Drugs and Crime

Baroness Meacher Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2010 Lords Chamber

Tabled By

[Baroness Meacher]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their response to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime discussion paper Treating Drug Dependence through Healthcare, not Punishment.

[Baroness Meacher]

My Lords, I rise to ask the Minister about the Government’s response to the remarkable draft discussion paper issued on 2 March this year by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime entitled From Coercion to Cohesion: Treating Drug Dependence through Healthcare, not Punishment. For nearly 50 years, ever since the first UN Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961, the UNODC has operated as the defender of the punitive approach to drug addiction as well as to drug trafficking. Some 186 countries have signed up to the three UN conventions, all of which promote a criminalising philosophy. Until relatively recently, virtually all of those countries have followed the criminalising approach without question. For those of us who believe that the war on drugs is misguided and destructive both for individuals and communities, this new UNODC document is indeed a major milestone for the UN and hence for the world drug policy regime.

What does the new document say? A quote from the foreword, signed by none other than Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the UNODC, makes clear the radical shift of policy. Mr Costa himself has for years promoted criminalisation. The fact that he now feels it is right to challenge 50 years of UN dogma must be something of a turning point. Mr Costa now says:

“The aim of this draft discussion paper, ‘From Coercion to Cohesion’ is to promote a health-oriented approach to drug dependence”.

The paper quotes the narcotic drug conventions in support of the health-oriented approach. One of the great strengths of the paper is that it argues the scientific case for treatment as an alternative to criminal justice sanctions, suggesting that the health approach,

“is in agreement with a large body of scientific evidence”,

including epidemiological, clinical and neurobiological.

Many across the world have said these things, but not the UNODC. The paper argues that,

“there is increasing evidence that a health-oriented approach is also the most effective in reducing illicit drug use”.

By the same token, imprisonment often worsens the problem in a variety of ways. In my view, no serious policy-maker can ignore this paper.

There are two explanations for the change of heart by the UNODC. First, the sheer cost and level of destruction caused by the war on drugs has become a significant world problem. Secondly, more and more countries have become disenchanted by the UN conventions as interpreted—until now—by the UNODC and they have taken unilateral action. I would add a third explanation—action by 30 Peers from this House. I shall say a little about each of these.

First, as to the cost, the criminals and gangsters involved in the drugs trade are benefiting to the tune of about £320 billion a year, and I know that a lot of people in this House are aware of that. The most severe consequences of course have been in Latin America and Afghanistan. In Mexico, for example, drug trafficking employs some half a million workers and has involved some 5,600 killings a year. The profits to Latin American traffickers have financed 25 years of civil war in Colombia and devastating social disruption in Mexico, Peru and Bolivia. These profits are aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan and, indeed, funding the killing of British soldiers. That is what we are talking about here. The US spends some $40 billion a year trying to eliminate the supply of drugs; it arrests 1.5 million of its citizens each year; it imprisons half a million of them. We in Britain spend £19 billion or so on the criminal justice system responding to drugs and drug-related crime, most of it a consequence of the criminalisation of drug use.

The second explanation for the 180-degree policy shift of the UNODC is the growing disenchantment with the UN conventions. For some years a number of countries have made it clear that they are not happy with the criminalising consequences of the UN conventions—notably Brazil, Mexico and Bolivia in South America, but also Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Czech Republic, the Baltic states, Switzerland and others in Europe, and, indeed, a number of states in Australia and the US. They have explored more civil or health-oriented approaches to drug addiction and have in many case removed criminal penalties for the possession of cannabis or, indeed, for the possession of all drugs. These initiatives have not led, as feared, to increased drug addiction. Rather, countries such as the US and UK, with tougher policies on drugs, have levels of narcotic drug use at least as high as those countries with more liberal policies.

On the role of the House, in 2009, 30 Members of this House signed a letter to the UN Secretary-General, Mr Ban Ki-Moon, urging him to establish an inter-governmental panel charged with the task of examining all possible alternative policies for the control of the drugs trade, including an evaluation of the experience of countries that have experimented with alternative policies despite the UN conventions. In his reply, Mr Ban assured us that the commission on narcotic drugs had on its agenda a review of current policies. We responded saying that we were not aware of any resources devoted to any such review, and so the correspondence continued. It seems reasonable to suppose that interest in an area of failure by the top man in the UN may have been helpful in strengthening the arm of the forces of reform within the UNODC.

I was subsequently invited to the UN Commission in Vienna in March this year and met Mr Costa. Certainly he was well aware of the activities of 30 Members of this House. Since then, Mr Gilberto Gerra, a health policy chief at the UNODC, who was involved in my meeting with Mr Costa, has asked us to do what we can to achieve endorsement of the discussion document by as many Governments as possible across the world—a slightly daunting task, I have to say. I am hoping that our coalition Government will be the first formally to endorse From Coercion to Cohesion. There are strong reasons why they may want to do just that.

As I mentioned earlier, this country spends more than £19 billion on the criminal justice system due to the criminalisation of drugs. The Government want to cut all wasteful public expenditure. There is no more obvious public service area of waste than this—waste of resources on prisons, police officers, court officials, judges and the whole paraphernalia of the system. I should assure the Minister that, by endorsing the UNODC document, the Government would be committing themselves neither to any specific policies nor to any change in the treatment of drug traffickers. This is, not surprisingly, a purely pragmatic document where recommendations, if implemented in some form, would lead to major savings in public spending and to benefits for hundreds of thousands of individuals, for communities and for our whole society.

Let us take just one example of a good policy. The UK’s randomised injecting opioid treatment trial programme showed that heroin-injecting addicts reduced their crimes by more than two-thirds as a result of the programme. Taking heroin-injecting addicts substantially out of the criminal justice system would provide enormous savings to the taxpayer, albeit that some of that money would need to be reinvested in health services. Yet even more savings would be achieved through cuts in the benefits bill as users engaged in therapeutic programmes to help them reduce their drug use, organise their lives and in time return to employment. They might remain intermittent drug users, but if drug use were decriminalised, they could become contributing members of society.

On the supply side, the heroin addicts involved in the RIOTT programme reduced their spending on street drugs by £250 per week, from £300 to £50. It is clear that if countries across the world adopted similar programmes, drug traffickers would lose the bulk of their opium sales. This approach would massively dent the billions of pounds currently earned by the gangsters, who rely on addiction and illegality.

This QSD does not pose an idle question. It represents a real plea for the Government’s endorsement of the UNODC’s most important paper in 50 years. Although many would have liked it to go further, I was delighted to see reference to a review of drugs policy on page 23 of the coalition Government’s programme. They now have UNODC support for such a review. We have the biggest opportunity in 50 years to begin to resolve one of the world’s most challenging and destructive problems. I await the Government’s response with interest.