Former World Leaders Say International War On Drugs Is A Failure On Its Own Terms

“Drug use itself is not the issue. It has been a part of human societies for centuries. The real problem lies in how society responds to it.”

By Manisha Krishnan, Filter

The United States and Canada should fully decriminalize the use and possession of drugs rather than double down on a failed drug war, according to a new report from the Global Commission on Drug Policy.

The report, “Beyond Punishment: From Criminal Justice Responses to Drug Policy Reform,” published December 5, urged countries to implement strategies that focus on “health, human rights, and social equity.” It was authored by over two dozen former presidents, prime ministers and diplomats from around the world.

The report recommended expanding the availability of opioid agonist therapy such as methadone and buprenorphine, syringe service programs, overdose prevention centers, drug checking and naloxone. It also said governments should explore safer supply models, through which people with substance use disorders are offered pharmaceutical alternatives to unregulated drugs, as a means of curbing overdose deaths.

Louise Arbour, former United Nations high commissioner for human rights, who contributed to the report, was unambiguous when asked about the efficacy of the drug war.

“There’s nothing in it that works,” she told Filter. “There are more drugs today that are cheaper and more lethal used by more people in the world than there were 60 years ago when the so-called War on Drugs got launched. So it’s a complete failure on its own terms.”

Arbour, also a former justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, said striving for a drug-free world is “ridiculous.”

Despite governments around the world spending $100 billion on prohibition annually, drug use is on the rise, the report said, with an estimated 292 million people having consumed illicit substances in 2022—up from 185 million in 2002. Cannabis remains the most popular, though it is decriminalized or legalized in dozens of countries and 24 U.S. states.

“Drug use itself is not the issue. It has been a part of human societies for centuries. The real problem lies in how society responds to it,” said an executive summary from the Commission.

The report said prohibition has resulted in increased violence, strained justice systems and increasingly toxic drug supplies.

“Part of the reason that fentanyl is rampant in the U.S. and a lot less so, almost nonexistent up to now, in Europe, is because the U.S. cracked down on heroin,” Arbour said. Blocking one substance from the market, she noted, just means “it will immediately be replaced by something else.” Market pressures created by enforcement incentivize the production of more potent substances.

Drug-war policies infringe on many human rights, the report detailed, and disproportionately impact Black, Brown and Indigenous people. As of 2022, 40 percent of all Black federal prisoners in the U.S. were being held for a drug conviction. For Latinos, that figure was 60 percent.

In 2023, 40 percent of known executions around the world were for drug convictions.

President-elect Donald Trump (R) has repeatedly expressed support for the death penalty for smuggling or selling drugs. As the U.S. braces for his second presidency, a backlash against progressive drug policy is already underway, with Oregon reversing its decriminalization scheme and California allowing involuntary treatment for people who are homeless and use drugs.

In Philadelphia, ground zero for “tranq dope”—a combination of opioids and the veterinary sedative xylazine—police regularly conduct street sweeps of the Kensington neighborhood, targeting the many people there who are unhoused and using drugs. The city is building a $100-million treatment center next to a jail that will be able to hold 600 people.

Canada is also regressing. Ontario plans to shut down 10 supervised drug consumption sites and British Columbia has gutted its decriminalization pilot project. B.C. and Alberta are also both considering involuntary treatment.

The decriminalization reversals are driven by public and commercial frustration with public drug use and visible poverty. However, the report notes, “decriminalization of drugs isn’t the cause of the housing crisis; criminalization of drugs won’t solve it either. The real cause of the housing crisis lies in housing policies and inequality, not drug policy reform.”

Arbour sees the re-entrenchment of the drug war as part of a larger embrace of right-wing populism.

“There’s an undertone of morality. Law enforcement is highly valued, and so more of that is superficially very appealing, I think, to the general public,” she said.

But she also said it’s simply difficult for people to think outside of the box when they’ve been subjected to prohibition for decades. Even though it’s not working, there’s a belief that scaling up enforcement is the solution.

“If we were designing drug policies from scratch, this model would look ridiculous. It would be the most radical model,” she said. “If you want to control tobacco, have we ever considered putting in jail people who smoke and then sending them to compulsory treatment? Locking them up to try to wean them from their addiction? I mean, it’s just completely unthinkable.”

The report was also critical of involuntary rehab and drug treatment courts, through which people charged with a crime can avoid jail by agreeing to treatment, noting that there’s a high risk of people whose substance use is non-problematic being forced into treatment under these programs. Involuntary treatment can increase the risk of overdose, after people forced to be abstinent are released with lowered tolerance.

“It doesn’t make any sense to treat someone who doesn’t have a problem. Someone who’s not addicted or drug-dependent doesn’t need treatment. What they may need is better information, better products, so they know what they consume,” Arbour said.

To that end, she said Canada’s legalization of cannabis in 2018 was the “non-event of the century” in terms of dire prophecies coming true. But people are now able to be selective over what they’re consuming, which includes CBD or products that don’t produce a high.

The Commission found that cannabis legalization had led to a reduction in illegal activity and better health outcomes.

“We’ve managed the control and consumption of a lot of dangerous substances, like tobacco, alcohol, sugar…through information and so on, but not through prohibition,” Arbour said.

“I think history makes clear that people have searched forever for either mind-enhancer substances, or they look for things for pain control or just pure pleasure,” she added. “Prohibition clearly doesn’t work, nor does anything that would completely try to preclude people seeking access to these kinds of substances.”

This article was originally published by Filter, an online magazine covering drug use, drug policy and human rights through a harm reduction lens. Follow Filter on Facebook or Twitter, or sign up for its newsletter.

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