Fedotov too quick to dismiss the regulation debate

In September, the Global Commission on Drug Policy released its fourth high-profile report: ‘Taking Control: Pathways to Drug Policies that Work’. The report reiterates the Commission’s calls for the decriminalisation of drug use, alternatives to incarceration, and greater emphasis on public health, human rights and harm reduction. But it also goes further than previous reports and calls for the legal regulation of psychoactive substances.

Last week, the Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) – Yury Fedotov – told a news conference that any ‘experimentation’ with legal regulation will lead to greater use, and therefore automatically to greater health and social harms. Putting aside the fact that the media coverage continues to focus on one aspect of a comprehensive Global Commission report containing a wide range of thoughtful recommendations on how the international community can rise to the challenge of 21st century drug markets, Mr Fedotov’s comments do address a couple of the key issues related to current and future regulation initiatives.

It is true that the Global Commission were clear in their view that, in order to address some of the most intractable health and security problems associated with illicit markets, governments would need to develop models of regulating some drugs. Their report also acknowledges that such initiatives will need to be carefully designed in order to minimise the risks of increased and uncontrolled use – discussing issues such as price controls, limits on commercialisation, and measures to reduce availability to young people. These and other nuances of regulated markets are explored in more detail in publications such as Transform’s excellent ‘Blueprint for Regulation’ and ‘How to Regulate Cannabis’.

Mr Fedotov’s comments also assume that higher rates of consumption automatically lead to higher harms – this is an assumption that should not be made. There is ample evidence that drug related harms do not increase in proportion to level of use – for example, if more people use drugs, but in a safer way, overdoses and infections will go down not up. Similarly, if a particular drug market grows in size, but supply is controlled by doctors or state agencies rather than organised crime, then the threat to personal security goes down, not up. Any consideration of future policy options must take a more sophisticated view than ‘more drug use equals more harm’.

That said, it is fair to ask what impact regulated markets may have on overall levels of use. We have some indications of what to expect from experiences of ’tolerant’ approaches in some countries, where overall prevalence seems only marginally impacted by policy change. But we now for the first time have real life experiences to evaluate, in Washington, Colorado and Uruguay. Serious analysts are now engaged in attempts to understand what these initiatives can tell us about the impact of regulated markets.

Thanks in large part to the Global Commission, these debates are no longer taboo. Sadly, however, they appear to remain a step too far for the peak bodies in the UN drug control system. UNODC, the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) and the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) are constrained by their allegiance to the existing treaty limits, so are unable or unwilling to join this valid and vibrant debate on how to design regulated markets that can effectively reduce harms.

We hope that Mr Fedotov and others can find a way of joining these debates, as they are not going to go away.

Mike Trace, IDPC Chair

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