Legal Commentary

U.N. Summit Opens on Global Drug Policy : Wrong Approach

By Jeralyn

The UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) opened its Summit on Global Drug Policy today at which they are expected to approve another decade of the War on Drugs. Human Rights Watch explains why the U.N. approach should be rejected.

On March 11-20, 2009, the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) will meet, opening with a high-level segment that will set the international drug policy agenda for the next decade.

In many countries around the world, drug control efforts result in serious human rights abuses - torture and ill-treatment by police, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, and denial of essential medicines and basic health services. UN drug control agencies have paid little attention to whether international drug control efforts are consistent with human rights protections, or to the effect of drug control policies on fundamental human rights.

In our own country, the war on drugs has been a failure, emphasizing prison over treatment. [More...]

Those incarcerated are often the most marginalized - small time dealers, low level drug offenders, and overwhelmingly, people who use drugs.

In the United States, the "war on drugs" falls disproportionately on African Americans. Although whites commit more drug offenses, African American men are sent to prison at 12 times the rate of white men. HRW has documented racial disparities among drug offenders sent to prison and automatic exclusion from public housing of people with criminal records, including drug users.

Many prisons combine the failure to treat drug dependence with harsh disciplinary measures for drug use and possession. In New York, effective drug dependence treatment and harm reduction services are unavailable to many prisoners; and drug dependent prisoners face harsh punishment - including solitary confinement for years - that bars them from treatment as part of the disciplinary sanction.

We also have the wrong approach to pain medication:

Unnecessarily strict narcotic drug control laws, policies, and practices in many countries also severely restrict access to controlled medicines for therapeutic purposes, thus undermining the right to health and to be free from cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment for millions of people who need narcotic drugs to treat pain or drug dependence.

Human Rights Watch has documented how the international community's strong focus on cracking down on illicit drug use has led many countries to neglect their obligation to ensure that people can benefit from the crucial medicinal qualities of narcotic drugs.

Access to pain treatment is a human right.

We also have witnessed decades of racially disparate treatment caused by the war on drugs.

Check out Building Consensus (pdf), the new report by Human Rights Watch and the International Harm Reduction Association, showing the extent of support for human rights-based approaches to drug policy.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on March 11, 2009 (boomark / email).