This fantasy world of drug prohibition

The United Nations International Narcotic Control Board (INCB) has attacked one of the few progressive drugs reforms introduced by any British government since the disastrous tide of prohibition began to roll across the world in the 1960s. The downgrading of cannabis – a drug which more than half of all British citizens under the age of 30 have tried – from Class B to Class C, earmarked for this Easter, was the barest minimum that could be done in a country where even The Daily Telegraph, Peter Lilley and The Economist support legalisation. Yet the INCB has condemned it as a move made by a government "intimidated by a vocal minority that wants to legalise illicit drug use". This "vocal minority" includes, according to a 2001 ICM poll, more than half of all British people when it comes to cannabis.

The INCB is among the world's most hardline exponents of drug prohibition. Whenever a country moves in the direction of greater tolerance and reducing harm, the INCB is there to beat it with a big stick. Despite its disingenuous attempt yesterday to claim to speak on behalf of African nations, it is effectively a puppet of the United States, a nation whose drugs record speaks for itself. The latest US Department of Health found last year that despite endless "crackdowns" over two decades, 87 million Americans have used illegal drugs, and nearly a million regularly use the most hardcore of all, crack cocaine.

The intellectual poverty of the prohibitionists is so obvious that it no longer merits serious discussion. They are not interested in evidence from the real world; they are simply blinkered ideologues. Yet the INCB still tries to enforce the catastrophic US model across the globe. Any nation that tries to liberalise its drugs policy finds itself, as Britain has, under intense US/UN pressure.

Through the INCB, they oppose even the most basic harm-reduction tactics, such as injecting rooms where heroin addicts can inject under supervision in case they overdose; needle exchanges (to avoid HIV infection); heroin prescription (proven to reduce property crimes, because addicts no longer need to steal to fund their habit); and ecstasy testing in clubs, combined with education about the drug (which could save the lives of the few people who do die using ecstasy).

As Danny Kushlick, director of the increasingly influential Transform Drugs Policy Institute, explains: "There is now a serious tension emerging between the US approach to drugs – which is being aggressively forced on the world – and the European harm-reduction philosophy which is gradually emerging. Portugal has effectively decriminalised personal possession of all drugs; and in Spain and Italy, personal possession is now only a civil offence."

At the moment, the European approach remains – just – within the boundaries of the international drug-control treaties, regulated by the UN, that were set up in successive waves in 1961, 1971 and 1988. Even these changes are achieved mostly by exploiting clauses about medical necessity. For example, needle exchanges, which test the ultra-prohibitionist spirit of the treaties, are justified by the Dutch with reference to the clauses about individual health. But no European country can move towards full legalisation of production and supply while remaining within the treaties' constraints. Sooner or later, there will be a blatant challenge to the treaties by a European country that wants to travel this path, although massive diplomatic pressure will be exerted to rein it back.

The US-imposed constraints on South America are even greater. In Colombia, 40 per cent of the national economy is based on the international trade in drugs. The distorting effect on the entire country is immeasurable, with billions sloshing around in illegal funds, corrupting both politics and the administration of law. This is exacerbated by a US policy of mass-spraying, with noxious herbicides, of fields suspected to be used for cocaine-related crops. Tens of thousands of acres of land belonging to poverty-stricken small farmers have been destroyed, the environmental damage is devastating, and yet the policy is so ineffective that since it began the cocaine yield from Colombia has trebled.

The idea that the drugs market can be stamped out is a fantasy. A kilo of cocaine is worth £1,000 in Colombia, but, because of the massive inflationary effects of prohibition, it is worth £30,000 by the time it reaches the streets of London. Wherever there is a 3,000 per cent profit margin, people will be prepared to take extraordinary risks. This market will not die.

Legalising the supply and distribution networks of drugs, however, would put the huge sums of money generated by this industry into the hands of legitimate businesses and – most importantly – through taxation into the hands of governments that urgently need more money for the provision of basic health and education.

The INCB approach, in contrast, is a guarantee of poverty in South America and mass property crime in Britain. The Government has unflinchingly taken the condemnation of this unaccountable body for even its very moderate change. This should embolden it to confront the prohibitionists again and move faster towards the European model that will – one day soon – replace the current anarchy and criminality of the drugs world with regulation, legality and sanity.

johann@johannhari.com