frankzappa

Drug production, trafficking and consumption affects every country in the world. Despite forty years of US-led international drug control efforts that prioritize eradication of production, interdiction of traffic, and criminalization of consumption, overall drug production, trafficking and consumption have remained consistently steady. Even in cases where eradication programs have lowered levels of production in one country, production is simply pushed into another country – this phenomenon is known as the “balloon effect”. This was the case in the 1980s and 1990s with coca production in Peru, Colombia and Bolivia and with opium production in Burma and Afghanistan. The resilience of the global drug market has led to drug trafficking becoming the world’s primary revenue source for organized crime and the illicit drug industry now accounts for an estimated $320 billion dollars annually. Drug Laws and Drug Enforcement Around the World Drug laws vary widely from country to country. Some nations embrace various elements of a harm reduction approach, in which drug laws are set and evaluated with the goal of reducing the harm of drugs and drug policies. Afghanistan In Afghanistan, illicit opium production is so lucrative that establishment of a stable, non-corrupt central government is proving nearly impossible. International efforts to stop Afghan farmers from growing opium have fallen flat because the well-resourced Taliban can provide for farmers in a way the government cannot. Latin America In Latin America, which has been brutalized for decades by the US-led drug war, momentum is currently building to explore less punitive measures that would reduce the economic, social and human costs of the war on drugs. Uruguay became the first country to legalize marijuana in December 2013. Latin America is a crucial geographic zone for drug production and trafficking. The Andean countries of Colombia, Peru and Bolivia are the world’s main cocaine producers, while Central America, Mexico and the Caribbean have become the principal corridors for transporting drugs into the United States and Europe. As a result, the countries of the region have suffered various consequences of drug trafficking and US-led eradication and interdiction efforts. In production countries, these include environmental and community damage from forced eradication of coca crops such as aerial spraying and the funding of guerrilla insurgent groups through illicit crop cultivation and sale, most notably, FARC in Colombia and the Shining Path in Peru. Throughout the entire region, in both drug production and trafficking areas, there has been an upsurge of violence, corruption, impunity, erosion of rule of law, and human rights violations caused by the emergence of powerful organized crime groups and drug cartels. Mexico’s drug war has turned incredibly violent in recent years, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths. Law enforcement attempts to put cartels out of business by arresting key figures have led not to the demise of the drug trade, but to bloody struggles for control. With prohibition propping up drug prices, it is inevitable that the drug trade will continue, no matter how risky or violent it gets. Central America is now home to some of the world’s most dangerous cities, with the highest global homicide rate found in Honduras, at 82.1 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. The region has become unsafe for human rights defenders and journalists that expose the violence; for politicians and security officials that refuse to be corrupted by drug trafficking groups; and, most of all, for its citizens that get caught in crossfire between rivaling gangs. Increasingly, Latin American policymakers are speaking out against prohibition and are highlighting its devastating effects on the hemisphere. Uruguay became the first country to legalize marijuana in 2013. DPA is working to keep Latin American leaders, officials and civil society informed on drug policy issues, with the aim of ensuring that the dialogue on alternatives to the war on drugs continues. Europe Some nations are increasingly adopting less repressive policies including harm reduction approaches and decriminalization. Several countries in Europe are implementing varying degrees of decriminalization – with Portugal as the most notable example. In 2001, Portugal decriminalized the use of all drugs and the results have been encouraging. Drug addiction, overdoses and drug-related HIV transmission have decreased dramatically in Portugal, without a significant increase in drug use. Global Reform Efforts The United States and the United Nations, both of which have a great deal of influence on international drug laws, maintain a criminal justice rather than health-oriented approach. They also continue to promote ineffective eradication and interdiction policies in countries where drugs are produced. This sets the overall tone for global drug policy, so that the international community is locked into a model that promotes lucrative illicit markets dominated by organized crime. As the international community grapples with these issues, solutions such as marijuana legalization to reduce the violence of Mexico's drug war, legal export of Afghan opium crops for medical use, and models that follow Portugal's drug laws become increasingly credible. The Global Commission on Drug Policy was established in 2011 and is comprised of political leaders, cultural figures, Nobel Prize laureates, and former Presidents and Prime Ministers of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, East Timor, Greece, Malawi, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Portugal, and Switzerland. Their latest report – Regulation: The Responsible Control of Drugs – examines how governments can take control of currently illegal drug markets through responsible regulation, and calls for reform of the prohibition-based international drug control system

We need new metrics for measuring the success of our nation's drug policies. Rather than measuring success based on slight fluctuations in drug use, the primary measure of effectiveness should be the reduction of drug-related harm – such as overdose deaths, drug addiction, and the transmission of diseases such as HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C. Critically, though, our drug policies should also be evaluated based on the harms caused by the policies themselves. We need to drastically reduce the enormous numbers of people behind bars for drug law violations. We also need to end the corruption, public distrust of law enforcement, environmental damage, breakup of families, loss of civil liberties, collateral sanctions like removal of financial aid for students, and racial disparities in drug law enforcement, prosecution and sentencing. Our drug policies should be judged – and funded – according to their ability to meet these goals. U.S. States – Laboratories for Reform Voters and state lawmakers are moving forward even while their federal counterparts remain paralyzed by decades of inertia and drug war rhetoric. The number and scope of state-level reforms provide evidence of diminishing public confidence in the reflexive “get-tough” mentality, and a growing commitment to approaches rooted in science, compassion, health and human rights. Both Republicans and Democrats – in states from Maine to Montana, and from Mississippi to Michigan – have led successful efforts to use marijuana for medical purposes, to reduce long and costly prison sentences for people who commit nonviolent drug law offenses, to increase access to sterile syringes to reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS, and to prevent fatal drug overdose. International Success The United States has almost single-handedly exported the prohibitionist model to every country in the world. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration alone maintains more than 80 foreign offices in over 60 countries. In many parts of the world, however – from South America to Europe – health-centered drug policies are being implemented that are proving to be remarkably more effective at improving public safety and health than outright criminalization. Portugal presents the most significant and successful example of a post-criminalization, health-centered drug policy. In 2001, Portuguese legislators decriminalized low-level drug possession and reclassified it as an administrative violation. The explicit aim of the policy shift was to adopt an approach to drugs based not on dogmatic moralism and prejudice but on science and evidence. At the heart of this policy change was the recognition that the criminalization of drug use was not justifiable and that it was actually a barrier to more effective responses to drug use. Every objective analysis has clearly demonstrated that Portugal has drastically decreased its rates of violent crime, addiction, and disease transmission since reforming its drug laws.

The drug war is responsible for trillions of wasted tax dollars and misallocated government spending, as well as devastating human costs that far outweigh the damage caused by drugs alone. The United States’ unrivaled incarceration rate is a constant financial drain, causing an immeasurable loss in workforce productivity, and puts a strain on scant legal and law enforcement resources. DPA is working to end wasteful government spending on the drug war by leading the national dialogue about ending prohibition and refocusing resources on health-centered approaches to drug use. Key Economic Issues Wasted Tax Dollars Over the past four decades, federal and state governments have poured over $1 trillion the drug war and relied on taxpayers to foot the bill. Unfortunately, these tax dollars haven’t solved the problems they were intended to solve – while creating a whole new set of huge problems. Here are some of the fiscal costs of the war on drugs: In 1980, the United States had 50,000 people behind bars for drug law violations – now we have half a million. More than one million people are arrested simply for drug possession in the U.S. every year – that’s one arrest every 25 seconds. Money funneled into drug enforcement has meant less funding to improve public safety and has left essential education, health, social service and public safety programs struggling to operate on meager funding. Drug war advocates continue to demand more money for the same failed policies despite the fact that highly-funded law enforcement and interdiction strategies have failed to reduce drug use and drug availability. They want to keep wasting your tax dollars and destroying countless lives on a losing battle. The demand for drugs in the United States has remained constant despite the United States’ enormous financial commitment to fighting the war on drugs with well-equipped drug taskforces and the full force of mass incarceration. The drug war has created enormous public health costs by limiting the availability of harm reduction programs that could quell overdose and infectious disease transmission rates. Just as disheartening as the fiscal costs of fighting a failed drug war are the opportunity costs. Think of the impact all that drug war funding could have if instead of financing the arrest and incarceration of millions of people each year, we made drug treatment more widely available, improved social service and education programs, or simply gave the money back to taxpayers. Distorted Incentives for Law Enforcement Ever wonder why police spend so much time enforcing failed drug laws? To find the answer, you just need to follow the money. Funding schemes – Because funding for law enforcement is often based on the number of arrests made and the amount of property seized, the easiest way for local police to up their numbers and boost their careers is to target low-level drug offenders. To create arrest opportunities, police routinely rely on untrustworthy informants, conduct dangerous home invasions on flimsy evidence, frame suspects, and commit perjury. Asset forfeiture laws – These laws allow law enforcement agencies to keep the property they seize during drug arrests with minimal proof, putting the burden instead on suspects to prove their own innocence. As a result, local law enforcement agencies tend to increase their focus on drug arrests, often at the expense of more pressing public safety needs. The Byrne Justice Assistance Grant program – This program provides federal funding to hundreds of regional anti-drug taskforces. These taskforces are at the center of numerous scandals involving falsified government records, witness tampering, fabricated evidence, false imprisonment, stolen property, large-scale racial profiling and sexual abuse. Supply and Demand A prime example of the drug war’s backward logic is its distortion of the basic economic principle of supply and demand. The federal government funnels vast resources into futile criminal justice and interdiction policies intended to reduce the supply of drugs, while neglecting treatment and education strategies that could help reduce drug demand. This focus on supply reduction has failed to reduce drug use, while provoking drug trade-related violence. The economic incentives of the illegal drug trade ensure that supply-side interdiction is an unwinnable battle. Education and treatment programs are exponentially more cost-effective and successful when it comes to addressing problematic substance use. Internationally, the hypocrisy of American drug policy is clear. Despite being the largest consumer of drugs in the world, the U.S. focuses on violent supply reduction strategies in other countries while investing little in demand reduction strategies domestically. Drug prohibition essentially provides a monopoly and price supports for organized crime. Forcibly limiting the supply of drugs while demand remains relatively constant only increases the profitability of drug trafficking. Drug Prohibition and Violence Drug enforcement officials often cite drug-related violence as a reason that drugs must be eliminated from our society, but it is actually the system of drug prohibition that causes much of the violence. Just as alcohol Prohibition fostered organized crime in the 1920s, drug prohibition empowers a dangerous illegal market throughout the United States and the world. Prohibition has inflated the price, and thus the profit, of drugs substantially. It has also driven the drug trade underground, where there are no legal avenues for peacefully resolving disputes between competitors. Rather than proposing specific policies for increasing prevention and treatment services to directly impact drug use in the United States, the federal government's approach to the alarming prohibition-related violence in countries like Mexico and Colombia has been to pour more money into law enforcement crackdowns on cartels and efforts to intercept drug shipments. Throughout the drug war's history, these kinds of supply-side interventions have consistently failed to reduce violence. They have instead made the illicit drug market more profitable, more competitive and more dangerous. In countries that bear the brunt of drug war violence, such as Mexico, Bolivia and Colombia, prominent leaders are speaking up more and more about the benefits of ending prohibition. We believe ending drug prohibition is the key to reducing drug war violence in the U.S. and restoring peace to destabilized regions abroad.

Did you know.... Amount spent annually in the U.S. on the war on drugs: $47+ billion Number of arrests in 2017 in the U.S. for drug law violations: 1,632,921 Number of drug arrests that were for possession only: 1,394,514 (85.4 percent) Number of people arrested for a marijuana law violation in 2017: 659,700 Number of those charged with marijuana law violations who were arrested for possession only: 599,282 (90.8 percent) Percentage of people arrested for drug law violations who are Black or Latino: 46.9% (despite making up just 31.5% of the U.S. population) Number of people in the U.S. incarcerated in 2016: 2,205,300 – the highest incarceration rate in the world Number of people in the U.S. incarcerated for a drug law violation in 2016: 456,000 Number of people in the U.S. who died from an accidental drug overdose in 2017: 72,000 Number of states that allow the medical use of marijuana: 33+ District of Columbia Number of states that have legalized marijuana: 10 (Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont and Washington State) + District of Columbia Number of states that have decriminalized or removed the threat of jail time for simple possession of small amounts of marijuana: 22 Number of people killed in Mexico's drug war since 2006: 200,000+ Number of people killed in the Philippines drug war since 2016: 12,000+ Number of students who have lost federal financial aid eligibility because of a drug conviction: 200,000+ The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that syringe access programs lower HIV incidence among people who inject drugs by: 80 percent Tax revenue that drug legalization would yield annually, if currently-illegal drugs were taxed at rates comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco: $58 billion