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Date: Mon, 5 Nov 2001 16:24:50 -0500
To: Matthew Gaylor <<a href="mailto:freematt@coil.com">freematt@coil.com</a>>
From: Matthew Gaylor <<a href="mailto:freematt@coil.com">freematt@coil.com</a>>
Subject: The Secret of World-Wide Drug Prohibition by Professor Harry
Levine
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<p>
Levine, Harry G. (2001), The secret of world-wide drug prohibition:
The varieties and uses of drug prohibition.
<p>
October 2001 On-line: <<a href="http://www.cedro-uva.org/lib/levine.secret.html>">http://www.cedro-uva.org/lib/levine.secret.html></a>
Š Copyright 2001 Harry G. Levine. All rights reserved.
<<a href="http://www.hereinstead.com/sys-tmpl/worldwide/.>">http://www.hereinstead.com/sys-tmpl/worldwide/.></a>
<p>
<hr>
<p>
THE SECRET OF WORLD-WIDE DRUG PROHIBITION:
The Varieties And Uses Of Drug Prohibition
<p>
by Harry G. Levine
<p>
<hr>
<p>
"What percentage of countries in the world have drug prohibition? Is it 100
percent, 75 percent, 50 percent or 25 percent?"
<p>
I recently asked many people I know to guess the answer to this question.
Most people, especially avid readers and the political aware, guess 25 or
50 percent. More suspicious people sometimes guess 75 percent. The correct
answer is 100 percent, but nobody guesses that. Most readers of this
paragraph will not have previously heard that every country in the world
has drug prohibition. Unusual as it seems, almost nobody knows about the
existence of world-wide drug prohibition.
<p>
In the last decade of the 20th century, many people throughout the world
became aware of national drug prohibition. They came to understand that the
narcotic or drug policies of the United States and some other countries are
properly termed "drug prohibition." But even as this understanding spread,
the fact that drug prohibition covers the entire world remained a kind of
"hidden-in-plain-view" secret. Now, in the 21st century, that too may be
changing.
<p>
"Global drug prohibition" (the term was first used in 1990) has begun
losing some of its invisibility. And as it becomes more visible, it loses
some of its other powers. This article briefly describes the varieties and
uses of world-wide drug prohibition in the 20th century, and explores its
prospects in the 21st century.
<p>
<hr>
<p>
1. DRUG PROHIBITION IS A CONTINUUM:
FROM HEAVILY CRIMINALIZED TO DECRIMINALIZED
<p>
Every country in the world has drug prohibition. Every country in the world
criminalizes the production and sale of cannabis, cocaine and opiates. In
addition, most countries criminalize the production and sale of some other
psychoactive substances, and they make exceptions for limited medical
purposes, especially morphine for pre- and post operative pain management.
Most countries also criminalize simple possession of small amounts of some
of the prohibited substances, usually an ounce (28 grams) or less.
<p>
In "Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice," Craig Reinarman and
I suggested that the varieties of drug prohibition can be seen as a long
continuum. The continuum extends from the most criminalized and punitive
forms of drug prohibition, such as the crack cocaine policy of the United
States of America, to the most decriminalized and regulated forms of drug
prohibition, such as the cannabis policy of the Netherlands. In this
article I want to suggest that the most criminalized and punitive end of
the drug prohibition continuum be called "criminalized drug prohibition"
and the other end be termed "decriminalized drug prohibition."
<p>
Criminalized drug prohibition uses criminal laws, police, and imprisonment
to punish people who use specific psychoactive substances, even in minute
quantities. In the U.S., drug laws prohibit even supervised medical use of
cannabis by terminally ill cancer and AIDS patients. U.S. drug prohibition
gives long, mandatory prison sentences for possession, use, and small-scale
distribution of forbidden drugs. U.S. drug laws require mandatory prison
sentences that increase for repeated drug offenses. Most U.S. drug laws
explicitly remove sentencing discretion from judges, and do not allow for
probation or parole. The United States now has nearly half a million men
and women in prison for violating its drug laws. Most of these people are
poor and from racial minorities. Most of them have been imprisoned just for
possessing an illicit drug, or "intending" to sell small amounts of it. The
mandatory federal penalty for possessing five grams of crack cocaine, for a
first offense, is five years in prison, with no possibility of parole.
Criminalized prohibition is the harshest form of drug prohibition.
<p>
The cannabis policy of the Netherlands is the best known example of the
other end of the drug prohibition spectrum -- of a decriminalized and
regulated form of drug prohibition. Several United Nations drug treaties --
especially the "Single Convention on Narcotics" of 1961 -- require the
government of the Netherlands to have specific laws prohibiting the
production and sale of particular drugs. Therefore Dutch law explicitly
prohibits growing or selling cannabis. This is still formally drug
prohibition, and the Netherlands does prosecute larger growers, dealers and
importers (or smugglers) as required by the U.N. treaties. But in the
Netherlands national legislation and policy limits the prosecution of
certain cafes, snack bars and pubs (called "coffee shops") that are
licensed to sell small quantities of cannabis for personal use. The coffee
shops are permitted to operate as long as they are orderly and stay within
well-defined limits that are monitored and enforced by the police. The
coffee shops are not allow to advertise cannabis in any way, and they may
sell only very small amounts to adults. Like other formally illegal
activities, cannabis sales are not taxed. Without a change in the Single
Convention and other international treaties, this is probably as far as any
country can go within the current structures of world-wide drug prohibition.
<p>
The prohibition policies of all other western countries fall in between the
heavily criminalized crack cocaine policies of the U.S. and the
decriminalized and regulated cannabis prohibition of the Netherlands. No
western country, nor most third world countries, have ever had forms of
drug prohibition as criminalized and punitive as the United States. And in
the last five to ten years, drug policy in Europe, Canada, Australia and
elsewhere appears to be shifting even further away from the criminalized
end of the prohibition continuum. But all these countries are required by
international treaties to have -- and still do have -- real, formal, legal,
national drug prohibition.
<p>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
<hr>
<p>
2. DRUG PROHIBITION HAS BEEN ADOPTED THROUGHOUT THE WORLD
<p>
Drug prohibition is a world-wide system of state power. Global drug
prohibition is a "thing," it is a "social fact" (to use the classic term of
the sociologist Emile Durkheim). Drug prohibition exists whether or not we
recognize it, and it has real effects, real consequences.
<p>
For many decades, public officials, journalists and academics rarely
identified any form of U.S. drug law as "prohibition." Instead, public
officials, journalists, and academics referred to a national and
international "narcotics policy." The international organization that
created and still runs global drug prohibition is called the "International
Narcotics Control Board."
<p>
National drug prohibition began in the 1920s in the United States as a
subset of national alcohol prohibition. The first U.S. drug prohibition
enforcement agents were alcohol prohibition agents assigned to handle
"narcotics." American prohibitionists had always worked hard to convince
other nations to adopt alcohol prohibition laws; during the 1920s, some
savvy prohibitionists (notably an obscure U.S. Prohibition Commissioner
named Harry A. Anslinger) realized that the success of U.S. alcohol
prohibition depended on support from other countries. However, the campaign
to spread American alcohol prohibition to other nations was an utter
failure. In 1933, the U.S. repealed its own national alcohol prohibition
laws -- the 18th Amendment to the Constitution and the Volstead Act -- and
returned the question of alcohol policy to state and local governments to
do with as they wished.
<p>
The story of drug prohibition took an entirely different course. Since the
early 20th century, the U.S. had found European governments far more
willing to consider anti-narcotics legislation than anti-alcohol laws. The
founding Convenant of the League of Nations explicitly mentioned the
control of "dangerous drugs" as one of the organization's concerns. In
1930, the U.S. Congress separated drug prohibition from the increasingly
disreputable alcohol prohibition and created a new federal drug prohibition
agency: the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, headed by the committed alcohol
prohibitionist Harry A. Anslinger. In the 1930s, the U.S. helped write and
gain acceptance for two international anti-drug conventions or treaties
aimed at "suppressing" narcotics and "dangerous drugs." In 1948, the new
United Nations made drug prohibition one of its priorities, and the U.N.
Single Convention of 1961, and a series of subsequent anti-drug treaties,
established the current system of global drug prohibition.
<p>
In the last eighty years, nearly every political persuasion and type of
government has endorsed drug prohibition. Capitalist democracies took up
drug prohibition, and so did authoritarian governments. German Nazis and
Italian Fascists embraced drug prohibition, just as American politicians
had. Various Soviet regimes enforced drug prohibition, as have its
successors. In China, mandarins, militarists, capitalists, and communists
all enforced drug prohibition regimes. Populist generals in Latin American
and anti-colonialist intellectuals in Africa embraced drug prohibition.
Over the course of the 20th century, drug prohibition was supported by
liberal prime ministers, moderate monarchs, military strongmen, and
Maoists. It was supported by prominent archbishops and radical priests, by
nationalist heroes and imperialist puppets, by labor union leaders and
sweat shop owners, by socialists, social workers, social scientists, and
socialites -- by all varieties of politicians, practicing all brands of
politics, in all political systems.
<p>
Over the last eighty years, every government in the world eventually
adopted drug prohibition. National drug prohibition was one of the most
widely accepted, reputable, legitimate government policies of the entire
20th century. Why? Why should this be so?
<p>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
<hr>
<p>
3. DRUG PROHIBITION IS USEFUL TO ALL TYPES OF GOVERNMENTS
<p>
There is no doubt that governments throughout the world have accepted drug
prohibition because of enormous pressure from the United States government
and a few powerful allies. But U.S. power alone cannot explain the global
acceptance of drug prohibition. Governments of all types, all over the
world, have also found drug prohibition useful for their own purposes.
There are several reasons for this.
<p>
-- The Police and Military Powers of Drug Prohibition --
<p>
Drug prohibition has given all kinds of governments additional police and
military powers that they have been freer to deploy than other kinds of
police powers. Police and military narcotics units can legitimately go
undercover anywhere and investigate anyone -- anybody could be in the drug
business. Most of the undercover police in the United States are in
narcotics squads (no other crimes require so much undercover manpower). The
CIA can only legally operate beyond U.S. borders, and the FBI only within
the U.S., but the DEA (the Drug Enforcement Administration) is free to
independently stage covert operations domestically and in other counties.
Anti-drug units within city, county and state police departments have
unparalleled freedom of movement. Police anti-drug units have regular
contact with informers and spies; they can make secret recordings and
photographs of anyone, and they have cash for buying drugs and information.
In the United States, police anti-drug units are sometimes allowed to keep
money, cars, houses and other property they seize. Top politicians and
government officials in many countries may have believed deeply in the
cause of drug prohibition. But other health-oriented causes could not have
produced for them so much police, coast guard and military power.
<p>
Government officials throughout the world have used anti-drug squads to
conduct surveillance operations and military raids that they would not
otherwise have been able to justify. Many times these anti-drug forces have
been deployed against targets other than drug dealers and users -- as was
the case with U.S. President Richard Nixon's own special White House
anti-drug team, led by former CIA agents, which later became famous as the
Watergate burglars. Nixon was brought down by his squad's mistakes. But
over the years, government anti-drug forces all over the world have carried
out countless successful non-drug operations.
<p>
Sometimes this use of "anti-drug" justifications for diverse military and
police activities has been fairly obvious. The U.S. has long justified the
military support provided to anti-democratic governments and factions it
favored in Latin America by asserting that the military hardware was being
given to "fight drugs." Nearly everyone who writes seriously about U.S.
foreign policy takes it for granted that the "anti-drug" justifications
have been transparent but politically useful cover stories.
<p>
-- The Usefulness of Drug Demonization and of Anti-Drug Messages --
<p>
Drug prohibition has also been useful for governments and politicians of
all types because it has required at least some anti-drug crusades and what
is properly called drug demonization. Anti-drug crusades articulate a moral
ideology that depicts "drugs" as extremely dangerous and destructive
substances. Under drug prohibition, police, the media, and religious and
health authorities tend to describe the risks and problems of drug use in
extreme and exaggerated terms. "Drugs" are dangerous enemies. "Drugs" are
called evil, vile, threatening, and powerfully addicting. Politicians and
governments crusade against them, declare war on them, and blame them for
many unhappy conditions and events. Anti-drug crusades and drug scares
popularize images of "drugs" as highly contagious invading evils. Words
like plague, epidemic, scourge, and pestilence are used to describe
psychoactive substances, drug use, and moderate, recreational drug users.
<p>
Government officials, politicians, the media and other authorities have
found that the enemies described in the language of drug demonization can
be very useful. These enemies can be blamed by almost anyone at any time
for long-standing problems, recent problems, and the worsening of almost
anything. Theft, robbery, rape, malingering, fraud, corruption, physical
violence against men, women or children, disrespect, juvenile delinquency,
sloth, sloppiness, sexual promiscuity, low productivity, and all around
irresponsibility -- anything at all -- can be and has been blamed on
"drugs." Almost any social problem is said to be made worse -- often much
worse -- by "drugs."
<p>
Consider the case of crack cocaine and the still active U.S. "War on
Drugs." In the 1980s, the Reagan and Bush administrations helped popularize
the image of crack cocaine as "the most addicting drug known to man." They
then used that image to explain the deteriorating conditions in America's
impoverished city neighborhoods and schools, and they warned that crack
addiction was rapidly spreading to the suburbs. In effect, Presidents
Reagan and Bush said: "Our economic and social policies did not make those
urban problems worse, addiction to crack cocaine did, and now crack is
spreading to young people in the suburbs." Democrats in Congress happily
joined with Republicans and voted major increases in funding for police,
prisons, and military to fight the War on Drugs.
<p>
Even if crack was as bad as Republicans, Democrats, and the media said, it
probably still could not have caused all the enduring problems they blamed
on it. But the truth about crack cocaine is even more startling than the
myths. Crack cocaine, "the most addicting drug known to man," turned out to
be a drug that almost nobody liked to keep using. Many Americans tried
crack, but very few people continued using it heavily for a long time.
Mainly this is because most people cannot physically tolerate, much less
enjoy, frequent encounters with crack's brutally brief, extreme up and down
effects. Crack use in America is now so low that the U.S. government does
not even include crack use in its press releases about the prevalence of
drug use. Nor has crack become popular anywhere in the world. Heavy,
long-term crack smoking appeals only to a small number of deeply troubled
people, most of whom are also impoverished. Because frequent bingeing on
the drug is so unappealing, there was never any danger of an epidemic of
crack addiction spreading across America, especially not to middle-class
families in the suburbs.
<p>
Nonetheless, the contradictions between the drug war's myths about crack
and the reality of crack cocaine's very limited appeal have not affected
the credibility and legitimacy of the War on Drugs. Most politicians have
not regretted spending hundreds of billions of dollars to save America's
children from addiction to crack cocaine and other drugs by running an
expensive, punitive, utopian crusade to make America "drug free." In the
presidential election of 2000, both George W. Bush and Al Gore promised
more funding and more prisons to make America "drug free." Here in the 21st
century, U.S. politicians continue to justify the enormous expenditures and
imprisonment; they still insist that less criminalized and punitive drug
policies will lead to a mass epidemic of drug addiction and substantially
increase every social and economic problem. In this respect, drug war
propaganda is like the propaganda from other wars: many otherwise
reasonable people continue to believe in it even when the drug demonization
and pro-drug war claims are patently false, or do not make logical sense.
<p>
Drug demonization also endures because it is useful to at least some
important individuals and institutions. In a war on "drugs," as in other
wars, defining the enemy necessarily involves defining and teaching about
morality, ethics, and the good things to be defended. This content varies
somewhat by place and time, but in the U.S. anti-drug messages, especially
those aimed at children and their parents, have recognizable themes.
Currently these include messages about: individual responsibility for
health and economic success, respect for police, the value of providing the
police with information about drugs, resisting peer-group pressure, sexual
abstinence outside of marriage for health reasons, the value of God or a
higher power in recovering from drug abuse, parents knowing where their
children are, sports and exercise as alternatives to drug use, why sports
heroes should be drug tested, low grades as evidence of behavioral problems
including drug use, and parents setting good examples for their children.
Almost anyone can find some value that can be defended or taught while
attacking "drugs."
<p>
In the U.S., newspapers, magazines and other media have long found that
supporting anti-drug campaigns is good for public relations; they have also
found that anti-drug stories are good for their business -- they attract
customers. The media regularly editorially endorse government anti-drug
campaigns and favorably cover anti-drug efforts as a "public service." For
doing so, they are praised by government officials and prominent
organizations. There is no doubt that many U.S. publishers and editors have
believed in the War on Drugs and in defending the criminalized,
prison-centered tradition of U.S. drug policies. But only some of the
causes that people in the media believe in can be shaped into compelling
"read all about it" and "more details at eleven" type news stories. Only
some causes can be turned into scary front page stories that are
simultaneously good for public relations and very good for business.
<p>
For many decades, the top editors in the news media have clearly
recognized, as an economic fact of their business, that a scary front page
drug story will increase sales of magazines and newspapers -- especially
when it is about a potential drug epidemic threatening to destroy
middle-class teenagers, families and neighborhoods. Editors know that a
scary story about a new, tempting, addicting drug attracts more TV viewers
and radio listeners than most other kinds of news stories, including
non-scary drug stories. In short, whatever their personal values,
publishers, editors and journalists give prominent space to frightening
drug articles because they know the stories attract customers.
<p>
When one demon drug loses its ability to scare people, then politicians,
the media, and drug enforcement agencies shift to another. At this moment
(the spring and summer of 2001), they are focusing on prescription
narcotics, methamphetamine, and ecstasy. Each demon drug comes with its own
distinctive story about the ruin it causes including brain damage,
psychological destruction, moral collapse, and sometimes death. The many
anti-drug news stories and public education campaigns implicitly (and
sometimes explicitly) suggest that nearly all social problems can be
reduced at least somewhat by attacking "drugs." And to a remarkable extent,
pro-drug war politicians in the U.S. have an easier time getting elected,
and expensive anti-drug programs pass without much debate. In the U.S.,
funding grows for "anti-drug" courts, police, prisons, and military
operations, while schools, housing, medical care, and other social services
are under-funded or cut back.
<p>
Because U.S.-style criminalized prohibition is so extreme, it allows us to
see the continuing political usefulness and viability of prohibitionist
policies and anti-drug campaigns for governments in third world countries,
and for many governments in Western democracies (including currently for
Blair, Clinton and Gore "third way" politicians). Drug prohibition has
powerful sources of support because of its usefulness to politicians, to
the media, and to many other important institutions and constituencies. As
a result, in the coming years, "drugs" will continue to be attacked with
guns, soldiers, police, courts, and prisons in the U.S. and many other
countries. "Drugs" will also be attacked with words, pictures, grave
commentary, editorials, and uncountable anti-drug stories and ads on TV and
radio, in newspapers and magazines, and in videos, movie trailers, and
glossy booklets taught to children in school. All of this will further help
justify drug prohibition, and help maintain public support, especially for
the more criminalized and punitive varieties of drug prohibition.
<p>
-- Additional Political and Ideological Support for Drug Prohibition --
<p>
In many countries, popular support for drug prohibition has also been
rooted in the uniquely 20th-century faith in the capacity of the state to
penetrate and benevolently control many aspects of daily life for the
"common good." The hope of global drug prohibition, of the people who
created the system, was the hope of using the powers of a nearly omnipotent
state to do good and suppress evil. This romantic vision itself was very
much part of a distinctly 20th century utopian hope or dream. Unlike, say,
the "founding fathers" who wrote the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights,
and unlike many political movements in the 19th century, in the 20th
century liberals, conservatives, fascists, communists, socialists,
populists, right-wingers and left-wingers usually shared this romantic
vision of the benevolent state. Twentieth-century political movements
disagreed violently about how the state should be used. Drug prohibition
was one of the few things they could all agree upon. Drug prohibition was
part of what I think it is appropriate to call the 20th century's "romance
with the state."
<p>
Because politicians in many countries, from one end of the political
spectrum to the other, shared this positive, romantic view of the powerful
state, they could agree on drug prohibition as good non-partisan government
policy. In the U.S. during the 1980s and the 1990s, Democrats feared and
detested Presidents Reagan and Bush, and Republicans feared and detested
President Clinton, but the parties united to fight the "War on Drugs." They
even competed to enact more punitive anti-drug laws, build more prisons,
hire more drug police, expand anti-drug military forces, and fund many more
government sponsored anti-drug messages and "drug-free" crusades. Opposing
political parties around the world have fought about many things, but until
recently they have often endorsed efforts to fight "drugs."
<p>
Finally, drug prohibition has enjoyed widespread support and legitimacy
because the United States has used the United Nations as the international
agency to create, spread, and supervise world-wide prohibition. Other than
the government of the U.S., the U.N. has done more to defend and extend
drug prohibition than any other organization in the world. The U.N.
currently identifies the goal of its anti-drug efforts as "a drug-free world."
<p>
-- The Spread of Drug Prohibition in the 20th Century --
<p>
In the 20th century, drug prohibition spread from the U.S. to every country
in the world. I have suggested a number of reasons this. First, drug
prohibition has spread so successfully because of the enormous political
influence and economic power of the United States. Second, many different
kinds of governments throughout the world have supported drug prohibition
because they have found that drug prohibition's covert and open police and
military powers can be used for many non-drug related activities. Third,
drug prohibition has also gained substantial popular support in many
countries because its drug demonization crusades and anti-drug ideology
have been rhetorically, politically and even financially useful to many
politicians, the media, schools, the police, the military, religious
institutions, and some elements of the medical profession. Fourth, the
spread of drug prohibition has been aided by the 20th century's romantic or
utopian ideologies about coercive state power, making the fight against
"drugs" the one topic about which politicians of all stripes could usually
agree. Finally, drug prohibition has gained great legitimacy throughout the
world because it is seen as project of the United Nations.
<p>
All forms of drug prohibition, from the most criminalized to the most
decriminalized, have probably involved at least some explicit drug
demonizing. In general, drug demonization and drug prohibition reinforce
each other. But it is important to recognize that drug demonization existed
before global drug prohibition, and drug demonization will certainly
continue long after world-wide drug prohibition has passed away.
<p>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
<hr>
<p>
4. THE PLACE OF HARM REDUCTION WITHIN DRUG PROHIBITION
<p>
Since the early 1980s, harm reduction workers and activists in Europe, and
increasingly throughout the world, have sought to provide drug users and
addicts with a range of services aimed at reducing the harmful effects of
drug use. In the U.S., conservative pundits and liberal journalists have
accused harm reduction advocates of being "drug legalizers" in disguise.
But in most other countries, many prominent politicians, public health
professionals, and police officials who are strong defenders of drug
prohibition have also supported harm reduction programs as practical public
health policies. Even the United Nations agencies that supervise world-wide
drug prohibition have come to recognize the public health benefits of harm
reduction services within current drug prohibition regimes.
<p>
A better understanding of the varieties and scope of world-wide drug
prohibition helps us to better see the place of the "harm reduction
movement" within the history of drug prohibition. I want to suggest that
harm reduction is a movement within drug prohibition that shifts drug
polices from the criminalized and punitive end to the more decriminalized
and openly regulated end of the drug policy continuum. Harm reduction is
the name of the movement within drug prohibition that in effect (though not
always in intent) moves drug policies away from punishment, coercion, and
repression, and toward tolerance, regulation and public health. Harm
reduction is not inherently an enemy of drug prohibition. However, in the
course of pursuing public health, harm reduction necessarily seeks to
reduce the criminalized and punitive character of U.S.-style drug prohibition.
<p>
Consider the many programs identified as part of harm reduction: needle
exchange and distribution, methadone maintenance, injection rooms,
prescription heroin, medical use of marijuana, especially by cancer and
AIDS patients, truthful drug education aimed at users, drug testing
services at raves, and so on. Harm reduction programs have pursued all
these to increase public health and to help users reduce the harms of drug
use. In order to carry out their stated objectives, harm reduction programs
have often required laws, policies, or funding that in effect quite clearly
also reduce the harshness of drug prohibition. Harm reduction programs can
be said to reduce the punitive character of drug prohibition without
necessarily challenging drug prohibition itself.
<p>
I am suggesting that harm reduction's stance toward drug prohibition is
exactly the same as its stance toward drug use. Harm reduction seeks to
reduce the harmful effects of drug use without requiring users to be drug
free. Harm reduction also seeks to reduce the harmful effects of drug
prohibition without requiring governments to be prohibition free. Harm
reduction organizations say to drug users: "we are not asking you to give
up drug use; we just ask you to do some things (like use clean syringes) to
reduce the harmfulness of drug use (including the spread of AIDS) to you
and the people close to you." In precisely the same way, harm reduction
organizations say to governments: "we are not asking you to give up drug
prohibition; we just ask you to do some things (like make clean syringes
and methadone available) to reduce the harmfulness of drug prohibition."
<p>
Harm reduction offers a radically tolerant and pragmatic approach to both
drug use and drug prohibition. It assumes that neither are going away
anytime soon, and suggests therefore that reasonable and responsible people
try to persuade those who use drugs, and those who use drug prohibition, to
minimize the harms that their activities produce.
<p>
<hr>
<hr>
<p>
5. THE CRITICS OF GLOBAL DRUG PROHIBITION
<p>
As noted earlier, U.S. federal drug prohibition began in 1920 as a part of
U.S. federal alcohol prohibition. U.S. alcohol prohibition lasted as
national policy for only fourteen years. U.S. drug prohibition quickly
became far more acceptable than alcohol prohibition ever was, and it has
now lasted over eighty years, growing ever bigger, more criminalized, and
more powerful.
<p>
In many countries increasing numbers of knowledgeable people -- physicians,
lawyers, judges, journalists, scientists, public health officials,
teachers, religious leaders, social workers, drug users and drug addicts -
now openly criticize the more extreme, punitive, and criminalized forms of
drug prohibition. Harm reduction is a major part of that critical
tradition. Indeed, harm reduction is the first popular, international
movement to openly challenge drug demonization and the more criminalized
forms of drug prohibition. As even the defenders of criminalized drug
prohibition recognize, the drug policy reformers have changed the debate.
For example, in the summer of 2001, the mainstream Canadian newspaper, the
Toronto Globe (August 20 & 21), wrote a two part editorial strongly
endorsing decriminalization, and the British business magazine The
Economist (July 26) devoted an entire issue to drug policy, endorsing
decriminalization and harm reduction. However, all of this is fairly recent.
<p>
For much of its history, national and global drug prohibition has had very
few critics. Even today, despite the impressive growth of the harm
reduction movement, and of drug policy reform activities in many countries,
the regime of world-wide drug prohibition still has very few explicit
opponents.
<p>
One reason for the lack of organized opposition to global drug prohibition
is that very few people actually know that it exists. In effect, global
drug prohibition has operated for many years as a kind of official secret.
Its existence was on a "need to know basis," and most people, it seems, did
not need to know. This is why for most of its history drug prohibition has
rarely been called "drug prohibition." This non-use of the phrase "drug
prohibition" has occurred even though (and perhaps because) "alcohol
prohibition" was always called "prohibition," especially by the people in
favor of it. Sometimes, perhaps often, this prohibition on the use of the
phrase "drug prohibition" has been explicitly enforced by prominent
publications and government agencies who tell contributors and grant
recipients that they may not use the term "drug prohibition."
<p>
Since almost nobody yet knows that global drug prohibition exists, of
course almost nobody yet opposes it. Furthermore, even fewer people
currently understand that by ending or even modifying the Single Convention
of 1961, the question of national drug policy could be returned to
individual countries, and then to local governments, to do with as they
wished. Defenders of global drug prohibition like to evoke an international
conspiracy of what they call "drug legalizers." But nobody thus far has
tried to launch even a half-baked international campaign with slogans like
"Repeal the Single Convention" or "End Global Drug Prohibition."
<p>
Yet it may well be that the Single Convention stands in much the same
relationship to world-wide drug prohibition that the 18th Amendment to the
Constitution and the Volstead Act stood in relation to U.S alcohol
prohibition. Repeal of prohibition did not "legalize" the sale of alcoholic
beverages -- it turned the question back to the states. Once the 18th
Amendment was gone, state and local governments were free to create their
own alcohol policy at the local level. Similarly, once the Single
Convention is gone, or even modified, national governments around the world
will be free (or freer) to create drug laws and policies geared to their
own conditions -- including prohibition if they should so desire.
<p>
This is precisely what happened in the United States when the 18th
Amendment was repealed in December of 1933. Within a year, most states had
adopted one form or another of legalized and controlled sale of beer, wine
and distilled liquor, but Mississippi and Kansas kept state-wide
prohibition. Further, from 1934 on, in all states with an alcohol control
system regulating legal sale, county and local governments also enacted
their own forms of restrictions on the sale of alcohol. Today, as in the
1930s, these local policies range from local prohibition of any sale at
all, to no bars or "on-premises' consumption and sale only at "package
stores," to wine and beer for on-premises consumption but hard liquor only
at liquor stores. These taken-for-granted patterns continue to this day and
as a result some large amount of the land area of the U.S. continues under
one form of local alcohol prohibition or another. It seems likely that this
kind of local variation is what will eventually happen with drug policy in
most parts of the world.
<p>
In recent years, critics of criminalized drug policies in a number of
countries have been discovering, much to their surprise, what I have been
saying here. They have been learning that drug prohibition is a global
system, a global regime; it is a Durkheimian social fact -- and no nation
in the world currently has the effective power to withdraw from it. Many
people already understand that world-wide drug prohibition is not
monolithic; increasingly they can see that it is a continuum extending from
heavily criminalized drug war approaches to decriminalized and regulated
forms of prohibition -- with considerably autonomy at the local level. As a
result, many nations (and many more regional or local governments) are
independently reforming their drug prohibition laws and making them less
criminalized.
<p>
However, because of the international treaties, especially the Single
Convention, and because of the economic and political sanctions that bind
nations to the treaties, no country in the world could formally end its
national prohibition regime without facing massive, economic and political
retribution. No country in the world -- including the Netherlands or
Switzerland -- can at present, without changing the Single Convention,
truly "legalize" the sale of any drug including marijuana. As many national
and local governments throughout the world have shown, drug prohibition can
be substantially reformed and modified at the local and national level. But
as more and more people are coming to understand, at present no single
country can "defect" from the world-wide prohibitionist regime.
<p>
In recent years, drug warriors around the world have also been discovering,
much to their surprise, that they too are facing their own intractable
Durkheimian social facts. Most alarming to them, they find that they cannot
make the hundreds of millions of cannabis users in the world stop using the
drug. They are also discovering that they cannot make the critics of
criminalized prohibition go away either. In the reports of the U.N.'s
International Narcotics Control Board, and in other publications, the most
knowledgeable defenders of drug prohibition warn every year of the
increasing growth of marijuana cultivation and use on every continent, and
of the increasing legitimacy given to the critics of drug prohibition.
These defenders of global drug prohibition recognize that the advocates of
decriminalized drug prohibition -- and the political, economic and cultural
forces driving that opposition -- are growing stronger all the time.
<p>
<hr>
----
<p>
6. THE FUTURE OF GLOBAL DRUG PROHIBITION
<p>
Drug prohibition is in crisis. The fact that it is at long last becoming
visible is one symptom of that crisis. In the long run, the more
criminalized and punitive forms of drug prohibition are almost certainly
doomed. In the short run, the ever-growing drug law and policy reform
movements make it likely that criminalized drug prohibition will find
itself confronted with new opponents. (This is already happening in
Switzerland, Australia, Germany, Portugal, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain,
the United Kingdom, the U.S., and other counties.)
<p>
In the 20th century, for specific practical and ideological reasons, the
nations of the world constructed a global system of drug prohibition. In
the 21st century, because of the spread of democracy and trade, and for
other practical and ideological reasons, the peoples of the world will
likely dismantle and end world-wide drug prohibition.
<p>
It is important to understand that this process of dismantling global drug
prohibition will not end local drug prohibition. The end of global drug
prohibition will not (and cannot) be the end of all national drug
prohibition. Advocating the end of world-wide drug prohibition is not the
same as advocating world-wide drug "legalization." Long after the demise of
the U.N.'s "Single Convention," many small communities, larger regions, and
some entire nations will choose, sometimes by large popular majorities, to
retain forms of drug prohibition. Many places in the world will also
continue to support vigorous anti-drug crusades.
<p>
However, as accurate knowledge about drug effects and drug policies becomes
more widespread, most people in most countries of the world will likely
choose not to retain full-scale criminalized drug prohibition. Most places
will eventually develop their own varied local forms of regulated personal
cultivation and use of the once prohibited plants and substances. Many
places will also eventually allow some forms of commercial growing,
production, and sale -- first of all and above all of cannabis, which is by
far the most widely grown, traded, sold, and used illegal drug in the world.
<p>
All of this will take time. Prohibitionists and drug warriors in every
country will fight tenaciously to maintain their local regimes. And
enormous power will be employed to prevent the Single Convention of 1961
and its related treaties from being repealed, or even modified. As a
result, in coming years, all around the world, there will be even greater
public discussion and debate about drug prohibition, about criminalized
drug policies, and about the world-wide movement within drug prohibition to
decriminalize the possession and use of cannabis, cocaine, heroin and other
substances.
<p>
As part of that process of conversation and debate, many more people will
discover -- often with considerable astonishment -- that they have lived
for decades within a regime of world-wide drug prohibition. That growing
understanding will itself push world-wide drug prohibition closer to its
end. Here in the 21st century, it may turn out that the most powerful force
holding global drug prohibition in place is the secret of its existence.
<p>
<hr>
<hr>
<hr>
<hr>
<p>
NOTES
<p>
This is a revised version of a talk first presented at the International
Harm Reduction Association meetings in Paris in 1997. In the spring of 2001
it was rewritten for the Greek newspaper Eleftherotypia (which my friend
Professor Yannis Gabriel says is "a serious newspaper of fairly wide
circulation that is read by a wide range of Greek people, including
intellectuals"). Needless to say, because of its length and topic, no
prominent U.S. newspaper would yet publish this. It was revised again for
the workshop on "Exploring Global Prohibition Regimes. The Case Of
Dangerous Drugs" held in Oņati, Spain, June 2001.
<p>
I want to thank Drs. Ernest Drucker and Patrick O'Hare for first
encouraging me to write this paper. I want to thank Professor Peter Cohen
for teaching me again and again since 1989 how Dutch, American and
world-wide drug prohibition has worked. I want to thank Professor Lynn
Zimmer for coming up with the phrase "world-wide drug prohibition" and much
else. I want to thank Professor Ethan Nadelmann, who, back in 1988, was the
first person that I ever met who talked all the time about drug
prohibition, and who himself coined the name "global drug prohibition."
See: Ethan A. Nadelmann, "Global Prohibition Regimes: The Evolution of
Norms in International Society," International Organization 44 (4), 1990.
Finally, I want to thank Professor Craig Reinarman. Most of the ideas
presented here were taken directly from him, developed together with him,
or born in continuous conversation with him. Some of the sentences in this
article come directly from our book. See: Craig Reinarman and Harry G.
Levine, Crack in America: Demon Drugs and Social Justice. Berkeley,
California: University of California Press, 1997. Chapters 1, 15, 16, 17,
and the epilogue.
<p>
I want to dedicate this paper to the memory of Kettel Bruun, and to Nils
Christie. Years ago, in the very pro-drug war climate of Sweden, Norway and
Finland, these two social scientists and citizens of the world courageously
published a book about drugs that they titled "The Suitable Enemy" or "The
Good Enemy." The argued against drug demonization and called for a
fundamental reconsideration of Scandinavian and Nordic drug policy. Their
book was never published in English, and so I have never read it. But I
met both Kettel and Nils, I have read other works of theirs, and like many
people I have been inspired by both of them in more ways that I can say. To
Kettel's spirit, which lives on within many people, and to Nils, who
continues to say what is right and true, I give thanks for showing the way.
<p>
The best study by far of global drug prohibition in the 20th century is:
the book by David Bewley-Taylor, "The United States and International Drug
Control, 1907-1997," London and New York: Wellington House, 1999. Professor
Bewley-Taylor correctly focuses on the League of Nations and especially the
United Nations as the chief instruments developed by the United States and
some allies for the construction and defense of international drug
prohibition. He also identifies the Single Convention of 1961 as the
central international treaty holding in place the current system of
world-wide drug prohibition. David Bewley-Taylor's brilliant book is now
the first essential source for understanding what, following Ethan A.
Nadelmann, he rightly terms the "global drug prohibition regime."
<p>
<hr>
<p>
Professor Peter Andreas, from Harvard University's Center for International
Affairs, has summarized well why currently no country in the world can
withdraw from global drug prohibition. Andreas writes:
<p>
"Open defection from the drug prohibition regime would ... have severe
consequences: it would place the defecting country in the category of a
pariah 'narcostate,' generate material repercussions in the form of
economic sanctions and aid cutoffs, and damage the country's moral standing
in the international community."
<p>
"Even if their control efforts have a limited impact on the drug trade,
leaders across the globe repeatedly pledge their commitment to the battle
against drugs. Regardless of whether they are 'true believers' or simply
trying to pacify international critics, for drug-exporting countries to
openly defect by officially advocating drug legalization would be
unthinkable, not only because it would draw the wrath off the United States
but also because their advocation would be universally condemned and would
openly violate their pledge to uphold UN-based anti-drug treaties."
<p>
From: the chapter by Peter Andreas, "When Policies Collide: Market Reform,
Market Prohibition, and the Narcotization of the Mexican Economy," in the
book "The Global Economy and State Power" edited by H. Richard Friman and
Peter Andreas, New York: Roman & Littlefield, 1999, pp. 127-128.
<p>
<hr>
<p>
The agency within the United Nations that imagined world-wide drug
prohibition and the Single Convention - meaning one single drug prohibition
law for the whole world -- and then put it into effect, is the
International Narcotics Control Board, the INCB. Recently the INCB has put
many of their historic documents on the world-wide web. Now anyone with
access to the internet can learn about the making of the Single Convention
of 1961 and the growth and spread of global drug prohibition from the
people who created it, and who to this day celebrate its successes and warn
about its weaknesses. You can find most of the INCB's "Bulletins on
Narcotics" from the first issue in 1949 to 1999 at
<<a href="http://www.undcp.org/bulletin_on_narcotics.html.>">http://www.undcp.org/bulletin_on_narcotics.html.></a>
<p>
Many other UN drug control
publications can be found at: <<a href="http://www.undcp.org/publications.html.>">http://www.undcp.org/publications.html.></a>
<hr>
<p>
Harry G. Levine is Professor of Sociology at Queens College, City
University of New York., and the author of many publications on alcohol and
drug topics. His recent book with Craig Reinarman, "Crack in America: Demon
Drugs and Social Justice," is published by the University of California
Press. He can be reached at the Department of Sociology, Queens College,
Flushing, New York, 11367 USA. His writings on drugs and other topics
can be found at
www.hereinstead.com
<p>
<hr>
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