During a presentation at the LatinEast conference at Corvinus University in Budapest on November 5, Associate Dean Julia Buxton argued that existing drug control strategies have failed and must change to adapt to today's reality. The international drug control framework is based on ideas and approaches that were popularized by the United States over 120 years ago, explained Buxton, citing the US alcohol prohibition experience (1920-1933). She questioned the extent to which the goal of a drug-free world was ever viable and if the international drug control treaty framework and administration (the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC) are fit for purpose in an age of HIV/AIDS, internet drug sales, and synthetic drug innovation – exemplified by the challenge posed by New Psychoactive Substances (NPS).
Buxton outlined that international drug strategy has a source-focused approach, aiming to prevent and interdict supply of narcotics to consumers. This "outsources" the problem of drug use in the Global North to supply states in the Global South - and it is an approach that can never succeed. Market logic dictates that diminished supply elevates price, increasing the incentive for new illicit market entrants while fueling violent contestation for vacated market share. Alternatively, supply routes and consumer demand simply diversifies following disruption of supply chains; the so called balloon effect. The result of a century long effort to prevent production and consumption of narcotic substances is that more people are now consuming a greater diversity of drugs that are now cheaper and purer than at any point in the history of the control model.
In particular since the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, which committed the international community to eliminate illicit opium poppy and coca cultivation over a 25 year timeframe, supply control efforts have become militarized. "This has huge ramifications for countries in Latin America," noted Buxton of this key source region for coca, opium and cannabis. Latin American states and transit countries must commit significant financial resources to a state led and US backed "war on drugs" with grave ramifications for human rights, citizen security and democracy. Over 160,000 people have been killed in the last 8 years of Mexico's drug war, and in Colombia over a quarter of a million people have been displaced by drug crop fumigation.
The irony Buxton noted is that coca and opium are the least consumed of all narcotic drugs, with UNODC figures showing that 17 million people use cocaine and opiates, in contrast to over 51 million reporting consumption of synthetic drugs like amphetamines and MDMA. She argued it was unconscionable that the US (itself one of the world's leading drug producers) would compel the Netherlands, Poland or Canada to engage in a militarized domestic campaign against synthetic supply. Yet Latin American states that fail to embrace the US led drug war in the hemisphere are sanctioned for non-compliance. "We have a hypocritical, lopsided understanding of the world of drugs," said Buxton.
Buxton noted that unlike the U.S., the EU has eschewed militarized source control efforts in the Global South and has instead focused on development assistance – although this was also problematic. Like the U.S., the EU continues to see the drug "threat" as external, particularly in relation to the Balkans heroin route. The reality, as the case of Hungary exemplifies, is that domestically produced cannabis, NPS and other synthetics are the drugs of problematic use.