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 Despite broad agreement on the need to deal with the global drug
problem, there are deep divisions among the 193 U.N. member states,
with some favoring a shift towards decriminalization and a greater
focus on reducing the harm caused both by narcotics abuse and the
war on drugs.
A number of Latin American leaders say the aggressive war on drugs
has failed, having killed or destroyed thousands of lives worldwide.
They say there is an irreversible trend towards legalizing "soft
drugs" such as marijuana.
Emphasizing that point, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto told
the gathering his country would soon increase the amount of
marijuana Mexicans are allowed for personal use and legalize
marijuana for medical purposes.
"We should be flexible to change that which has not yielded results,
the paradigm based essentially in prohibitionism, the so-called 'War
on Drugs' ... (which) has not been able to limit production,
trafficking nor the global consumption of drugs," he said.
This week's special U.N. session was called by Mexico, Guatemala and
Colombia.
But some major powers like Russia, delegates say, remain wary of the
trend towards legalization and frown upon moves by U.S. states to
regulate access to marijuana.
Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales said "one of the most important
changes that the current drug policy needs is that we give priority
to demand reduction rather than focusing solely on supply
reduction."
No major decisions are expected this week. But European and Latin
American delegations and activists hope this week's special U.N.
session taking stock of what many describe as the failed war on
drugs can contribute to pushing the world a few steps closer towards
a more liberal drug strategy that puts human rights and public
health, not repression, at the center.
"Evidence shows that prohibitionist approaches have not worked: from
1998 to 2008 the number of people using illicit drugs did not change
significantly and neither did the area used for opium poppy
cultivation," U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Magdy Martinez-Soliman
wrote in the Guardian newspaper.
"Conventional policies have failed in reducing addiction and
production," he said.
The General Assembly adopted a declaration on Tuesday that activists
supporting more liberal drug laws found disappointing. They said it
focused on the traditional approach of cutting off supply, not
reducing the harm caused by narcotics and protecting human rights.
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The Global Commission on Drug Policy, a non-governmental group that
includes prominent personalities like billionaire philanthropist
Richard Branson and former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz,
criticized the U.N. declaration as "long on rhetoric but short on
substance."
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, also writing in the
Guardian, said "the time has come for the world to transit into a
different approach in its drug policy."
"This is not a call for legalization of drugs," said Santos, one of
the most vocal critics of the criminalization of drug use and the
heavy-handed tactics of the war on drugs. "It is a call for
recognition that between total war and legalization there exists a
broad range of options worth exploring."
He called for ending the death penalty for drug offenses, and
non-prison rehabilitation for drug abusers.
A report by the medical journal the Lancet and Johns Hopkins
University said last month that the examples of Portugal and the
Czech Republic had shown that decriminalizing non-violent offenses
produced compelling health benefits.
The report's authors called instead for an evidence-based approach,
focused on reducing harm by minimizing both the violence associated
with drugs and the health risks, such as the transmission of HIV and
hepatitis through shared needles.
(Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; editing by James Dalgleish, Diane
Craft and David Gregorio)
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