work. The likely result, based on history rather than emotional fear of a drug menace, is that usage will increase, profits grow, corruption remain, police morale deteriorate, human rights suffer, foreign relations deteriorate, and militarisation increase. Is that what we want?