International Public Health Experts: Decriminalize All Non-Violent Drug Offenses

Countries that pursue a prohibition on drugs neglect their legal responsibilities to their citizens, report authors say. Kelly O

A major report from 22 international experts on public health and drug policy has concluded that drug prohibition is dangerous and poses an ongoing threat to global society.

The report, put together by a commission organized through Johns Hopkins University and The Lancet, tears into drug policies spearheaded by the US government. Not only has the War on Drugs failed, the experts say; it's actually contributed to the spread of infectious disease, increased risk of overdose, lethal violence, racially biased policing, forced displacement, widespread exposure to probable carcinogens in the form of herbicides, environmental degradation, and needless human suffering.

The Johns Hopkins-Lancet commission echoes what many people from different disciplines have been saying for a long time, but today, they've rigorously compiled and reviewed much of that research in one place.

Some highlights from their findings:

• Mass incarceration for drug offenses has increased the spread of HIV and hepatitis C among people who inject drugs.

• The US isn't the only place where drug laws have reinforced racial discrimination in policing:

The evidence also clearly demonstrates that enforcement of drug laws has been applied in a discriminatory way against racial and ethnic minorities in a number of countries. The USA is perhaps the best documented but not the only country with clear racial biases in policing, arrests, and sentencing.

• Prohibition makes it "impossible" to control contaminants in street drugs, and aggressive policing of drug laws is linked to "rushed injection and overdose risk."

• Lack of access to opioid substitutions like methadone and bans on safe injection sites also contribute to overdose risk.

• Because the US government has funded so much of the research on drugs, it's been difficult to study them in a way that doesn't align with the US government's assumptions about drug use.

The whole report is long, but it's eye-opening. The report authors also endorse supervised injection sites, like Insite in Vancouver. King County's heroin task force is considering creating a supervised injection site—the first of its kind in the United States—and earlier this week, Seattle City Council members heard from health workers in Vancouver about the program's successes. Council Member Debora Juarez has said that she wants to build a supervised injection site on Aurora Avenue.

But the report's authors are unequivocal. They're not just talking about one supervised injection site; they're calling for an overhaul of the entire system.

"Drug policy that is dismissive of extensive evidence of its own negative impact and of approaches that could improve health outcomes is bad for all concerned," the Lancet authors write. "Countries have failed to recognize and correct the health and human rights harms that pursuit of prohibition and drug suppression have caused, and, in doing so, neglect their legal responsibilities."

Check out the paper abstract here.