Transcript HIV infection and injecting drug use: a global perspective

Prohibition
and the Drug War
Dr Norm Stamper
October, 2009
Australian Tour sponsored by
1
SYDNEY 4 - 10 Oct
MELBOURNE 10 – 14 Oct
PERTH 14 – 18 Oct
BRISBANE 19 – 22 Oct
CANBERRA 22 – 27 Oct
2
• Founded 2002
• Now over 13,000 members and increasing every day
• Police, parole, probation and corrections officers,
judges, prosecutors, prison wardens, FBI and DEA
agents
3
Why Drug Prohibition?
• To prevent individual, family and societal
health harms of drug abuse
• To protect children from damaging effects on
early development
• To stop people from injuring themselves,
others
• To safeguard innocent people against antisocial, criminal conduct
4
Why Drug Prohibition? (2)
• To ensure sober, responsible behaviour in the
home, at work, on the streets
• To cut the economic costs of drug abuse on
health care, families, communities, criminal
justice and other systems
• To promote workplace and classroom
productivity
5
Implicit Motives Behind
Prohibition?
• To keep ethnic minorities, the young and the
poor in their place
• To protect the profits of Big Pharma, the liquor
industry, and assorted other industries
• To maintain full employment in the criminal
justice system, and maximise profits for
private prisons
6
Implicit Motives Behind
Prohibition? (2)
• To satisfy religious and other morality-based
interests
• To appear tough on crime
• To stop people from having fun
7
Results of the Drug War as
Organising Mechanism of Prohibition
Enforcement?
• U.S. taxpayers have spent $1 trillion since
President Richard Nixon declared war (1971);
$69 billion per year
• Drugs more readily available, at lower prices
and higher potency
• Children’s access to drugs facilitated
8
Results of the Drug War as Organising
Mechanism of Prohibition
Enforcement? (2)
• Over 2.3 Americans currently incarcerated,
more than half a million for drug offences
• War on Drugs = War on People
• Race, age, class discrimination
• Violence, local and global
9
Results of the Drug War as Organising
Mechanism of Prohibition
Enforcement? (3)
• Sick people denied medicine
• Otherwise law-abiding people losing jobs, student
loans, public housing
• Families losing relatives, including breadwinners,
to long prison sentences
• The spread of infectious diseases
• Drug overdose deaths
10
Results of the Drug War as Organising
Mechanism of Prohibition
Enforcement? (4)
• Police corruption (personal use, criminal
enterprise, bribery, extortion, kidnapping,
murder)
• Environmental destruction
• Political and economic instability, globally
• Financing terror
• U.S. hegemony
11
Results of the Drug War as Organising
Mechanism of Prohibition
Enforcement? (5)
• Users stigmatised, treated as criminals
• Infringement of civil liberties, widespread violation
of Fourth Amendment
• Funding law enforcement over prevention,
education and treatment at 7:1
• Massive credibility problem for the government
(gateway drug, zero tolerance, “winning the war”
12
From Prohibition to Regulation –
One Path
1. Repeal prohibition, end the drug war
2. Transfer drug enforcement
responsibilities form criminal justice to
public health system
13
From Prohibition to Regulation –
One Path
3. States would issue hard-to-get, easy-to-lose
licenses to purveyors (could be doctors),
predicated on:
4. State governments would set and enforce
standards, oversee and inspect every aspect:
growing/manufacturing, pricing, packaging,
strength and purity levels, cleanliness and
security of facilities
5. Ban on advertising, marketing of any kind
14
Thank you very much for thinking
about this important issue.
For more information or to join these organisations
and show your support, go to:
www. leap. cc
www.adlrf.org.au
15