Institute of Development Studies

International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking?

Mick Moore - 19 June 2009

Were you aware that the 26 June is International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking? Probably not. Had you been aware, would you have celebrated? Again, probably not – and certainly not if you had been following media reports about the consequences of the campaign that the day is intended to support. That campaign is better known as the ‘war on drugs’.

The first thing most of us hear is that the war is not working. Even the most enthusiastic supporters, like the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, claim no more than a stalemate: narcotic production sites and shipment routes change slightly; levels of production and consumption vary a little from year to year; but there is no clear downward trend. People who study more closely the effects of the war on poor countries probably realise that ‘stalemate’ understates the problem. It has corrosive effects on the quality of life of many millions of already poor and disadvantaged people. Who are these victims?

First are the great majority of people who grow opium and coca to make a living. Their harvests are illegal and the focus of conflict between competing narcotics gangs, the subject of attacks and eradication campaigns by official armed forces – yet also easily grown on poor soils, very light in relation to their value, and easily storable. As a result, the growers live mainly in remote areas, with few public services, often with few land rights, and in great insecurity. These people receive scant reward. Coca leaves are worth very little in Colombia or Peru. Raw poppy is very cheap in Afghanistan or Myanmar. Because narcotics are illegal and need to be smuggled across borders to distant high-income markets, all the profit is made by the processors, the transporters, the wholesalers and the retailers in countries like the United States and Britain. It is in those same consuming countries that a few people make fortunes manufacturing amphetamines and growing cannabis using hydroponic techniques. Most narcotics growers make no more than a bare, insecure living in a poor country.

Second come tens of millions of people. People who suffer insecurity and violence because they live in places where authority is exercised, legally or illegally, formally or informally by:

• powerful groups financed and motivated by the illegality and profitability of the narcotics trade;
  paramilitaries and self-proclaimed liberation fighters in Colombia, Peru and elsewhere in Latin America;
• the gangs and networks that dominate the Mexican border with the US and so many other parts of the poor world;
• the governors in Afghanistan who trade narcotics with one hand and, with the other, take aid money to eradicate opium; 
• the policemen, politicians and customs officials of much of West Africa, Central Asia, Central America and the Caribbean who facilitate illegal narcotics shipments.

The illegality and profitability of narcotics is certainly not the only cause of bad government in the poor world. But it is a major cause.

Third come all those narcotics addicts, including an increasing number in poor countries, who have no access to treatment and harm reduction services because the anti-drug campaigners have no sympathy or tolerance for anything but ’war’.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the ‘war on drugs’ in not just unwinnable: it is unsustainable. The political costs are mounting. The inconclusive battle that has been raging on the Mexican-US border for the past year is causing a great deal of re-thinking in Washington. Because they are also trying to eradicate the opium business, the Western forces in Afghanistan are faced with the prospect of losing a war of great strategic importance. Sensing the beginnings of a change in mood, an increasing number of voices are calling for a different policy. In February 2009, the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy delivered a very clear message: the war on drugs threatens our democracies. Some taxpayers are beginning to wonder whether a controlled, transparent and legal narcotics business, designed to keep consumption low and finance harm reduction, could make the world a richer, more secure and more honest place.

Mick Moore is a Research Fellow in the Governance Team at the Institute of Development Studies and will be speaking on the subject of drugs and development at the following event.

Image: Yannis Kontos/Polaris Panos

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