Una fea verdad de la guerra contra las drogas

Este artículo de Ruth Dreifuss y Fernando Henrique Cardoso, subraya los fracasos del enfoque de guerra contra las drogas y su impacto en los derechos humanos y la salud. Más información, en inglés, está disponible abajo.

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By Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Ruth Dreifuss, Global Commission on Drug Policy.

This week, representatives from many nations will gather at the annual meeting of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna to determine the appropriate course of the international response to illicit drugs. Delegates will debate multiple resolutions while ignoring a truth that goes to the core of current drug policy: human rights abuses in the war on drugs are widespread and systematic.

Consider these numbers: Hundreds of thousands of people locked in detention centers and subject to violent punishments. Millions imprisoned. Hundreds hanged, shot or beheaded. Tens of thousands killed by government forces and non-state actors. Thousands beaten and abused to extract information, and abused in government or private “treatment” centers. Millions denied life-saving medicines. These are alarming figures, but campaigns to address them have been slow and drug control has received little attention from the mainstream human rights movement.

For instance, late last year, despite the evidence before it, the U.N. Committee against Torture failed to condemn the widespread abuse of people who use drugs in the Russian Federation. While tolerating such abuses, the Russian government continues, inexcusably, to prohibit the prescription of oral methadone treatment to people who are injecting heroin or other opioids, fueling the H.I.V. epidemic and risks of overdose.

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