Drug and Alcohol Review 18:305-315, 1999.
THE INTERNATIONAL DRUG CONTROL SYSTEM IN
THE POST-COLD WAR ERA:
MANAGING MARKETS OR FIGHTING A WAR?
Robin Room and Angela Paglia
ABSTRACT
The
core institutions and scope of the international drug control system are
described. The system has grown in
participation and particularly in scope and ambitions since it was studied in
the early 1970s by Bruun and colleagues.
Its premises are notably in conflict with the currently dominant
ideologies of a free-market global economy, although as earlier the U.S. plays
a dominant role in the drug control system.
At a time when it is seen as a failure in its primary aims both from
inside and from outside, defenses of the system have ranged from rousing
rhetorical appeals to efforts to "de-sensationalize" the issues.
key words: drug control, international
narcotics control, drug conventions
____________________
In
the present paper we describe and analyze some of the features of the
international drug control system. In
this analysis, we draw on a variety of materials: a study of the system as it
was a quarter-century ago [1]; a new round of historical and policy analyses
relevant to the system which have begun to appear, documents from the system
itself, and limited participant observation.
Our
approach is necessarily selective. We
describe the development and scope of the core institutions of the system, the
disparity between its governing and assumptions and the dominant ideology of
the global economy, the special role of the U.S. in the system, the
effectiveness and effects of the system, and the responses of the system to its
overall failure in controlling supplies of illicit drugs.
Core institutions of the international drug control
system
A
specific set of institutions and organizational arrangements, first established
early in the 20th century, has the aim of controlling the world supply of
certain classes of psychoactive drugs.
At the heart of the system are four international agencies:
The
Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), with an elected membership of 53 nations,
comes under the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) of the UN, and serves as
the political governing structure of the international drug control
system. The system’s charter documents
are three international conventions on drugs: the 1961 Single Convention on
Narcotic Drugs (amended in 1972), the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic
Substances, and the 1988 Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs
and Psychotropic Substances. The
Commission holds an annual two-week long meeting in Vienna to review activities
and developments under the Conventions, and to adopt resolutions. The meeting is attended by several hundred
members of delegations from the nations on the Commission, from other nations,
and from intergovernmental bodies and accredited nongovernmental agencies.
The
International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) is composed of individual members
chosen in their personal capacity, rather than as representatives of
countries. Those with technical
competence in the drug field are a minority of the membership. It serves as the control body for legal
(pharmaceutical) markets in controlled drugs, offers some technical assistance
to national control efforts, and reports annually on the world drug situation.
The
third element, the United Nations Drug Control Programme (UNDCP), has been
located in Vienna since 1991, when it replaced the old Division of Narcotic
Drugs and the UN Fund for Drug Abuse Control. It serves as the secretariat for
the CND and the INCB, as well as carrying on an ambitious international program
of work. In 1972 there were 49 staff in
the predecessor organizations, and 78 in 1976/77 [2]. In 1997, the staff altogether numbered about
200 -- 140 staff at headquarters (down from 270 in 1995) and 60 international
staff in the field. Seven of these serve
as the secretariat for the CND, and 28 for the INCB. The revised regular budget of the UNDCP for
the biennium 1996/97 totalled just under USD $70 million, and the project
budget for the same period was just over $109 million [3]. The project budget depends on a narrow base
of donors; in 1994/95 90% of it was derived from eight donors (seven countries
and the European Commission).[4]
In
September 1997 the UNDCP and the UN Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice
Division were brought together by the UN Secretary-General into a single Office
for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, located in Vienna and headed by Pino
Arlacchi, who has the status of an Under-Secretary-General (paragraphs 130-142
in [5]).
The
World Health Organization (WHO), through its Programme on Substance Abuse
(formerly through its Mental Health Division), has the duty under the
international conventions to determine whether and in which category drugs
should be put under international control.
It also conducts its own programs of research, coordination and
assistance in public health approaches to drugs, including tobacco and
alcohol. WHO's role specifically in the
international control system is the responsibility of a single staff member and
an expert committee meeting every two years.
In
general, the international narcotics control system has grown in complexity and
responsibility over the years, although, as the UNDCP staffing figures reveal,
its bureaucracies suffered through the
recent downsizing throughout the UN system.
The membership of the Commission
When
the Commission was set up in 1946, replacing prewar organs, it had 15 states as
members. Membership grew to 21 in 1961,
to 24 in 1966, to 30 in 1972 and to 53 in 1991.
An official description of the UNDCP's mission [6] notes that "that
growth reflected the need to broaden the Commission's representational base to
keep pace with the worldwide expansion of the drug abuse phenomenon". Currently, the Commission has 11 members from
Africa, 12 from Asia, 10 from Latin America and Caribbean, 6 from "Eastern
Europe", and 14 from "Western Europe and other" (a designation
which includes Turkey, Australia, Canada and the U.S.).
While
83 states have been members of the Commission at some time since 1946, there is
a core of 36 states which have been on the Commission for 16 years or longer,
all but 5 of which are on the Commission in 1997 or will return to it in
1998. This core includes 5 countries
from each of Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America, 9 Asian countries, and
12 from "Western Europe and Other" (see Table 1; data from [7]).
The
continuity actually extends back further.
The listing in Bruun et al. [1:303-307] of "influential persons in
international narcotics control 1921-1971" lists 70 persons from 27
countries. Twenty-two of these countries
(which accounted for 64 of the persons on the Bruun et al. list) are
represented on the current core of 36 states: influential persons in the
earlier period were drawn from 11 of the 12 current "Western Europe and
Other" core countries, from 5 of the 9 current Asian core countries, from
3 each of the Latin American and Eastern European core countries, and from 1 of
the African countries (Egypt).
Despite
these continuities, the sheer size of the Commission makes the system less of a
"gentlemen's club" than in the era described by Bruun and his
colleagues. In addition, the greater
ease of travel and the increased political profile of drug issues has meant an
increase in attendance at Commission sessions, and a shift towards diplomatic
rather than expert leadership of delegations.
Altogether, the delegations of the 50 member states in attendance at the
1997 Commission session totalled 433 members.
In addition, the 1997 Commission session was attended by "observers
of 58 other States and by representatives of 5 specialized agencies, 11
intergovernmental organizations and 26 non-governmental organizations in
consultative status with the Economic and Social Council" of the UN.
[3:69].
The scope of the system
The
system is still not quite global. Thus
considerable energy is devoted to pushing or persuading countries to accede to
the three conventions (and to the 1972 amendment of the 1961 Convention). This effort has met with considerable, though
not complete, success. According to the
1996 INCB Report [8], 158 states had ratified or acceded to the 1961 Single
Convention by November 1996. Those not
acceding include 10 states in Africa, 5 in the Americas, 5 in Asia, 3 in
Europe, 6 in Oceania, and 4 states which were formerly part of the Soviet
Union. A total of 146 states have
ratified or acceded to the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances, and 137
(72% of all the states in the world) to the 1988 Convention. In the 10-year period 1987-1996, the number
of signatories of the 1961 Convention had risen by 39%, and of the 1971
Convention by 72%.
The
effort to push holdouts into ratifying the Conventions has thus met with
considerable success. However, the
system recognizes that this in itself can be a hollow victory. While greeting with "widespread
satisfaction" the increase in accessions in 1996, the Commission noted
that "the increasing number of ratifications of, and accessions to, these
treaties was in itself not enough, and the wider implementation of the treaties
was urgently needed". [3:55]
Until
the early 1970s, the international control system was primarily concerned with
three agricultural products and their derivatives: opium poppies, coca leaves,
and cannabis. While the Single
Convention on Narcotic Drugs of 1961 superseded a series of earlier treaties,
dating back to 1912, it did not make substantial changes in their
provisions. Industrial societies with
substantial pharmaceutical industries had successfully resisted attempts to
extend the international control system beyond the scope of opium, coca and
cannabis derivatives. The scales were
tipped by the growth of recreational and other nonmedical use of pharmaceutical
drugs in industrial countries. In
particular, the US became a proponent of a new treaty as part of the official
US reaction to the use of drugs by the 1960s counterculture. [9] When Kettil Bruun and his colleagues [1]
studied the system, the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances had been
adopted but had not yet gone into effect.
As eventually implemented, this treaty covers a wide range of
psychoactive substances, including drugs which in many developed societies
account for one-quarter or one-third of all prescriptions for medication. The 1988 Convention against Illicit Traffic
in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances further extended the range of the
system, including provisions for controlling precursor chemicals, for
confiscation of property connected with drug trading, and for extradition and
mutual legal assistance, including as needed abrogation of bank secrecy rules.
Presently,
the system exercises control over "more than 116 narcotic drugs"
under the 1961 Convention, 105 psychotropic substances under the 1971
Convention, and 22 chemical precursors under the 1988 Convention. [6]
From
the perspective of harm to public health, what is notable about the
international conventions is what is omitted: tobacco and alcohol, which each
account for more of the global burden of disease and disability than all of the
controlled drugs together. [10] In the WHO’s current estimates of the
contributions of different risk factors to the global burden of disease, 3.5%
of lost disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) are attributed to alcohol, 2.6%
to tobacco, and 0.6% to all drugs under international control.[11]
As
Bruun et al. [1] describe, there were international agreements about alcohol
trade among colonial powers in the first part of the century; and Tyrrell [12]
has described the international leadership role the U.S. temperance forces played
in this era. All such efforts came to a
halt, however, by the 1930s. The
contrast between the special status of controlled psychoactive substances and
the treatment of alcohol as an ordinary commodity [13] has if anything
sharpened since the time of Bruun et al.'s analysis. At the end of 1998, there is perhaps the
equivalent of one full-time staff person working in the entire international
agency system on alcohol problems (primarily in WHO), and no staffers with
alcohol as their primary responsibility. On the other hand, tobacco is
receiving increased attention from the World Health Organization, as a major
initiative under the new WHO Director-General, Gro Brundtland.
There
are some glimmerings of recognition by those in the drug control system of the
incongruities involved. In his address at the opening of the 1994 Commission
meetings, UNDCP's then-Director-General, Giacomelli, noted that it was
increasingly difficult to justify the
continued distinction among substances solely according to their legal status
and social acceptability. Insofar as
nicotine-addiction, alcoholism, and the abuse of solvents and inhalants may
represent greater threats to health than the abuse of some substances presently
under international control, pragmatism would lead to the conclusion that
pursuing disparate strategies to minimize their impact is ultimately
artificial, irrational and uneconomical. [14]
At the same meeting, the statement by the
then-Director of the WHO Programme on Substance Abuse pushed the analysis
farther:
Current drug strategies are, to some
extent, driven by a few industrialized countries. On the one hand, they are making strenuous
efforts to exclude from their shores every conceivable kind of illegal
substance. But on the other hand, these
countries are also vigorously pushing their own substances, such as
alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceuticals onto the very same countries from which
they are doing their best to exclude illegal drugs. [15]
Indeed, the Executive Board of the World Health
Organization has requested its Director-General to "initiate the
development of a framework convention" which will among other matters
"deal with aspects of tobacco control that transcend national
boundaries" (EB97.R8, WHO Executive Board 23 January 1996).
Drug control, the free market and the effective state
The
1990s have seen the triumph of free market ideology and of the doctrine of
consumer sovereignty. In the view of
orthodox economists in North America, few impediments indeed are legitimate in
the path of the consumer who has the resources to purchase a commodity. Grudgingly, this tradition will acknowledge
"market imperfections" to the extent use of a commodity has adverse
effects on others, but from this perspective any harm a consumer may do to
him/herself is already accounted for in the price s/he chooses to pay (see, for
example, [16]).
On
an international level, there has been a trend for trade agreements and
free-market treaties to subordinate public-health considerations to economic
considerations and free-trade principles.
For instance, the U.S. and Canadian national governments have both used
trade rules to attack alcohol controls in the other's provinces and states
[13], and the U.S. has used trade rulings to force open Asian tobacco markets
and introduce new levels of promotion into them. [17]
In
the world of the drug conventions, all this is turned upside down. The eager consumer is to be saved from
him/herself, by whatever means necessary.
The rules of the conventions override any trade agreements. The world of licit narcotics is a managed
economy on a global scale, with a committee (the INCB) in charge of managing
it.
Another
aspect of the dominant ideology of the 1990s is a new orthodoxy about the role
of the state. The World Bank's World
Development Report for 1997 is entitled The State in a Changing World
[18], and is devoted to setting forth lessons about increasing the
"effectiveness of the state".
The report notes (p. 3) that "many states try to do too much with
few resources and little capability, and often do more harm than
good". Elsewhere, it is noted that
“incentives for corrupt behaviour” by officials can be reduced by
"policies that lower controls on foreign trade.... If the state has no authority to restrict
exports or to license businesses, there will be no opportunities to pay bribes
in these areas" (p. 105).
Almost
the only mention of drugs in the main text of this report is in terms of the
need "to address the growing problems of crime and violence" in Latin
America, "which is partly related to drug trafficking in the region"
(p. 166). But a box devoted specifically
to how the homicide rate was reduced in Cali, Colombia, identified as "one
of the centers of the illegal world trade in cocaine", enumerated four
successful strategies, none of them specifically directed at the drug traffic
(one of them included restricting "sales of alcohol ... late at night and
during holidays") (p. 44).
Again,
the world of the drug conventions is at odds with this dominant orthodoxy. Under the conventions, trade controls are
being increased on a wider variety of commodities, including “chemical
precursors” with broad non-drug uses. As
the World Bank report would predict, opportunities for corruption are
accordingly multiplying. In the
armamentarium of the modern state and of the international system, drug
controls are the most intrusive instrument of limitation on autonomy,
sovereignty, free markets and travel. In
the wake of the 1988 Convention, the system of international controls is
extended to cover international licensing and oversight of the transactions of
a wide variety of industries: not only the pharmaceutical industry, but also
the chemical industry (precursors), the banking industry (money laundering),
postal and courier services, and the shipping, air and road transport
industries. As the Moroccan delegate put
it during the general debate in the 1995 meeting of the Commission on Narcotic
Drugs, countries are caught in
contradictory positions resulting from
international commitments.... We have a
commitment to follow the recommendations of international funding organizations
for a liberalization of trade. This runs
counter to strengthening control of ships and containers. The contradictions in such obligations raise
public and legal problems. (quoted in [19])
The role of the U.S.
By
all accounts, the U.S. has long played a dominant role in the international
control system. Writing in 1972, Bruun
and his colleagues summarized their findings: "more is invested in the
system by way of effort, people, and ... money by the United States than by any
other nation in the world community."
"Interestingly enough", they note, "this role was assumed
before the U.S. gained ‘superpower’ status after World War II".[1:131,
132] "Among developed
countries," Friman [20] notes in his historical study of US drug
diplomacy, "the United States has adopted the strictest national control
measures against illicit drugs and has played the most active role in
international enforcement.... Since the
early 1900s, the United States has also used various pressure tactics to win
international allies and convert adversaries in the war against drugs".
Bruun
et al. [1:148] list 18 "features of the international drug control system
attributable to U.S. influence".
The influence has if anything grown in the ensuing quarter-century. As Stares [21:16] remarks concerning this
period, "largely at the urging of the United States, the global
prohibition regime was subsequently strengthened and broadened".
The
US efforts internationally to a considerable extent reflected domestic
politics. A feature of recent domestic
US political history has been the waging of two "wars on drugs": the
first by Nixon starting in the late 1960s, and the second by Reagan starting in
1984, and continuing to some extent under Bush.
To a considerable extent, the 1971 Convention, the 1972 Protocol
amending the 1961 Convention, and the 1988 Convention may all be seen as
outgrowths of the two American "wars" (see [20:74-76] on the 1988
Convention).
In
the meetings of the Commission, there is formal equality among Commission
members, and the U.S. interventions are by no means the most rhetorically
inflated. Nevertheless, the U.S.
delegation's behaviour often assumes a status of being "first among
equals". The opening of the first
1994 Commission session was delayed when the US refused to accept the Asian
region's selection of Iran as chair of the Commission sessions; eventually a
chair acceptable to the US, from South Korea, was named. The US speech in the Commission's opening
"general debate" tends to be authoritative and prescriptive in tone
-- a tour of the horizon of the world situation, replete with such admonitions
as that only countries which have ratified all Conventions should be reelected
to the Commission.
While
the U.S. has spent much energy and influence within the international control
system, it has also acted in a sustained and energetic manner outside the
system, both through bilateral agreements and actions, and through unilateral
action. One aspect of this has been the
gradual building up of a substantial establishment of drug enforcement agents
placed around the globe. The old Bureau
of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs already had 5 men stationed in Europe by
1959. By 1965 this had grown to 14
agents in Europe [1:143], and by 1969 there were 26 agents and 8 other staff in
a total of 12 offices outside the US.[22:482] Growth continued exponentially to
reach a high point of 417 staff overseas in 1976, declined for a while after
that, and grew again to 416 in a total of 73 offices in 50 countries in
1993.[22:482] The DEA foreign establishment, which by no means exhausts US
government staff posted overseas on drug matters, is thus twice the total staff
complement of the UNDCP.
In
concert with this effort, the US has pursued an active program of negotiating
mutual legal assistance and extradition treaties (see [22]). Where other means have failed, the U.S. has
not hesitated to act unilaterally, as in the 1989 seizure of the President of
Panama, General Noriega, for arraignment on drug charges in the U.S. [22:455]
Backing
up these efforts has been an increasingly prominent "certification"
process, whereby the US President is required to certify to Congress each year
the extent of cooperation by each country in the war on drugs. Nations designated as
"uncooperative" automatically become ineligible for US aid and trade credit
guarantees, and face US opposition to multilateral lending through such
institutions as the World Bank. This
process is not popular outside the US; as the Mexican ambassador to Britain put
it,
So where does the United States get the
moral authority to unilaterally pass judgement on the rest of the world? Who certifies that the United States is doing
its part to cooperate not against drug production or trafficking, but by
reducing its own domestic demand, which
fuels much of the world's drug trade?.... The United States is fuelling nationalist sentiment
in Latin America, where many continue to ask why they must fight in this most
American of battles. [23]
"Many governments understandably resent the
process", the US State Department acknowledges, adding that nevertheless
"most governments try to ensure that they receive full certification the
following year". [24]
Underlying
the strong and multifaceted US efforts against the illicit drug market are both
objective conditions and ideological considerations. Objectively, drug issues matter more to the
U.S. than, say, to New Zealand; the U.S. has long been the largest market in
the world for illicit drugs. Drugs have
periodically occupied the top of the U.S. political agenda; fighting against
drugs has been a proven path to political success.
At
the international level, it can be argued that the global war on drugs plays an
ideological role in organizing U.S. foreign policies and actions. In the last years of the Soviet Union, drugs
came to the top of the international agenda in part because they offered a
terrain where there was less contention than elsewhere between the two
superpowers. With the collapse of
communism as an ideological opponent, the main ideological organizing principle
of U.S. foreign policy disappeared. To
some extent, the war on drugs has filled the gap; indeed, the UNDCP itself
notes in a report that it "seemed almost to take [the] place" of the
cold war in the early 1990s.[25:184] For
U.S. foreign policy the war on drugs provides, for instance, a rationale for
activist and interventionist policies in Latin America that previously would
have been justified by anticommunism.
Among
the conclusions of Bruun et al. [1:274] over 20 years ago was the comment that
"the international control system has failed to become truly international". They added, pointedly, that "the extent
to which the drug control system is dominated by U.S. interests ... makes it a
travesty of internationalism".
Despite all the intervening changes, it is doubtful that they would
change their conclusion today.
Assessments of the system’s effectiveness and effects
In
terms of its primary aim of suppressing the illicit traffic in drugs, in most
accountings the international drug control system is pronounced to be a
failure. The UNDCP’s own banner
publication, the World Drug Report of 1997, notes that the ultimately
supply reduction strategies “must be judged by how they affect consumer demand,
through the decreased availability of drugs”, and that “in this domain the
outcome is undoubtedly less than satisfactory”.[25] In the same vein, the Commission's Report on
the 1997 sessions noted that "despite the rising trend in seizure of
drugs, the worldwide drug problem had shown no significant decline during the
past year".[3:48). Other voices
within the system are in consensus; “year after year, the situation is worse”,
as the delegation from Greece put it in the CND general debate in
1994.[19] Summing up the situation in
the 1995 general debate, the Interpol representative noted that
I am reminded of the film title, Same
Time, Next Year -- as the years go by, there is no real improvement in the
situation. There are serious problems in
nearly every region.... Next year we
hope for serious progress, but we can't report it today.[19]
Policy analyses more at arms-length concur with these
conclusions:
The production of heroin, cocaine,
cannabis, and synthetic drugs is at a record high and will continue to rise;
narcotics traffickers are moving drugs and money throughout the international
economy with virtual impunity; and drug consumption is exploding in many
countries that had hitherto escaped the drug scourge.[26]
In a
longer perspective, Stares [21:15-46] has recently provided a concise account
of the rise of global illicit drug market, despite the best efforts of the
control system. Some analysts would
argue that it is, indeed, because of the control system that the illicit market
has grown. In the general debate at
the1995 Commission meetings, the chief Netherlands delegate pointed to the
"giant criminogenic multiplier effects", as he called them, of the
drug control system. The drug trade, he
noted,
is about 10% of total international trade;
greater than the oil trade, and double the receipts of the pharmaceutical
companies. It has formidable economic
power. [The meeting's documents show] a 285% increase 1985-1993 in opium, a
185% increase in cocaine. I wish I were
conducting such a business!... By the
laws of economics, prices and profits are high if competition is stifled. Paradoxically, law enforcement contributes to
restricting trade. Profits provide
reserves to absorb losses and pay for corruption. The combined push and pull factors generate
enormous power. (quoted in [19])
As
Tullis [27] has found in a study in nine drug-producing societies, drug policies
also produce unintended and often adverse consequences. Summarizing a detailed study of effects in
Colombia and Bolivia, he concludes:
although drug-control laws have
contributed little to suppressing the illicit-drug trade, they have
contributed much to social dislocations, corruption, militarization, abuse of
human rights, and a general disregard for human decency.... However much U.S.
politicians of moment may call for death, destruction, and mayhem to drug
suppliers, Colombia and Bolivia -- and many countries like them -- cannot be
faulted for resisting. [27:171, 182]
As
we discuss below, these assessments of the system do not paint the whole
picture, mainly because they focus on the prohibitory aspects of the system and
ignore its effects in the arena of control and regulation of prescription and
other pharmaceuticals.
Circling the wagons
To a
large extent, then, the failure of the system to accomplish its primary aim is
acknowledged by all the organs of the international control system. The next breath, however, brings a call to
redouble the same repertoire of efforts.
Among a strong majority of participants in the Commission meetings,
there appears still to be a consensus to pursue the same paths even more
strenuously than in the past. But even
the strongest statements of commitment to these paths do not express much faith
in succeeding. The tone is well conveyed
by the Norwegian contribution to the Commission's 1995 general debates: “the
global situation looks grim, and calls for concerted action rather than
resignation”.[19] In the common rhetoric
of Commission participants, drug control efforts remain a "war" or a
"battle" against a "scourge" or "menace". As the
Saudi Arabian delegate put it in 1995, "we regard drug traffickers as evil
on earth, enemies of humankind". In
this frame, any call for flexibility tends to be seen as unacceptable and
indeed traitorous.[19]
Recent
efforts to defend the system point in several rather incompatible
directions. In the context of preparing
for a June 1998 Special Session of the UN General Assembly to mark the tenth
anniversary of the 1988 Convention, the 1998 CND meeting adopted a "draft
political declaration" which ties goals for progress (though unquantified)
to specific dates. By 2003, there is to
be national legislation and programs implementing an action plan on
amphetamines; national money-laundering legislation in accordance with the 1988
Convention; new international cooperation among judicial and law enforcement
authorities; and new or enhanced demand reduction strategies. By 2008, there are to be "significant
and measurable results in the field of demand reduction", and supply
reduction strategies should "eliminate or significantly reduce the illicit
cultivation of the coca bush, the cannabis plant and the opium
poppy".[28] The new UNDCP Executive
Director, Pino Arlacchi,
stressed ... that the Special Session
should be a turning point for the world to go forward with renewed energy on
drug control. There are many reasons for
optimism in this regard, he said: a politically more cooperative international
climate -- devoid of the East-West and North-South ideological divides; sophisticated
technology such as satellite monitoring systems; and the accumulated knowledge
of the international community in drug control activities. [29]
Less
optimistically, the INCB's report for 1997 concluded that "preventing the
abuse of drugs is becoming an increasingly difficult endeavour, at least partly
because of the rapid and growing spread of messages in the environment that
promote drug abuse. Many of them can be
regarded as public incitement and inducement to use and abuse drugs". Noting that the 1988 Convention requires
governments to criminalize "publicly inciting or inducing others" to
use illicit drugs illicitly, the INCB called for governments if necessary to
find practical ways around guarantees of freedom of expression in adopting such
laws. "Prominent people have issued
some very public calls to take drugs and have not been prosecuted", the
INCB noted; "this flagrant refusal by Governments to implement an
international convention to which they are signatories is almost
hypocritical" [30, paragraphs 2, 8, 10, 27).
A
third path of defense has been an effort to "de-sensationalize the drugs
issue".[25:3] "UNDCP believes
that the drugs issue is best discussed on the basis of objective, factual and
scientific analysis", a press statement puts it; "our World Drug
Report has been widely praised for doing just that".[31] The 1997 World Drug Report is indeed
the flagship of this effort to steer away from dramatization, with relatively
sober assessments of the difficulties involved in education, treatment, crop
substitution and other countermeasures, and with a fairly full consideration of
all sides in the "regulation-legalization debate". The Report concludes with a fairly
pessimistic and defensive justification of the control system:
Realistically, we have to accept that
human beings are imperfect, and therefore that drug problems and drug abuse
which have been with us for centuries, albeit in milder form, are likely to
remain for the foreseeable future, as are the conditions that contribute to
them -- boredom, insecurity, ignorance, unhappiness and poverty. But what we can do is try to prevent
the exploitation of these vulnerable conditions by criminal greed. In the words
of the eighteenth century writer, Edmund Burke, "all that it takes for
evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing". In the end, perhaps this is what drug supply
reduction is all about. [25:237-238]
Conclusion
The
international drug control system is the most ambitious and complex attempt in
history to control the flow and use of widely-used commodities, and to manage
the markets for them on a global basis.
The sheer ambition of the system is impressive. Impressive also is the extent to which the
system has been able to function in the teeth of dominant global doctrines of
the 1990s, the doctrines of consumer sovereignty and of the freedom of markets
and trade.
In
some areas, the system has shown some successes. For instance, in most places doctors have
successfully been persuaded or pressured to stop prescribing barbiturates. As Bruun et al. [1:276] note, the successes
tend to be where "it has been the conduct of professions and of private
enterprise which has been influenced"; the system has had little success
where its efforts are "directly aimed at affecting the individual
drug-taker at the behavioural level".
Put in other terms, the successes of the system are in the control of
legal markets in psychoactive medications, and exemplify that "control
systems operate most effectively through a license system which restricts
sales, provision, or authorization of sales to particular professions or
licensees".[32] While the
prohibitory side of the regime creates a space for market forces to work
against the regime, the market-control side of the regime legitimates and
harnesses a set of vested interests in a joint enterprise.
But
in terms of achieving its major aims, the system is seen as a failure, not only
by outside observers but by those inside the system. Among those committed to the system and to
its approaches, this becomes an argument not for change but for redoubling the
same kind of efforts. The very lack of
success breeds a rigidity in the stance of the system's defenders. As a Dutch member of the European Parliament put
it,
we have been increasingly tempted to build
structures which, once they are in place, make flexible thinking
impossible. I mention for instance the
Conventions of the United Nations.... We
have to beware a sort of fundamentalism which tends to confer a degree of
sanctity to the approach laid down in the Conventions. [33]
Why
has the system flourished in the face of failure? Part of the answer may lie in the title of a
book about national drug policies, "suitable enemies".[34] In the book, Christie and Bruun point out the
suitability of illicit drugs as an enemy for the modern state. Wars have been a traditional means of
rallying consensus and solidarity among a nation's citizenry. But real wars have many casualties, and
involve much expenditure of state resources.
The rhetorical war on drugs becomes a substitute mechanism for rallying
consensus and solidarity. Particularly
in the late 1980s and the 1990s, the international drug control system, and the
international war on drugs which it prosecutes, may be seen in the same light.
Drugs are a suitable enemy not only for the modern state but for the new world
order.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Revised from a paper presented at the annual meetings
of the American Sociological Association, Toronto, Canada, 10 August 1997.
Views expressed are those of the authors, and not necessarily of agencies with
which they are affiliated.
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TABLE 1 CORE MEMBERSHIP OF THE COMMISSION ON
NARCOTIC DRUGS, 1946-1999
AFRICA (25) |
EASTERN
EUROPE (8) |
ASIA (14) |
LATIN
AM/CARIBBEAN (17) |
WESTERN
EUR & OTHER (19) |
Egypt 44* |
Bulgaria 16* |
China 36* |
Argentina 21 |
Australia 25* |
Ghana 16* |
Hungary 37 |
India 52* |
Brazil 20* |
Belgium 20* |
Madagascar
21 |
Poland 25* |
Indonesia 20* |
Colombia 16* |
Canada 50* |
Morocco 27* |
Russia 52* |
Iran 47* |
Mexico 52* |
France 54* |
Nigeria 22* |
Yugoslavia 50 |
Japan 36* |
Peru 42 |
Germany 37* |
|
|
Malaysia 18* |
|
Italy 24* |
|
|
Pakistan 31* |
|
Netherlands 27* |
|
|
South Korea 18* |
|
Sweden 19* |
|
|
Thailand 27* |
|
Switzerland 23** |
|
|
|
|
Turkey 48** |
|
|
|
|
United Kingdom 52* |
|
|
|
|
United States 54* |
NOTE: The
table lists countries which have been (or will have been) members for 16 years
or longer since 1946 (years to end of
term in 1997 or 1999, if on Commission in 1997). Number listed for each region is number of
states from the region which have at some time been on the Commission.
* on
Commission in 1997; number of years listed is to end of that term, in 1997 or
1999.
** returned
to Commission in 1998; years to 1997 counted.