Ending the war on drugs

Experience has discredited the 1975 approach, which saw drugs purely as a matter for the criminal justice system and the deterrence and punishment of people who use drugs as the sole purpose of drug law. This is sometimes known as the ‘war on drugs’ approach, a term first used by President Richard Nixon in 1971 and usually linked with the harsh drug control tactics used in the United States that greatly inflated prison populations.

It is an approach that has proven ineffective both overseas and here. In isolated examples, strong law enforcement initiatives have contained the overall scope of a drug market, but researchers have struggled to find solid evidence for a straightforward link between efforts to clamp down on supply and a sustained drop in the availability or use of illegal drugs.

Fruitless attempts to prohibit alcohol last century demonstrated that trying to stamp out the supply of a product is a poor way of eliminating an entire market. Thai economist Pasuk Phongpaichit noted in a recent paper about her nation’s drug problem, “If you attack the supply but do little about demand, then the result is rising prices, rising profitability, and hence increased entrepreneurship.”

Entrepreneurship within the drug industry has thrived. Despite the fierce war on drugs waged by the United States and its allies over more than three decades, the global drug market has expanded exponentially.

Today, policy reform advocates believe that viewing the issue of drug use through the prism of health and social policy sharpens our understanding of the best ways to reduce the problems that drugs can cause. This means that we look at both drug demand and supply, which offers a wider range of up-to-date policy tools.

Social researchers also tell us that it is necessary to acknowledge the simple fact that people will continue to use legal and illegal drugs, no matter what legal approach is taken. While we will always want to reduce drug use, this fact means that we have an obligation to try to make drug use as safe as possible for people who use drugs and for the communities around them and that people can access essential health services.

In New Zealand, it is important for us to learn from the emergence of ecstasy, party pills and other designer drugs, and the phenomenon of diverted pharmaceuticals such as benzodiazepines and morphine sulphate. Our drug law has proved poorly prepared for such developments. New substances or variations of existing substances will continue to surface.

The outdated approach underpinning the Misuse of Drugs Act ensures that it has a heavily punitive focus on banning illicit drugs and attempting to control supply. The law is not adaptable. When new drugs emerge, they need to be fitted into a matrix of ‘harm’ and a political response planned.

The 34-year-old law divides drugs into classes, ostensibly on their risk of harm, and sets out the penalties for their possession, manufacture and supply. It gives power to the Police and Customs. In keeping with attitudes when it was first drafted, there is no emphasis on attempting to dampen demand, or on attempting to reduce the dangers to people who use drugs.

The inevitable result of this narrow approach is that far greater governmental resources go to control and enforcement than to programmes that focus on prevention or that deal with the harm that drugs cause.

It also means that artificial distinctions are made between legal drugs – notably alcohol and tobacco – and illegal drugs. In terms of economic impact and lives lost, tobacco is clearly New Zealand’s most harmful and costly drug, followed by alcohol.

As long ago as 1994, an advisory group told the Ministry of Health that “as a philosophical basis for drug policy, the justice perspective is very limited. Its underlying premise, that illegal drugs are ‘bad’ while legal drugs are generally ‘good’, is too black and white to be credible.”