Posted by: zanshin, 2009-03-17 03:20

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Failed states and failed policies -- How to stop the drug wars
2009-03-05 (Thursday), Economist
Prohibition has failed; legalisation is the least bad solution

Illustration by Noma BarA HUNDRED years ago a group of foreign diplomats gathered in Shanghai for the first-ever international effort to ban trade in a narcotic drug. On February 26th 1909 they agreed to set up the International Opium Commission—just a few decades after Britain had fought a war with China to assert its right to peddle the stuff. Many other bans of mood-altering drugs have followed. In 1998 the UN General Assembly committed member countries to achieving a “drug-free world” and to “eliminating or significantly reducing” the production of opium, cocaine and cannabis by 2008.

That is the kind of promise politicians love to make. It assuages the sense of moral panic that has been the handmaiden of prohibition for a century. It is intended to reassure the parents of teenagers across the world. Yet it is a hugely irresponsible promise, because it cannot be fulfilled.

Next week ministers from around the world gather in Vienna to set international drug policy for the next decade. Like first-world-war generals, many will claim that all that is needed is more of the same. In fact the war on drugs has been a disaster, creating failed states in the developing world even as addiction has flourished in the rich world. By any sensible measure, this 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless. That is why The Economist continues to believe that the least bad policy is to legalise drugs.

“Least bad” does not mean good. Legalisation, though clearly better for producer countries, would bring (different) risks to consumer countries. As we outline below, many vulnerable drug-takers would suffer. But in our view, more would gain.

The evidence of failure
Nowadays the UN Office on Drugs and Crime no longer talks about a drug-free world. Its boast is that the drug market has “stabilised”, meaning that more than 200m people, or almost 5% of the world’s adult population, still take illegal drugs—roughly the same proportion as a decade ago. (Like most purported drug facts, this one is just an educated guess: evidential rigour is another casualty of illegality.) The production of cocaine and opium is probably about the same as it was a decade ago; that of cannabis is higher. Consumption of cocaine has declined gradually in the United States from its peak in the early 1980s, but the path is uneven (it remains higher than in the mid-1990s), and it is rising in many places, including Europe.

This is not for want of effort. The United States alone spends some $40 billion each year on trying to eliminate the supply of drugs. It arrests 1.5m of its citizens each year for drug offences, locking up half a million of them; tougher drug laws are the main reason why one in five black American men spend some time behind bars. In the developing world blood is being shed at an astonishing rate. In Mexico more than 800 policemen and soldiers have been killed since December 2006 (and the annual overall death toll is running at over 6,000). This week yet another leader of a troubled drug-ridden country—Guinea Bissau—was assassinated.

Yet prohibition itself vitiates the efforts of the drug warriors. The price of an illegal substance is determined more by the cost of distribution than of production. Take cocaine: the mark-up between coca field and consumer is more than a hundredfold. Even if dumping weedkiller on the crops of peasant farmers quadruples the local price of coca leaves, this tends to have little impact on the street price, which is set mainly by the risk of getting cocaine into Europe or the United States.

Nowadays the drug warriors claim to seize close to half of all the cocaine that is produced. The street price in the United States does seem to have risen, and the purity seems to have fallen, over the past year. But it is not clear that drug demand drops when prices rise. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that the drug business quickly adapts to market disruption. At best, effective repression merely forces it to shift production sites. Thus opium has moved from Turkey and Thailand to Myanmar and southern Afghanistan, where it undermines the West’s efforts to defeat the Taliban.

Al Capone, but on a global scale
Indeed, far from reducing crime, prohibition has fostered gangsterism on a scale that the world has never seen before. According to the UN’s perhaps inflated estimate, the illegal drug industry is worth some $320 billion a year. In the West it makes criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens (the current American president could easily have ended up in prison for his youthful experiments with “blow”). It also makes drugs more dangerous: addicts buy heavily adulterated cocaine and heroin; many use dirty needles to inject themselves, spreading HIV; the wretches who succumb to “crack” or “meth” are outside the law, with only their pushers to “treat” them. But it is countries in the emerging world that pay most of the price. Even a relatively developed democracy such as Mexico now finds itself in a life-or-death struggle against gangsters. American officials, including a former drug tsar, have publicly worried about having a “narco state” as their neighbour.

The failure of the drug war has led a few of its braver generals, especially from Europe and Latin America, to suggest shifting the focus from locking up people to public health and “harm reduction” (such as encouraging addicts to use clean needles). This approach would put more emphasis on public education and the treatment of addicts, and less on the harassment of peasants who grow coca and the punishment of consumers of “soft” drugs for personal use. That would be a step in the right direction. But it is unlikely to be adequately funded, and it does nothing to take organised crime out of the picture.

Legalisation would not only drive away the gangsters; it would transform drugs from a law-and-order problem into a public-health problem, which is how they ought to be treated. Governments would tax and regulate the drug trade, and use the funds raised (and the billions saved on law-enforcement) to educate the public about the risks of drug-taking and to treat addiction. The sale of drugs to minors should remain banned. Different drugs would command different levels of taxation and regulation. This system would be fiddly and imperfect, requiring constant monitoring and hard-to-measure trade-offs. Post-tax prices should be set at a level that would strike a balance between damping down use on the one hand, and discouraging a black market and the desperate acts of theft and prostitution to which addicts now resort to feed their habits.

Selling even this flawed system to people in producer countries, where organised crime is the central political issue, is fairly easy. The tough part comes in the consumer countries, where addiction is the main political battle. Plenty of American parents might accept that legalisation would be the right answer for the people of Latin America, Asia and Africa; they might even see its usefulness in the fight against terrorism. But their immediate fear would be for their own children.

That fear is based in large part on the presumption that more people would take drugs under a legal regime. That presumption may be wrong. There is no correlation between the harshness of drug laws and the incidence of drug-taking: citizens living under tough regimes (notably America but also Britain) take more drugs, not fewer. Embarrassed drug warriors blame this on alleged cultural differences, but even in fairly similar countries tough rules make little difference to the number of addicts: harsh Sweden and more liberal Norway have precisely the same addiction rates. Legalisation might reduce both supply (pushers by definition push) and demand (part of that dangerous thrill would go). Nobody knows for certain. But it is hard to argue that sales of any product that is made cheaper, safer and more widely available would fall. Any honest proponent of legalisation would be wise to assume that drug-taking as a whole would rise.

There are two main reasons for arguing that prohibition should be scrapped all the same. The first is one of liberal principle. Although some illegal drugs are extremely dangerous to some people, most are not especially harmful. (Tobacco is more addictive than virtually all of them.) Most consumers of illegal drugs, including cocaine and even heroin, take them only occasionally. They do so because they derive enjoyment from them (as they do from whisky or a Marlboro Light). It is not the state’s job to stop them from doing so.

What about addiction? That is partly covered by this first argument, as the harm involved is primarily visited upon the user. But addiction can also inflict misery on the families and especially the children of any addict, and involves wider social costs. That is why discouraging and treating addiction should be the priority for drug policy. Hence the second argument: legalisation offers the opportunity to deal with addiction properly.

By providing honest information about the health risks of different drugs, and pricing them accordingly, governments could steer consumers towards the least harmful ones. Prohibition has failed to prevent the proliferation of designer drugs, dreamed up in laboratories. Legalisation might encourage legitimate drug companies to try to improve the stuff that people take. The resources gained from tax and saved on repression would allow governments to guarantee treatment to addicts—a way of making legalisation more politically palatable. The success of developed countries in stopping people smoking tobacco, which is similarly subject to tax and regulation, provides grounds for hope.

A calculated gamble, or another century of failure?
This newspaper first argued for legalisation 20 years ago (see article). Reviewing the evidence again (see article), prohibition seems even more harmful, especially for the poor and weak of the world. Legalisation would not drive gangsters completely out of drugs; as with alcohol and cigarettes, there would be taxes to avoid and rules to subvert. Nor would it automatically cure failed states like Afghanistan. Our solution is a messy one; but a century of manifest failure argues for trying it.

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2006-10-02Full text of Tony Blair's speech to the TUC
2006-10-03The new Dutch model? -- Living with Islam
2007-08-27Sarkozy Says He's Willing to Back Turkey-EU Talks (Update1)
2007-08-27Sarkozy Cautions Against Attack on Iran
2007-08-27Can Morocco’s Islamists check al-Qaida?
2007-09-02Remarks By The President At 2002 Graduation Exercise Of The United States Military Academy
2007-08-12How the ‘Good War’ in Afghanistan Went Bad
2007-08-18Water as a Right and Key to Social Stability
2007-08-20A False Choice in Pakistan
2007-08-10Who Is Osama Bin Laden?
2007-08-05The End of Cowboy Diplomacy
2007-07-12Republic or empire: A National Intelligence Estimate on the United States
2007-07-10Muslims in Europe: Country guide
2007-07-25Bush Still Doesn't Get It
2007-06-22Al Qaeda Strikes Back
2007-05-22We're Number One! America Leads the World in War Profits
2007-05-27Infiltrating Bilderberg 2005
2007-05-02Country Reports on Terrorism -- Chapter 4 -- The Global Challenge of WMD Terrorism
2007-05-03Timeline: Al-Qaeda
2007-05-02Country Reports on Terrorism -- Chapter 1 -- Strategic Assessment
2007-05-01Can Europe Age Gracefully? - Part I
2007-05-01Can Europe Age Gracefully? - Part II
2007-05-10A New World Political Architecture
2007-06-19Comparing US & Palestine homicide rates
2007-06-16The Osama Files
2007-06-06Russia Redux?
2007-06-08Race and Slavery in the Middle East
2007-05-30The great escape
2007-06-01The Importance of Being Lucid
2007-11-06President Bush Discusses Global War on Terror
2007-10-30Michael Ledeen discusses the Iranian Time Bomb
2007-10-19Is Brand America In Trouble?
2007-10-17Iran: Nuclear programme
2007-10-22YOUR PAPERS, PLEASE!
2007-10-23Torture in the Name of Freedom
2007-11-12NATO Expands into Arab South
2007-11-12Stabbed in the back! The past and future of a right-wing myth
2007-11-11 case number IT-04-74-T, the Prosecutor versus Prlic et al
2007-11-10The Nobel Lecture given by The Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2000, Kim Dae-jung
2007-11-11The Next Act -- Is a damaged Administration less likely to attack Iran, or more?
2007-11-20Whose War?
2007-11-21Afghanistan: 'Pashtunistan' Issues Linger Behind Afghan-Pakistani Row
2007-11-21Wars to Watch Out For
2007-09-09No Refuge Here: Iraqis Flee, but Where?
2007-09-06Excerpts from an interview with Lee Kuan Yew
2007-09-27Rice vows US is committed to tackling global warming
2007-09-28Voices From Afar: The Times are Changing for Europe
2007-10-04Open Fire
2007-10-12'The Trouble Is the West'
2008-03-15Russia throws a wrench in NATO's works
2008-02-29The new wars of religion
2008-02-22Three blind men confront the elephant that is this globalization era’s radical extremist reaction--and surprise! They all see a different beast!
2008-02-22Conversations in International Relations: Interview with John J. Mearsheimer (Part II)
2008-02-23The Two Faces of Saudi Arabia
2008-02-01Global Banking: The Bank for International Settlements
2008-01-25Western donors wrestle with the contradictions of rising India
2008-01-29THE WAR ON TERROR: FOUR YEARS ON; Taking Stock Of the Forever War
2008-02-08The Fallacy of Grievance-based Terrorism
2008-01-24The Three Rs: Rivalry, Russia, ’Ran
2008-01-04For Your Information: The World Trade Organization
2007-12-29Our Indefensible National Security Budget -- Talking Points
2007-12-27A Conversation With Benazir Bhutto
2007-12-29His Toughness Problem — and Ours
2008-01-01Sarkozy Seeks More Qaddafis in Quest to Win Business Contracts
2008-01-11After Iraq
2007-12-20The Nobel Lecture given by The Nobel Peace Prize Laureate 2007, Al Gore
2007-12-16Afghan Mission Is Reviewed as Concerns Rise
2007-12-17Donor conference politically oriented
2007-12-08September 11, 2001: The French Knew Much About It
2007-12-10Bilderberg 2007: Welcome to the Lunatic Fringe
2008-07-20Living on the Ice Shelf -- Humanity's Meltdown
2008-07-22The Failed States Index 2008
2008-07-28Rome Diary: Italy's Leap Into The Dark
2008-07-28"A Decent Respect to the Opinions of [Human]kind":
2008-07-28Reflections on Leadership
2008-07-31The Med’s moment comes
2008-08-04How The United States Reversed Its Policy On Bombing Civilians
2008-08-06Douglas Feith's War and Decision: Life in a Neocon's Parallel Universe
2008-06-27The Wrong War -- Why We Lost in Vietnam -- Chapter One
2008-06-30Preparing the Battlefield
2008-07-02The Story Behind George Bush's Lies -- What Scott McClellan (and Jay Rockefeller) Didn't Tell Us
2008-06-16The Fall of France and the Multicultural World War
2008-04-23Is Europe Dying? -- Notes on a Crisis of Civilizational Morale
2008-04-24A Dissenter’s Guide to Foreign Policy
2008-04-25Planning For Planetary Interrogation — Cradle To Grave For Perfect Slave
2008-05-03An Anatomy of Surrender
2008-05-04Downsized Discourse: Classroom Management, Neoliberalism, and the Shaping of Correct Workplace Attitude
2008-04-10Eretz Israel HaShlema / Greater Israel
2008-03-24Chalmers Johnson: “Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic”
2008-06-04Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence
2008-06-06Stumbling toward Eurabia