1. The international drug treaties: ‘paper tigers’ or dangerous behemoths?
- Author
-
Alex Wodak
- Subjects
medicine.medical_specialty ,business.industry ,Health Policy ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Public health ,Medicine (miscellaneous) ,International health ,International community ,Demise ,Repeal ,Denial ,Dominance (economics) ,Political economy ,Political science ,Law ,medicine ,business ,Communism ,media_common - Abstract
Communism, global drug prohibition and the international supremacy of the United States were among the dominant developments of the twentieth century. The ultimate fate of communism and global drug prohibition were both dependent on the dominance of the world by the United States. By the end of the 20th century, communism had already imploded, its demise accelerated by the United States. Likewise, no other country was more responsible for the creation and expansion of global drug prohibition than the United States. An implacable and almost religious commitment to prohibition was sustained by the United States over many decades, despite the fact that most other countries remained indifferent or even hostile. The United States was largely responsible for convening an international drug policy meeting in Shanghai in 1909, a forerunner of a series of later meetings which gave birth to the three international drug treaties and created the present network of international organisations charged with monitoring and implementing these treaties. During the last quarter of the 20th century, drug prohibition in many countries became a useful device for electing and re-electing the otherwise unelectable, sustaining for some time the lost cause that global drug prohibition had become. Communism and global drug prohibition both began as idealistic movements in the early years of the 20th Century. Communism perished because it ignored powerful market forces, especially the importance of profits in driving economic activity. The same shortcomings also apply to global drug prohibition. At the dawn of the 21st century, global drug prohibition still survives, propped up by the global supremacy of the United States. The failure and futility of prohibition is now apparent to ever-increasing numbers of commentators. This is because of the high costs, limited effectiveness and often-serious unintended negative consequences of banning substances whose demand is largely irrepressible and whose supply is largely uncontrollable. Many have concluded that some form of controlled availability could not possibly produce even worse health, social and economic outcomes than already occur from prohibition, partially successful at best. What is unclear at this stage is what arrangements should replace global drug prohibition. The likelihood is that the repeal of global drug prohibition will follow the same path as the repeal of alcohol prohibition in the United States in the 1930s: when the time comes, different states will go down different paths. As the end of drug prohibition and the end of the century drew near, the international community gathered at the United Nations in New York in 1998 to take stock and contemplate a new slogan (‘‘a drug free world, we can do it’’). The international community decided to commit itself within ten years to achieving SCOPE: the Scheme for Coca and Opium Poppy Eradication. This was denial on an impressively global scale and took place at the very time that the worst international public health threat since the Black Death was quickly gathering pace. By 2002, it was estimated that 25 million had died from AIDS; 42 million were living infected with HIV while an additional 45 million would become infected with HIV by 2010. This public health crisis is accompanied by almost unimaginable damage to the social and economic well being of the lives of hundreds of millions of people. In most regions of the world, sharing of needles and syringes associated with injecting drug use was either the major or the second most important risk factor for HIV infection. Measures to control HIV infection among or from injecting drug users remain among the most effective and cost-effective interventions in the entire HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment repertoire but are still imE-mail address: awodak@stvincents.com.au (A. Wodak). International Journal of Drug Policy 14 (2003) 221 /223
- Published
- 2003