A missed opportunity to end the war on drugs

By Diederik Lohman

The biggest United Nations summit on drugs in almost 20 years is over, and while there are signs many countries are stepping back from the destructive “war on drugs” approach to drugs, it’s hard not to conclude that overall the meeting was a missed opportunity.

Three years ago, Colombia, Guatemala, and Mexico called the meeting, arguing that the cost of the “War on Drugs” had become too high and a new approach was urgently needed. Unfortunately, the document the UN General Assembly approved on Tuesday does not represent a real break with the past but rather business-as-usual, with some shifts in emphasis.

The increased focus on health and human rights in the document is welcome, but as long as the dominantly courts-and-cops approach to fighting drugs continues, the toll from the fight will far outweigh the damage from the drugs themselves. There is little doubt that tens of thousands of people will continue to suffer from drug-related violence and human rights abuses in the coming years; that drug users and those involved in minor trafficking will continue to fill our jails; and that HIV and hepatitis C will continue to wreak havoc among people who inject drugs.

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