Illegal drugs like cocaine, cannabis and heroin have generally become cheaper, purer and more potent than ever, despite a global increase in drug seizures over the past two decades, according to a new study led by Canadian researchers.

The findings, published Monday in the medical journal BMJ Open, provide the “first global snapshot” of progress made by the four decade-long war on drugs, said senior author Dr. Evan Wood, a University of British Columbia professor and Canadian research chair in inner city medicine.

And the picture that emerges, he said, is one of total failure.

“By every metric, the war on drugs — which is estimated to have cost North Americans over the last 40 years over a trillion dollars — has really been hugely ineffective,” says Wood, who is also the founder of the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy. “Drugs are more freely and easily available in our society than they’ve ever been.”

Woods said that drug-bust press conferences — with their predictable stacks of drugs, cash and guns — are often used to reassure the public that progress is being made in the war on drugs. However, he and his co-researchers wanted to test this message by actually measuring the impact of drug seizures around the world.

Using data collected by seven government drug surveillance systems, the researchers looked for trends in drug prices and purity — both of which are proxy indicators for measuring drug supply, which is virtually impossible to get accurate data on. (The logic is that the greater the supply, the cheaper the price and the more pure the drug, since sellers are less motivated to dilute their product and increase yields.)

What they found was that between 1990 and 2007 (the last year for which data is publically available), the average purity of heroin and cocaine in the United States increased by 60 per cent and 11 per cent, respectively; cannabis, meanwhile, became 161 per cent more potent. Over the same time period, these drugs also became cheaper, with average heroin and cocaine prices dropping by 81 and 80 per cent, respectively, and cannabis 86 per cent cheaper than it was two decades ago. (All prices have been adjusted for inflation and purity.)

Meanwhile, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has been busier than ever, seizing 720,000 kilograms of cannabis in 2010 — up 465 per cent from the 130,000 kilograms it seized in 1990. The amount of heroin taken into DEA custody also increased by 29 per cent, although the amount of cocaine seized decreased by 49 per cent.

Data from European countries and Australia showed similar trends, with drugs generally also becoming cheaper and more potent as seizures increased. Canadian data was omitted from the study, however, because Canada only started collecting the relevant data in 2008, according to lead author Dan Werb.

While the available data was often patchy, and the statistical significance of the findings varied across regions and drug categories, the overall picture was clear, Werb said.

“There just did not seem to be any correlation between seizures and drug supply,” said Dan Werb, a research co-ordinator with the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy and affiliate scientist with St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.

Werb said the current strategy of stopping the supply of drugs is like looking for a needle in a haystack. The entire annual supply of drugs trafficked into the U.S. from Mexico can fit into just 60 trucks, he said — and 5.5 million trucks drive through the largest border crossing every year.

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Both Werb and Wood said their study reinforces the argument that policymakers need to recast the drug issue as a matter of public health rather than law enforcement — and that progress should be measured not by the kilograms of drugs seized, but with indicators like fatal overdoses and disease transmission amongst drug users.

“These are actually measures that will likely have a greater impact on community health and safety,” Werb said. “For all the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been spent on reducing the supply of drugs, there really are no answers (there).”