100 years of Drug Prohibition: 100 years of misery and failure.

100 years ago this year, the major powers of the day, signed the Shanghai Convention, which has resulted in the worldwide prohibition of opium. It is not an exaggeration to say the signing of this convention and the subsequent versions of it, have resulted in more human misery than almost any other international Treaty. *

Since then a whole raft of less harmful drugs have been added to the prohibited substances list. Today there are so many narcotics on the UK’s illicit drug list the Government is forced to categories them alphabetically, although there seems to be no justifiable reason as to which category these substances are placed in. (More often than not it depends on who has the ear of the prime minister.)

Up until the signing of the Shanghai convention opiate based drugs like Laudlum, which were not dissimilar to Heroin, morphine, had been used since time immemorial for a variety of medical conditions, as well as recreationally. Whilst most users did not become addicted, when they did it was not a major personal disaster as is often the case today. As drug addicts were not demonized and were able to buy openly their drug of need at an affordable price. Thus their addiction had very little affect on their own lifestyles and almost none upon society in general.

Once prohibition came into play it has been down hill ever since, with ever more draconian drug laws becoming the order of the day as governments attempted to shift the blame for their own inadequacies on to chemical substances. The one thing all of these laws have in common is once placed on the Statute book, they are totally divorced from the reality of the situation on the ground.

In many of the worlds nations, if a person is caught supplying or smuggling illicit drugs, they may face either the death penalty or a prison sentence up to and including life imprisonment.* *

If a drug mule gets caught at Bangkok airport with a suitcase full of smack, they may well end up facing a firing squad. Yet within Thailand young women and children, can be trafficked and sold into prostitution and the perpetrators face a sentence no where near as severe. In the West arms dealers who cause such misery in the Third World, go about their business with government blessing. Indeed in the UK they regularly end up getting one of Betty’s gongs for services to industry.

Today US and UK prisons are over loaded with people who have been sentenced for ‘drug crimes.’ In the overwhelming majority of these cases they were the only victims of their ‘criminal endeavors’ and in any civilized society the majority of these people would never have seen the inside of a prison cell. By the way, one cannot help feeling there is a link between the privatization of the US and UK prison systems. The large increase in the numbers of people incarcerated within them; and the willingness of politicians to place ever harsher drug laws on the statute book.

If there were any correlation between these harsh drug laws and the amount of narcotics reaching the street the prohibitionist might have a case, but there is not. The USA and Russia are two of the western countries that implement the harshest drug laws, yet both are amongst those Western nations that have the highest rates of illicit drug use. Whilst in the far-east, Thailand and Malaysia, which both have the death penalty for drug trafficking, show the highest number of drug users.

Yet still the worlds politicians and their media gofers claim prohibition works. Take Afghanistan, the worlds major producer of raw opium. The nincompoops who govern us, having transferred their ‘war on terror’ from Iraq to Afghanistan, have also decided to merge it with their equally infantile ‘war on drugs.’

Thus missing a massive opportunity to bring the Afghan peasantry on side by buying their opium crop. Instead NATO forces have inadvertently driven them into the arms of the Taliban by destroying their poppy-crop. They had a real opportunity to think outside the box and move beyond prohibition. If the had done so it would have been a win, win situation.

The European Union’s health care systems are currently suffering from a major shortage of opiates, the drugs which are used as pain relief medication in the treatment of serious illnesses. If the EU had purchased this years Afghan Opium crop it would not only have denied the criminal drug cartels their main source of profit. It would have restocked European hospital pharmacies and in addition the EU governments would also have been able to move away from the current failed prohibitionist treatment of long term heroin addicts, by moving them on to viable harm reduction treatment programs by providing them with a cheap and safe supply of pharmaceutical heroin.

Which would then enable these addicts to begin to take responsibility for their own lives and hopefully lead a productive existence. Just as their forbears did prior to the introduction of opium prohibition, 100 years ago this year. * * *

* The economist magazine has published an excellent issue entitled, How to Stop the Drug Wars, you can find a link here. http://transform-drugs.blogspot.com/

* * Photo of NATO troops in Afghanistan on a drugs raid.

* * * Today, when the media write about illicit hard drug use they portray users as Dilly addicts or silly celebs. (i.e. people who have hit rock bottom) This is far from the whole picture, below is a short list of well known historical figures who were addicted to drugs.

Admiral Horatio Nelson: The Admiral suffered from an opium addiction throughout his later years in the navy.

Lord Liverpool, British Prime Minister, ether addict.

Clive of India: Opium addict.

Queen Victoria: Like many people in those days took Cocaine for colds, opium and morphine for stomach complaints. (Or so they claimed;)

Sir Winston Churchill: The British Prime Minister and national hero: He was dependent on Barbiturates which he used unsparingly and often with alcohol, like many politicians, he also took amphetamines.

Anthony Eden, Prime Minister: he became addicted to Benzedrine and Morphine and during the Suez crises, due to his massive intake of amphetamines, he suffered so severely from paranoid psychosis he had to be hospitalized and eventually replaced.

Herman Goring: Addicted to Cocaine, Pethidine and Codeine.