Last week, the Global Commission on Drug Policy released a report condemning drug criminalization and prohibitionist policies. The Commission, which includes the former presidents of Portugal, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico and Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, called on world leaders to undertake a fundamental review of current drug control regimes and redirect both national and international drug policies to better fall in line with the UN mandate to “ensure security, human rights and development.”

“A new and improved global drug control regime is needed that better protects the health and safety of individuals and communities around the world. Harsh measures grounded in repressive ideologies must be replaced by more humane and effective policies shaped by scientific evidence, public health principles and human rights standards. This is the only way to simultaneously reduce drug-related death, disease and suffering and the violence, crime, corruption and illicit markets associated with ineffective prohibitionist police. The fiscal implications of the policies we advocated, it must be stressed, pale in comparison to the direct costs and indirect consequences generated by the current regime."

- Global Commission on Drug Policy  

With that the Commission made five concrete recommendations:

  1. A fundamental reorientation of policy priorities and resources from traditional goals and measures - such as amount of drugs seized and number of people arrested, prosecuted and incarcerated - to proven heath and social interventions.
  2. Ensure equitable access to essential medicines, in particular opiate-based medications for pain.
  3. Stop criminalizing people for drug use and possession and stop imposing “compulsory treatment” on people whose only offense is drug use or possession.
  4. Rely on alternatives to incarceration for non-violent, low-level participants in illicit drug markets such as farmers, couriers and others involved in the production, transport and sale of drugs.
  5. Focus on reducing the power of criminal organizations as well as the violence and insecurity that result from their competition with both one another and the state.

This report is the latest example of the growing, global call for reform of our failed drug policies. The War on Drugs has proved that criminalization is not only ineffective in deterring drug use but has actually amplified many of the harms that flow from substance abuse and addiction. We cannot arrest our way out of the drug problem, but instead must employ smarter, health-based approaches that are more compassionate and more effective.