According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), 185 million or 3% of the world population use an illegal drug. Cannabis, also the least destructive, is the drug of choice, with over 146 million adherents. But, it is the cocaine and opiate consumption that worries the majority of the world. With approximately 13 and 15 million users respectively, they produce vicious withdrawal symptoms and dependency in their users. They also have a high retail price and thus a lucrative profit margin for the distributors. In the shadows of this business, crime and destitution proliferate, while the core of society witnesses drugs through violence and insecurity.

To fight the problem, we reverted to the oldest trick known. Make the substance illegal and no one will touch it, as we like to believe. The Bush administration has decided to promote abstinence but more worryingly, it sees drug abuse as a war that has to be fought. Most countries in world have dovetailed to the same absurdity and the ‘war on drugs’ became the official policy of the planet.

But in 2002, the UNODC found that a staggering 74% of the 95 countries surveyed reported no change or an increase in drug abuse. This organisation evaluates the illicit substance market at nearly $400 billion annually. This should be the sign of a lost war, and justification for a radical change in tactics. Instead, we get ministerial meetings in the tropics to forge ahead with the same bankrupt plan.

Prohibition and repressive legislations against drug consumption have clearly not worked. The regional office of the UNODC views Mauritius as a country where “heroin abuse is now a serious problem.” The international body estimates that we have approximately 25 000 addicts. It also lists the island as a major transit area for drug trafficking, along with Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda. The CIA bestows the same unwanted distinction on us.

Heroin is where the human tragedy lies. Mainly the scourge of the poor, it is also closely linked with the HIV/AIDS pandemic, due to the intravenous nature of its consumption. Statistics for Injecting Drug Users (IDU’s), which take into account heroin and any other substance abused through this method, are in excess of

13 million in 130 countries, according to the UNODC. 78% reside in the developing world, more precisely in Eastern Europe and Asia and they are the most likely to experience and propagate AIDS among addicts. However, governments choose to ignore the problem and are content to lock up drug users. As the recent events in Mauritian jails revealed, narcotics are not foreign to our prisons.

In an essay for the Transnational Institute, an international network of scholars concerned with global issues, independent researcher Francisco Thoumi, points out that the authorities have a habit of linking any increase in AIDS directly with the existence and abuse of illegal drugs. (Minister Lauthan reasserted this ‘link’ last week.) Instead of distributing clean needles and syringes to drug addicts, governments tend to focus on eradicating the drug problem in the first place. While we acknowledge drug addiction as a disease, which requires treatment, we are reluctant to treat the victims with dignity. We find it convenient to blame them for the propagation of a deadly virus instead of ensuring their protection.

It is telling that the World Drug Report 2004 of the UNODC calls for a holistic approach to not only drug addiction itself but to its negative impact on society. This is rooted in the tenets of the 2000 UN Millennium Summit. The idea is to place human security at the top of the agenda, together with human rights and development. Nowhere in the document does it talk about the distribution of clean syringes for IDUs. The report provides a whole set of statistics on drug abuse throughout the world. But critics of the UN will see it as the usual palaver from that organisation.

The failure of prohibition

Cynicism is not however directed towards the UN these days. Governments and in fact the whole drug policy is being challenged. Prohibition has failed in most spheres of life. When in the 18th and 19th centuries, the authorities designed repressive laws against newspaper publishing, a radical press thrived by moving the printing underground. Similarly, the U.S attempt to ban alcohol in the early part of the 20th century failed spectacularly. Prohibition on drugs started during World War One and was globalised in 1961 at the UN Convention on Drugs. Since then, all signatories have had to take drastic measures to combat narcotics on their soil. Some states have been massively armed to achieve this target; an example is Colombia, where an oppressive army benefits from the latest technology from the Pentagon.

Transform Drug Policy Foundation, a think tank campaigning for an alternative drug strategy has dissected the current policy and shown the failure of prohibition in the ‘war on drugs’. It goes without saying that the institutions of society have to be reinforced, but there must be a challenge to the current attitude to illicit drugs. Transform points out that prohibition has in fact “encouraged a lucrative criminal market” and says that it represents a loss of £9 billion a year for the government in untaxed criminal profits. Transform also highlights the plight of women who turn to prostitution to fund their addiction. In the UK, since cannabis was reclassified in January, the number of people arrested has halved and the police has claimed to have saved nearly half a million pounds in police time. This is because the cops now administer a formal warning to those caught smoking instead of taking them to the station.

There is no straight answer to the drug problem. But a radical departure is needed from our current unproductive practice of tough law enforcement. We could start by distributing clean syringes to IDUs.