Wishful thinking clouds independent assessment in World Drug Report

No clear correlation between UN-led drug control and perceived 'recession' in the drug economy

The 2007 World Drug Report, released today (26 June) on the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, suffers from wishful thinking about the effectiveness of UN-led drug control.

"Inconvenient information is deliberately swept under the carpet, while data that confirm the desired message of success is highlighted out of proportion. This reflects UNODC's ambiguous position as a political agent and centre of expertise," says researcher Tom Blickman of the Transnational Institute (TNI), an international policy research institute with a decade long history as a watchdog of UN drug control agencies and global illicit markets.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) faces an impossible dilemma. For next year's ten year review of the 1998 UN General Assembly Special Session on drugs (UNGASS), the office wants to show that the commitments to reduce the illicit supply and demand by 2008 are having an impact. Meanwhile most data about supply and demand show that it has not.

In the preface of the report, UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa claims that there is a clear correlation between UN-led drug control efforts and a perceived 'recession' in the drug economy. The World Drug Report, however, fails to document the existence of a recession. Other market studies also fail to detect any significant impact of drug control efforts.

"The levels of opium and coca production have not significantly changed over the last decade, and market indicators like declining price and rising purity of cocaine and heroin indicate abundant availability," says Martin Jelsma, co-ordinator of TNI's drugs programme.

The data on cannabis and amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) are so incomplete as to make any assessment an unreliable guesstimate. The cannabis situation is assessed in the report mainly on the basis of developments in Morocco, which is one of 164 countries and territories where cannabis is cultivated.

"Despite record drug eradication efforts, a White House survey found that production of coca in Colombia rose for the third consecutive year in 2006, confusingly contradicting the figures provided by UNODC. In 2007 a record opium harvest is expected in Afghanistan", says Jelsma.

For most European countries, according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), the predominant 5-year trend has been a decline in street price for cannabis, heroin, amphetamine, ecstasy and cocaine. The US Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), very discretely and quietly revealed that cocaine prices on the streets of the United States had also fallen, while its purity was on the rise.

While the UN report acknowledges the methodological problems in making any conclusive assessment of the world drug situation, it chooses to disseminate an upbeat and unsubstantiated message of success.

"The discrepancy between the UNODC assessment and other reports shows that the office cannot be relied upon to take on a transparent, objective and balanced evaluation process of the global drugs situation that is needed unless it is combined with scrutiny of independent experts," says Blickman.

Nevertheless, there are positive signs in the report with regard to shifts in the discourse. For the second year the UNODC now talks about 'containment' of the world drug problem instead of a 'drug-free world'. Also UNODC now seems to recognize that the core of the problem lies with 'problem drug users' as a small share of those that use drugs recreationally.

"Containment fits the reality better and the recognition of a distinction in drug use is an important step away from zero-tolerance ideology," says Jelsma. "Market forces maintaining a supply-demand balance is more likely an explanation for the stabilisation than any impact of control efforts. Still, the aim of containment should lead to more space for policy measures that reduce the harms of drugs instead of continuing to focus on the unrealistic aim of eliminating drug use altogether."

Unfortunately, says Jelsma, "harm reduction policy developments are nowhere to be found in the report. This means that the real existing success stories of the past decade in many countries, such as reduced numbers of overdose deaths and lower rates of HIV transmission due to harm reduction efforts, are left out completely."

More information:
Colombia coca cultivation survey results: A question of methods
TNI Drug Policy Briefing No 22, June 2007

Contact details
Martin Jelsma, cel -31-6-5571 5893
Tom Blickman, cel -31-6-2153 5809

Transnational Institute (TNI)
De Wittenstraat 25
1052 AK Amsterdam (Netherlands)
Tel.: + 31 20 662 66 08
Fax: + 31 20 675 71 76
E-mail: drugs@tni.org
Web: http://www.tni.org/drugs