The drug menace

Opium, worth over Rs.3 crore, seized by the Upparpet police in Karnataka. A 2008 photograph.-V. SREENIVASA MURTHY

[T]he war on drugs has been a disasterthe 100-year struggle has been illiberal, murderous and pointless...the least bad policy is to legalise drugs.

The Economist (March 7-13, 2009)

ONE of the major handicaps a criminal justice researcher faces in India is the non-availability of up-to-date and reliable statistics. Crime figures put out annually by the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) and organisations such as the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) of the Finance Ministry tell only a part of the story. It is not because these agencies want to play down the magnitude of the problem. The fact is they depend on inputs from a variety of sources, especiall y the State police departments, which have a stake in proving to the rest of the world that crime is under control and they are doing their job very well indeed. The tendency, therefore, is to ignore most reported crimes and suppress information on them whenever possible. This is my impression not only of conventional crimes but of those induced by the trade in and consumption of drugs.

It is an open secret that drug addiction is widely prevalent in our major cities and that it is not difficult to buy drugs at a moments notice in the vicinity of some of our educational campuses. The figures quoted by the NCB in its annual report for 2006 do point to some activity on the part of enforcement agencies at the Centre and in the States. Seizures of opium (2,826 kg), heroin (1,182 kg), ganja (157,710 kg) and hashish (3,852 kg) and cocaine (206 kg) may be modest but cannot be dismissed as wholly inconsequential.

The nagging question is: Do these figures adequately reflect the ground situation, especially in the light of the fact that India is a lucrative market for drug dealers and is also a relatively safe transit point for prohibited substances originating from Afghanistan, a country notorious for poppy cultivation? (Afghanistan incidentally has edged out Morocco in the production of cannabis resin.)

Ironically, the same misgivings that we express with regard to India are aired in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom and in parts of Europe and Africa. There is reasonable criticism that laws in most of the regions of the world do not have the required bite and that enforcement agencies are either hampered by a lack of resources or by downright corruption. A case in point is Mexico, where a federal prosecutor working for the attorney general was charged last November with taking bribes in return for passing on crucial information to a dreaded drug gang called Sinaloa. Relevant here is the recent arrest by the Maharashtra Police of an Indian Police Service officer who allegedly got mixed up in the drug trade after a deputation to the NCB.

More than earlier, in the past few years, the need for proactive cooperation between nations is seen as absolutely essential to touch at least the fringe of the problem. No nation can remain complacent because the patterns of consumption and the routes used for transporting drugs keep shifting, and it is in everybodys interest that assistance is lent generously and ungrudgingly.

It is against this backdrop that the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) earlier this month convened its annual conference at its Vienna headquarters to review the progress of enforcement. More than 100 nations took part in the deliberations amidst visible scepticism that the labours of the U.N. body had become too routine to have any impact at all on a grave situation.

Interestingly, this year marks the 100th anniversary of international cooperation in the fight against drugs. Anti-opium activists managed to bring enough pressure on nations to hold the first conference of its kind in 1909 in Shanghai. This paved the way for an International Opium Convention of The Hague in 1912. Since then, there have been three conventions, all under the auspices of the U.N., in 1961, 1971 and 1988. These did bring about more than symbolic improvements. As a result, drug consumption across nations stabilised at around 5 per cent of the worlds adult population. Deaths traceable directly to drugs are around 200,000 a year, a small number compared with deaths resulting from alcohol and tobacco consumption.

But those who gathered in Vienna a few weeks ago were not exactly impressed. They said that these figures did not reflect the ground situation, which, in their opinion, was fast getting out of control. Not only were new and dangerous drugs finding their way rapidly into new centres, but the gangs dealing in them were found to be ingenious in finding fresh routes to transport them unnoticed by enforcement agencies. UNODC chief Antonio Maria Costa himself admitted at the conference that the problem was contained but not solved. This candid assessment should make all right-thinking leaders do more in their respective countries to ensure that drug consumption does not escalate. Success here would hit at what Costa referred to as a criminal black market of staggering proportions.

Ground realities, however, are forbidding. The World Drug Report 2008, prepared by the UNODC, recorded that since 2007 there was an undoubted expansion of the area under opium and coca cultivation. For instance, in Colombia, a determined President Alvaro Uribe, saw to it that hundreds of thousands of hectares of land was sprayed with weed killer in an attempt to reduce coca cultivation, which in fact fell by half between 1999 and 2006. This proved to be only a temporary success. Latest reports point to a surge in production.

Also, the UNODC report for 2008 found consumption to be on the rise in some developing countries. Most significantly, new routes are emerging as safe corridors for conveying prohibited substances. This is why Mexico has become such a dangerous place in the past few years. Drugs produced in Colombia were initially being transported to the rest of the world through the Caribbean islands. Once the U.S. and other countries sealed this route effectively, Mexicos lax administration came in handy for the drug lords. Small gangs making small profits from marijuana and heroin soon became rich beyond their wildest dreams through trading in the highly priced cocaine flowing copiously from Colombia into Mexico first and later into the U.S., where there is a huge market for them. The kind of violence this has spawned in Mexico is unbelievable.

Since 2006, 800 policemen and army soldiers have died in the battle with the gangs. The losses suffered by the gangs are far more. The point is, in an expanding consumer market such as the U.S., there is no way we can put down heavily armed rapacious gangs of the sort that haunt Mexican President Felipe Calderon and his dedicated officials who want to see a drug-free Mexico.

Costa is fully conscious that stiffer anti-drug legislation is no answer to the current malaise. He is aware that many countries are rooting for legalisation of drugs to get out of an awkward situation. This trend is growing, if the action taken in many States of the U.S. is any indication. In as many as 13 States, the police have been advised to ignore mere possession of cannabis by a citizen. Such possession is actually not an offence in many European countries, such as Spain, Portugal and Italy. The belief is that once drugs can be openly bought there will be less and less temptation to buy them, except when an individual is an addict.

As against this universal trend, there is an odd country here and there that is very rigid about enforcing anti-drug laws. Sweden is one such nation, where possession is a criminal offence and is strictly enforced. The UNODC would like to hold this up as an example worth emulating. This debate on whether to punish drug offenders guilty only of consumption is similar to the one we see in respect of capital punishment and will continue unresolved.

Ironically, Costa has taken the position that decriminalisation of drugs will be a historic mistake. It is difficult to believe that he will carry any conviction with many nations that are more concerned with conventional crimes. It is equally true that those who are pleading for drug offences to be taken out of statute books, except when they directly lead to violence, ignore the fact that consumption of drugs not only impairs public health but actually generates a wide range of criminal activities.

The Vienna conference, despite wide differences over existing U.N. policy and strategy with regard to drugs, adopted an action plan that laid emphasis on a balance between measures to curb supply and demand and those to strengthen health care and social services. In specific terms, the conference established 2019 as a target date to eliminate or reduce significantly and measurably drug production and trade. This is a compromise between those who believe that the current policy has failed and those who think that the struggle is worth pursuing relentlessly.

We hope to see this percolating down to Asia where the current trends are alarming. With the resurgence of the Taliban, which derives most of its resources from poppy cultivation, Afghanistan is going to pose many a problem to those who desire to see a drug-free world.