When the state decides to punish one of its citizens for
wrongdoing, that's taken very seriously in countries all around the world.
But we've come a long way in many countries in recent years in
regarding it as abhorrent, barbaric to punish people with minority
sexual preferences assuming there's no harm to a third person and
it's all done with consenting adults in private.
But there are great parallels with drug use here.
If it's wrong to punish people for a minority sexual preference,
why isn't it also wrong to punish people for a minority drug preference?
Yet that's exactly what we're doing.
Again, I'm emphasizing this is in situations where
harm is not being done to other people.
If harm is being done to other people, of course, that has to be,
always be punished.
But I think looking at this question of the ethics of drug policy
is in many ways just as important, or
even more important than the questions of whether our drug policy works or not, or
whether there are better ways of managing drugs than the way we're managing it now.
Thank you very much. >> So
in terms of the predominant approach and whether it's been effective,
governments have to ask themselves these questions in a very honest way.
At present, there really has been very little honest assessment
of the impact of punitive and draconian drug policies.
The UN has a goal enshrined in the 2009 Political Declaration and
Action Plan on Drugs to have eliminated or at least significantly reduced demand,
supply and the global drug market by 2019.
So that's two years away.
And still they have not identified a very clear review process on how
they plan to do this.
But they could and they could look at the evidence.
For example, the UN office on Drugs and
Crime estimates that around 250 million people world wide use drugs.
The drug market is as robust as ever.
We don't know for sure how much the global drug market is worth, but
estimates are somewhere between 300 and 400 billion US dollar per year.
In the mean time, we also estimate that government spend
around $100 billion per year at least trying to fight this global drug trade.
However, the drug market is diversifying.
There are new substances coming into the market.
These are called new psychoactive substances.
And move away a bit from the traditional drugs that we have of cocaine, heroine,
and cannabis, and amphetamines.
These drugs, we don't know necessarily what the long-term
effects of such drugs are for human health.
But we know that it is prohibition of the traditional drugs that has led to this
diversification.
In addition, the market itself is becoming more innovative, with