By Juan Gabriel Tokatlian - Open Democacy

The Summit represented a big opportunity to end the "war on drugs", but defenders of the status quo were able to abort aspirations of an effective transformation of the field.

According to the Real Academia Española dictionary, opportunity is understood as the existence of "appropriate circumstances" while opportunism refers to taking advantage of such circumstances to obtain "the greatest possible benefit". The recent (April 19-21) third United Nations General Assembly Special Session on drugs (UNGASS) promised to be a propicious opportunity to rethink and reorientate the issue of illicit psychoactive substances, towards a different track from the current prohibitionist approach. However, a preliminary assessment shows that this was an opportunist summit in which defenders of the status quo were able to abort aspirations of an effective transformation of the field.

Prior to the conference, a combination of factors had called into question the international regime of illicit drugs (IRID). In 1990 and 1998 the first and second United Nations General Assembly Special Sessions on drugs were held. The first UNGASS took place in the final days of the Cold War - with the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe - and the deepening of the "war on drugs" - especially in terms of the US anti-narcotics policy with respect to Latin America.

The emphasis was placed on punitive measures centred on controlling supply: a focus was placed on drugs as a security issue. Briefly, UNGASS 1990 concerned the imposition of a coercive rationality: alternative and/or dissenting voices were few and were ignored; the United States (accompanied by many Eastern countries) seemed to depend on the ability to advance their version of prohibitionism against a Europe and a Latin America with limited will to coordinate a common perspective distinct from the former.

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UNGASS 2016: from opportunity to opportunism

A global meeting on drugs failed to deliver a highly anticipated shift from a punitive approach to narcotics, disappointing Myanmar advocacy groups.

The outcome of the UN General Assembly Special Session on drugs held last week in New York instead resulted in a draft resolution that brings little new to the table, experts said.

Nang Pann Ei, a coordinator of the Drug Policy Advocacy Groups, called the UNGASS meeting significant because Myanmar civil society was able to speak up for opium farmers facing the constant threat of crop eradication. But she voiced disappointment about the resulting policy document, saying it has “some serious gaps”.

“It did not mention harm reduction specifically, and decriminalisation of drug use and abolishing the death penalty for drug-related offenses was not mentioned,” she said. “This will impact Myanmar drug policies, which will still stick to repressive drug laws and not change to 100 percent human rights-based drug policies for the affected communities.”

“We hoped UNGASS would help change these outdated and repressive policies, but this unfortunately did not happen,” she added.

Keep up-to-date with drug policy developments by subscribing to the IDPC Monthly Alert.

New agreement brings no end to war on drugs in ASEAN

From time to time, DrugWise will be featuring guest blogs. Our first one is from

 from Kent University and Editor of Drugs and Alcohol Today.

Consensus on Outcome Documents and centrality of drug convention is reached, but big split between reformers and conservative states

Legalisation schemes continue to be rolled out across different countries in clear contravention of treaty stipulations

Increasing number of countries adopt death penalty and corporate punishment

US position puts unprecedented emphasis on treatment and alternative punishment

Detailed list of operational recommendations likely to result in funding proposals submitted to European Union

Role of international agencies like INCB and UNODC strengthened

Detailed critique of human rights violations, adverse impact on public health and development objectives remains unaddressed

Next meeting in 2019 likely to be more acrimonious

“The drug problem and its related evils transcend borders and affect citizens worldwide. Hence international cooperation towards an integrated and balanced strategy is required in order to counter them”, said Archbishop Bernadido Auza of the Holy See when addressing the UN General Assembly on Thursday, 21 of April.

UNGASS 2016 – The consensus holds, but only under protest

“So how disappointed am I?,” Kasia Malinoska-Sempruch asked a crowd of civil society representatives that had gathered for the UN Special Session on Drug Policy (UNGASS) last week in New York. “The outcome is not ideal. But at least it advances access to pain medications for the terminally ill worldwide.”

Malinoska-Sempruch, who directs the Global Drug Policy program at the Open Society Foundations (OSF), was visibly exhausted after 18 months of civil society preparations for UNGASS. She may have put a brave face on it – at present, three quarters of the world's countries fail to provide adequate access to prescription pain medicines – but her disappointment, and the frustration and disappointment of the many who had gathered in New York for the UN meetings, was palpable.

The first meeting of UNGASS since 1998 was supposed to be a game changer in prodding the lumbering and often draconian UN drug policy regime into serious revision. Mass incarceration of the poor, corruption, human rights abuses, public health crises and violence caused by the Drug War have been exhaustingly documented all over the world. According to UN research, the negative impacts fall disproportionately on indigenous communities, people of color, women and children. Although about $100 billion is spent on counter-narcotics efforts every year, the illicit trade spirals upward with its current value estimated at between $300 billion and $500 billion a year. But in the end, the UN Special Session came up short in meeting the expectations of drug policy reformers from around the globe.

Lack of progress and transparency at the UN General Assembly Special Session on drugs

One year after the executions carried out by Indonesia on 29 April 2015, PKNI and LBH Masyarakat examined the drug situation in Indonesia. The executions were undertaken in the name of a “drug emergency” to achieve the so-called “drug-free Indonesia.” The executions were also carried out to deter and reduce the rate of drug-related crime. Is this justification plausible? After examining the data collected from the National Narcotic Board (BNN) and the Directorate General for Correctional Facilities, Ministry of Law and Human Rights, it can be seen that executions are not proven to decrease drug crimes.

In 2008, Indonesia executed two drug convicts from Nigeria. Since 2008, however, drug crimes have not fallen. The number of people convicted of drug offences throughout 2015 increased. Likewise, the number of people who use drugs has increased since 2011 until 2015. In 2011, there were 3.6 million people who use drugs and in 2015, the number rose to 5.9 million (representing a 64% increase) As the data shows, executing people has failed to curb drug offences. It is time for Indonesia's drug policies to be guided by evidence and science, instead of ideology or moral judgment.

Does the death penalty reduce drug use and drug related crime? Data from Indonesia

last week received some unexpected news about a major shift in the attitude of the United Nations towards the decriminalization of cannabis. According to the paper, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) was set to announce a more tolerant approach at a major meeting in New York City. But although the meeting was real, the policy shift was not. The announcement was a hoax, and pointedly timed for 20 April (‘4/20’), a day on which cannabis users celebrate and promote their choice. The scam even included a well-constructed fake press release that quoted the (real) UNODC executive director Yury Fedotov as saying: “The science increasingly supports decriminalization and harm reduction over proscriptive, fear-based approaches.”

For those who advocate drug-law reform — a group that includes a sizeable number of scientists — the truth was a lot less encouraging. The comments that Fedotov made at last week’s UN General Assembly Special Session on Drugs (UNGASS) were certainly less quotable. In a tweet he noted: “#UNGASS outcome doc reaffirms joint responses to world drug problem based on agreed frameworks, #sharedresponsibility, intl cooperation”.

Despite hopes ahead of the meeting that nations would step back from the ‘war on drugs’ rhetoric that has defined international policy — and science — for decades, instead the UN blandly reformatted the existing status quo. Essentially, the message is still: ‘drugs are bad’.

On a downer

Negotiating the political minefield of global drug policy has left civil society and many progressive-thinking countries disappointed by the outcomes of last week’s United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on the World Drug Problem, and frustrated by the UNGASS process.

The 19-21 April meeting of world leaders, non-governmental organisations and members of civil society in New York was the first special session on drugs in nearly 20 years. It offered a momentous opportunity to debate global drug policy, discuss successes and failures, and endorse a new Outcome Document as the way forward.

In the three-year run-up, there were strong calls from many member states and civil society organisations to move away from criminalisation and punitive approaches in place since the 1998 UNGASS on drugs, which vowed to reduce the ever increasing supply and demand of drugs through punitive measures, including the criminalisation of drug users.

However, the UNGASS process and last week’s meeting itself were seen by many to have side-lined calls to adopt a health and human rights-based approach to drug policy that is both fair and evidence-informed.

Civil society left disappointed by UNGASS on drugs

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that mandatory minimum sentences for repeat drug traffickers are unconstitutional.

The decision, one of two released Friday morning, overturns a policy brought in under former Prime Minister Stephen Harper that forced judges to hand down a minimum of one year in jail to people who are convicted of more than one trafficking offense within a ten-year period.

A separate ruling also struck down a law that infringed on a judge's ability to give credit for time served prior to a conviction.

Civil liberties advocates argued the laws amount to "cruel and unusual punishment"—a Charter violation—that disproportionately affects drug addicts and marginalized people. They said that the laws also effectively tie a judge's hands when it comes to using discretion during sentencing.

Canada strikes down mandatory minimum sentences for drug traffickers

Since 2011–2012 Kenya has successfully introduced and implemented a comprehensive harm reduction programme to tackle a sub-epidemic of HIV among people who inject drugs (PWID).

People who use drugs are highly stigmatised in Kenya. Cultural, religious and social norms were against harm reduction, which was widely perceived as encouraging drug use.

To overcome this, advocacy work was done to place harm reduction within a public health context and emphasise the benefits for all society. On a government level, the Kenyan Ministry of Health established a policy framework for a national HIV and harm reduction response targeting PWID. The National AIDS and STI Control Program (NASCOP) developed standard operating guidelines for initiating harm reduction.

Thumbnail: CC Community Action On Harm Reduction

Achievements and challenges in bringing harm reduction services to Kenya

In 1998, a special session of the United Nations General Assembly agreed to set a 10-year deadline to make the world “drug free”. After an embarrassing failure to achieve this goal, the deadline was extended a further 10 years, setting the world up for another inevitable failure in 2019.

In the intervening years, the use, availability and variety of illicit drugs have escalated exponentially. It is estimated by the UK charity Transform Foundation that 300 million people worldwide used illegal drugs in 2012, contributing to a global market with a turnover of $US330 billion a year.

The vision of a drug-free world has faded. We are instead presented with a nightmare scenario, where a multi-billion dollar black market funds organised crime and terrorist organisations.

A drug-free world is an impossible dream

You are invited to submit information covering developments since 18 December 2014 relevant to the question of the moratorium on the use of the death penalty. Send (maximum 1500 words) by 15 May 2016 with subject [SG report - moratorium - death penalty] to: registry@ohchr.org.

OHCHR’s work on the death penalty issue

Moratorium on the death penalty: Call for inputs

After a long gestation, the UN drug reform experiment suffered a miscarriage. It seems the UN is not the catalyst of change but its mirror. Reformers can learn many lessons - but can also be proud of their achievements.

Those who hoped this would be a watershed event must be feeling disappointed, after the closure of the UN General Assembly Special Session. As we reported earlier, the UNGASS adopted a weak and vague outcome document on the first day, in the opening plenary, without a debate. So the plenary debates and round-table discussions, which were supposed to shed new light on the world’s efforts to control drugs, were essentially no more than lip-service, and had no real impact on the system.

I have always been among the sceptics who didn’t believe that the UNGASS would bring much change, so this was not a real disappointment for me. I think drug policy reform has never come from the UN, and it never will. The UN is only a mirror that reflects the power structure of the world and what is happening at a national level. Its systemic inertia does not permit it to be the catalyst for change.

That said, it doesn’t mean that all advocacy efforts targeting the UN are necessarily meaningless. The UN is an important forum for power-play among world powers, and provides a platform for interaction between civil society and member states. What is more, it is a stage which NGOs can use, in order to highlight the flaws of the system in front of the watching eyes of the public. That’s why we, the Rights Reporter Foundation, attended the event and produced a movie about it.

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