Ending the Drug Wars
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Ending the Drug Wars Report of the LSE Expert Group on the Economics of Drug Policy Ending the Drug Wars Report of the LSE Expert Group on the Economics of Drug Policy, May 2014 Foreword It is time to end the ‘war on drugs’ and massively redirect resources towards effective evidence-based policies underpinned by rigorous economic analysis. The pursuit of a militarised and enforcement-led global ‘war on drugs’ strategy has produced enormous negative outcomes and collateral damage. These include mass incarceration in the US, highly repressive policies in Asia, vast corruption and political destabilisation in Afghanistan and West Africa, immense violence in Latin America, an HIV epidemic in Russia, an acute global shortage of pain medication and the propagation of systematic human rights abuses around the world. The strategy has failed based on its own terms. Evidence shows that drug prices have been declining while purity has been increasing. This has been despite drastic increases in global enforcement spending. Continuing to spend vast resources on punitive enforcement-led policies, generally at the expense of proven public health policies, can no longer be justified. The United Nations has for too long tried to enforce a repressive, ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach. It must now take the lead in advocating a new cooperative international framework based on the fundamental acceptance that different policies will work for different countries and regions. This new global drug strategy should be based on principles of public health, harm reduction, illicit market impact reduction, expanded access to essential medicines, minimisation of problematic consumption, rigorously monitored regulatory experimentation and an unwavering commitment to principles of human rights. Signed: Professor Kenneth Arrow, 1972 Nobel Prize in Economics. Luis Fernando Carrera Castro, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Guatemala. Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Professor Paul Collier, CBE, University of Oxford. Professor Michael Cox, LSE IDEAS. Alejandro Gaviria Uribe, Minister of Health and Social Protection, Colombia. Professor Conor Gearty, London School of Economics. ‘ Aleksander Kwasniewski, President of the Republic of Poland (1995 – 2005). Professor Margot Light, LSE IDEAS. Baroness Molly Meacher, UK House of Lords. Professor Sir Christopher Pissarides, 2010 Nobel Prize in Economics. Professor Danny Quah, LSE IDEAS. Professor Dani Rodrik, Princeton University. Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Columbia University. Professor Thomas Schelling, 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics. George Shultz, US Secretary of State (1982 – 1989). Professor Vernon Smith, 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics. Dr Javier Solana, EU High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy (1999 – 2009). Baroness Vivien Stern, UK House of Lords. Professor Arne Westad, LSE IDEAS. Professor Oliver Williamson, 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics. LSE Expert Group on the Economics of Drug Policy | 3 Contributors LSE Expert Group on the Economics of Drug Policy* Professor Danny Quah (Chair) is Senior Fellow at LSE Professor Mark A.R. Kleiman is Professor of Public Policy IDEAS. He is also Professor of Economics and International in the UCLA School of Public Affairs. He is a leading expert in Development and Kuwait Professor at LSE. He had previously the field of crime control and drug policy. In addition to his served as LSE’s Head of Department for Economics (2006 – academic work, he provides advice to local, state and national 2009) and Council Member on Malaysia’s National Economic governments on crime and drug policy. Advisory Council (2009 – 2011). He is Tan Chin Tuan Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore. Professor Alejandro Madrazo Lajous is a Professor and Researcher in the Legal Studies Division of the Centro de John Collins (Coordinator) is the International Drug Policy Investigación y Docencia Económica (CIDE) in Mexico. Project Coordinator at LSE IDEAS. He is also a PhD Candidate His research focuses on measuring the legal-institutional in the Department of International History at the London costs of drug policies and their implications for School of Economics. His research focuses on the history of socioeconomic development. international drug control. He edited the 2012 LSE IDEAS Special Report Governing the Global Drug Wars. Professor Daniel Mejia is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at Universidad de los Andes and Professor Laura H. Atuesta Becerra is a Professor and a Director of the Research Centre on Drugs and Security, Research Fellow in the Drug Policy Program at the Centro Colombia. His research focuses on conducting econometric de Investigación y Docencia Económica (CIDE), Mexico. Her analysis of interdiction and eradication policies, with a research focuses on the economics of illegal drugs and the particular emphasis on the outcomes of Plan Colombia. effects of drugs on income inequality, internal migration and conflict. Previously she worked at the Inter-American Pascual Restrepo is a PhD candidate in economics at Development Bank. the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Born in Colombia, his research focuses on empirical and theoretical Professor Jonathan P. Caulkins is the H. Guyford Stever analyses of the costs and benefits of policies implemented Professor of Operations Research and Public Policy at Heinz under the ‘war on drugs’. In particular, his latest research College, Carnegie Mellon University. His research focuses on quantifies the collateral costs in terms of violence created by modelling the effectiveness of interventions related to drugs, drug markets in transit and production countries. crime, violence, delinquency and prevention. Professor Peter Reuter is a Professor in the School of Public Dr Joanne Csete is Deputy Director for the Open Society Policy and the Department of Criminology at the University Foundations’ Global Drug Policy Program. Previously she was of Maryland. He founded and directed RAND’s Drug Policy an Associate Professor of Public Health at Columbia University, Research Center from 1989-1993. He also served as the the founding director of the HIV and Human Rights Program founding President of the International Society for the Study at Human Rights Watch, Executive Director of the Canadian of Drug Policy (ISSDP). Among his six books is (with Robert HIV/AIDS Legal Network and a senior technical advisor MacCoun) Drug War Heresies: Learning from other Vices, at UNICEF. Times and Places. Professor Ernest Drucker is an Adjunct Professor of Jeremy Ziskind is a crime and drug policy analyst with Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health, BOTEC Analysis. His work for BOTEC has included advising Columbia University. He is also a Scholar in Residence and the Washington State Liquor Control Board on rules and Graduate Faculty at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, regulations for its newly legalised cannabis industry. Jeremy City University of New York and a Professor Emeritus of previously held positions with the Office of National Drug Family and Social Medicine, Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Control Policy (ONDCP) and the Vera Institute of Justice. Einstein College of Medicine. Dr Vanda Felbab-Brown is a Senior Fellow with the Center * LSE IDEAS is responsible for the overall conclusions of this report. for 21st Century Security and Intelligence in the Foreign Each Contributor is responsible solely for the views expressed in Policy program at the Brookings Institution. She is an expert his or her contribution. on international and internal conflicts and non-traditional security threats, including insurgency, organised crime, urban violence and illicit economies. 4 | Ending the Drug Wars Contents Foreword 3 Contributors 4 Executive Summary 6 The Economics of a New Global Strategy 8 John Collins Effects of Prohibition, Enforcement and Interdiction on Drug Use 16 Jonathan P. Caulkins Why Is Strict Prohibition Collapsing? 26 Daniel Mejia and Pascual Restrepo The Mobility of Drug Trafficking 33 Peter Reuter Improving Supply-Side Policies 41 Vanda Felbab-Brown Internally Displaced Populations in Colombia and Mexico 49 Laura H. Atuesta Becerra The Constitutional Costs of the ‘War on Drugs’ 55 Alejandro Madrazo Lajous Mass Incarceration as a Global Policy Dilemma 61 Ernest Drucker Costs and Benefits of Drug-Related Health Services 70 Joanne Csete Lawful Access to Cannabis: Gains, Losses and Design Criteria 77 Mark A.R. Kleiman and Jeremy Ziskind LSE Expert Group on the Economics of Drug Policy | 5 Executive Summary John Collins, Editor major rethink of international drug policies is under way. The failure of the UN to achieve its goal of ‘a drug free world’ and the continuation of enormous collateral damage from excessively A militarised and enforcement-led drug policies, has led to growing calls for an end to the ‘war on drugs’. For decades the UN-centred drug control system has sought to enforce a uniform set of prohibitionist oriented policies often at the expense of other, arguably more effective policies that incorporate broad frameworks of public health and illicit market management. Now the consensus that underpinned this system is breaking apart and there is a new trajectory towards accepting global policy pluralism and that different policies will work for different countries and regions. The question, however, remains, how do states work together to improve global drug policies? This report highlights two approaches. First,