Taking Stock: a Decade of Drug Policy a Civil Society Shadow Report - Executive Summary Taking Stock: a Decade of Drug Policy a Civil Society Shadow Report
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TAKING STOCK: A DECADE OF DRUG POLICY A CIVIL SOCIETY SHADOW REPORT - EXECUTIVE SUMMARY TAKING STOCK: A DECADE OF DRUG POLICY A CIVIL SOCIETY SHADOW REPORT Taking stock: A decade of drug policy Funded by: Open Society Foundations Robert Carr Fund Partnership to Inspire, Transform and Connect the HIV response (PITCH) project Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria Copy editing: Kay Bailey Graphics and design: Report design: Mathew Birch Cover design: Rudy Tun-Sánchez Figures and infographics: Juan Fernandez Ochoa, IDPC Printing: Printech Europe © International Drug Policy Consortium Publication 2018 Taking stock: A decade of drug policy Foreword on Drug Policy Global Commission Credit: Global drug control policies have been based on the general principles of eliminating the production, trade or use of any illegal psychoactive substance from the world. Yet policies which seek to reach that objective have involved harsh law-enforcement and even militarisation. These end up affecting the most vulnerable people who use drugs, subsistence farmers involved in illegal crop cultivation and small-scale traffickers because they are easier to apprehend than are wealthy and well-connected people. The collateral damages are human rights and lives – those of the most vulnerable and those of the voiceless. To quote the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights (May 2018), in a world that is meant to be more inclusive and where no one should be left behind, ‘people who use drugs Rt Hon Helen Clark are not left behind. They are left outside’. strategy for the next ten years. But how can we A decade ago, the international community plan the future without a serious and far-ranging reiterated its aspiration to achieve a drug-free assessment of the past’s errors and successes? How world. Yet over that decade, available data shows can we quantify the unintended consequences of that the production, sale, and consumption of currently illegal drugs are soaring. So are the harms drug control policies when they are not evaluat- related to current policies, with dramatic increases ed? Up until now, no comprehensive evaluation in overdoses, prison overcrowding, HIV and has been carried out either on progress towards hepatitis transmission, a more revenue-generating achieving the 2009 targets or on the consequences and increasingly violent illegal market, and in the of the past decade in global drug control on human condoning by some of extrajudicial killings against rights, health, security, development, the environ- people who use drugs – killings that often take ment, and on the lives of the millions of affected place in broad daylight. people worldwide. Ten years after the world’s governments adopted at Furthermore, there is little appetite among countries the UN the Political Declaration and Plan of Action for such a review from the UN, proving once more on drugs, there is still little discussion on how to that drug policy remains mostly an ideological evaluate the impact of current policies, or on how issue rather than a societal topic that needs to be to analyse the results of the policies implemented addressed based on evidence, dialogue, and building during this period. In 2014, there was a mid-term consensus. In that vacuum, I welcome this Civil High-Level Review of the Political Declaration and Society Shadow Report in which the International Plan of Action. It resulted in a new negotiated Drug Policy Consortium which provides us with an document that reiterated the commitments, without excellent overview of the progress and the lack of providing any such ‘High-Level Review’. Two years it made in the last decade, as well as highlighting later, the 2016 UNGASS on drugs provided another the challenges and opportunities ahead – using all opportunity to review the current approach, to no existing government-based and UN-based data, avail. Although progress was made in bringing in along with scientific and grey literature. more visibility to issues related to health, human rights and development, the resulting Outcome What we learn from the shadow report is compel- Document failed to recognise the harmful ling. Since governments started collecting data consequences of the war on drugs approach. on drugs in the 1990s – based on the seizures of illegal substances, on the arrests of people who The international community is meeting again at a use drugs and their admission to treatment ser- Ministerial Segment at the Commission on Narcot- vices, and on the eradication of illegal crops – the ic Drugs in March 2019 to decide upon a common cultivation, consumption and illegal trafficking of Taking stock: A decade of drug policy Taking stock: A decade of drug policy i drugs have reached record levels. Moreover, current has driven countries to agree on the paths to drug policies are a serious obstacle to other social control drugs is breaking, both at the multilateral and economic objectives: progress on combating and at the regional levels. the HIV epidemic had been significant in the last 20 years, but is now stalled among people who It is our hope, at the Global Commission on Drug inject drugs; prison overcrowding has worsened, Policy, that the next decade in global drug policy with a fifth of the world’s inmates being arrested will align with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable for drug-related offences and mostly for drug use Development to alleviate the pain and suffering of alone; and the ‘war on drugs’ has resulted in mil- millions of people affected by current drug policies, lions of people murdered, disappeared, or internally with the objective of leaving no one behind. By displaced. As the situation stands today, the major providing the most comprehensive assessment Sustainable Development Goals that concern gen- of the past lost decade, I am certain that this Civil der equality, the protection of the environment, Society Shadow Report will greatly contribute to socioeconomic development, and the reduction of the global drug control debates and ensure that violence and corruption will not be achieved for an the coming decade will be better embedded in important part of the population because of current the international community’s priorities of human drug policies. rights, development, peace and security. But there is still hope for a better outcome and for the international community to do better during Rt Hon Helen Clark the 2019 high-level meeting. While the possibility Member of the Global Commission on Drug Policy of building a new negotiated political declaration Former Prime Minister of New Zealand, 1999-2008 and plan of action is unlikely with the lack of any Former Administrator of the United Nations Development monitoring and assessment apart from the current Programme, 2009-2017 Shadow Report, the Vienna-based consensus that ii Taking stock: A decade of drug policy Table of contents Foreword i Acknowledgements 5 Abbreviations 6 Executive summary 7 Part 1: Introduction 15 1 Background 16 1.1 The UNGASS decade: ‘A drug-free world, we can do it’ 16 1.2 The 10-year review of the 1998 Political Declaration 18 1.3 The 2009 Political Declaration and Plan of Action: Setting a new target date 18 1.4 The 2014 mid-term review of the 2009 Political Declaration: A missed opportunity 19 1.5 The 2016 UNGASS: The winds of change 20 1.6 The next step: The 2019 Ministerial Segment of the 62nd CND 22 2 Objective of this shadow report 23 3 Methodology 24 Part 2: Evaluating progress made in addressing the ‘world drug problem’ since the adoption of the 2009 Political Declaration and Plan of Action 25 1 Assessing progress made against Article 36 of the 2009 Political Declaration 26 1.1 The illicit cultivation of opium poppy, coca bush and cannabis plant 26 1.2 The illicit demand for narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances; and drug-related health and social risks 29 1.3 The illicit production, manufacture, marketing and distribution of, and trafficking in, psychotropic substances, including synthetic drugs 30 1.4 The diversion of and illicit trafficking in precursors 31 1.5 Money-laundering related to illicit drugs 32 2 Assessing progress made towards the 2009 Plan of Action against the broader priorities of the United Nations 34 2.1 Protecting human rights 34 2.1.1 The right to highest attainable standard of health 34 2.1.2 The right to enjoy the benefits of scientific research 55 2.1.3 The right to life 57 2.1.4 The right to be free from torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment 58 2.1.5 The right to liberty and to be free from arbitrary detention 63 2.1.6 The right to a fair trial and due process 66 2.1.7 The rights of indigenous peoples 66 2.1.8 The right to be free from discrimination 67 Taking stock: A decade of drug policy Taking stock: A decade of drug policy 1 2.2 Promoting peace and security 70 2.2.1 The ‘balloon effect’ and escalating levels of violence 70 2.2.2 The rise of crypto-drug markets 72 2.2.3 Tackling Money Laundering 75 2.3 Advancing development 78 2.3.1 Analysing factors leading to illegal cultivation 78 2.3.2 Promoting sustainable development in cultivation and trafficking areas 81 2.3.3 Support and cooperation for alternative development 83 2.3.4 Ensuring collaboration with local communities in illegal crop cultivation areas 84 2.3.5 Protecting the environment in drug control strategies 86 2.3.6 Ensuring that development assistance protects human rights 87 Part 3: What next: Designing new benchmarks for global drug policy 89 1 The UNGASS Outcome Document as a policy framework beyond 2019