World Officials Ponder
Success of War on Drugs
Excerpt By Hannah Cleaver, Reuters Health

The United Nations held a cautiously optimistic review of its campaign against drugs on Wednesday in Vienna, while civil experts meeting next door called for more flexibility to enable signatory states to reduce drug demand.

Ministers attending the U.N. Drug Policy Conference discussed progress made half-way through the Ten-Year Action Plan Against Illicit Drugs, begun in 1998 with the aim of producing a drug-free world by 2008.

Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said in a statement: "In recent years, efforts to reduce abuse of illicit drugs have shown signs of progress."

Reports were submitted showing that more than 80 percent of the governments concerned had adapted national drug-control strategies to include goals from the action plan, along with launching information campaigns.

However, experts holding another conference next door denied that significant progress against drug abuse could be made unless some fundamental attitudes changed.

Raymond Kendall, honorary secretary-general of Interpol, called for a more realistic approach.

"Nothing has basically changed in the last five years," he told Reuters Health.

"They are not really looking at the real issue, which is one of health and dealing with addiction problems."

People addicted to drugs, Kendall said, "are victims, and we will not be any better off treating them as if they are criminals."

Last year, he added, the British government's attempt to downgrade the legal classification of cannabis was stymied by the fact that such re-classification went against the U.N. convention.

Kendall argued that the political will is missing to focus more efforts on reducing demand for illicit drugs because such attempts only produce results in the long term.

"Results don't come for maybe 10 years, and in the minds of politicians that is way beyond the next election. They are interested in short-term results," he said.

Kendall noted that there are projects in many countries meant to help addicts get off drugs or at least better manage their addiction, but added that such projects are often too few and far between.

"We don't expect a change, of course, at this conference yet," he said. "But European civil society isn't going to wait until 2008 for the failure of the 'war on drugs' to become official. We will start a broad public debate of the issue today."

Reference Source 89

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