WHEN Tony Blair deployed British troops in Afghanistan in 2001, he cited
ending the illegal production and supply of opium as a key objective.
After 10 years of effort with tens of thousands of troops in the country and
billions spent trying to reduce poppy cultivation, Afghans are growing more
opium poppies than ever before.
As the December draw down deadline approaches, the UN Office of Drugs and
Crime estimates that Afghanistan produced nearly $3billion of opium and its
derivatives heroin and morphine last year.
Since 2002, the US has provided more than $7billion for counter-narcotics
efforts and agriculture stabilization programs. That’s $583million a year,
on average.
The illicit global trade in drugs has an estimated annual turnover of $320
billion and the war to stop it costs $100 billion a year.
All these big numbers lead to a bold but inevitable conclusion.
In a country like Afghanistan with weak institutions, remote areas ripe for
poppy cultivation and a well-established smuggling network, we are fighting
a lost battle.
Not only does illicit trade migrate toward ungoverned spaces, particularly
those inhabited by those in dire poverty, it goes on to makes matters far
worse.
Enforcement is not only failing to win the ‘war on drugs’, it is also a major
cause of violence and instability in itself.
The opium trade is corrupting Afghan institutions at all levels, arming
insurgents and warlords, and undermining security and development.
In short, the war on drugs has failed in Afghanistan. And without removing the
demand for illicit opium, driven by illicit heroin use in consumer countries
like ours, this failure is unsolvable.
If we cannot deal effectively with supply then the only alternative would seem
to me to try to limit the demand for illicitdrugs by making a legal supply
of them available from a legally regulated market.
Half of the world’s opium is already grown for the licit opiates market. The
UK grows 3,500 hectares of it, for example.
There is no reason why it cannot be expanded to include non-medical trade and
use.
In the unregulated prohibited market there is no quality control, no purity
guide and no safer use advice.
Many users die from overdoses because they use more than they intended to.
The criminalisation of use undermines public health and puts them in even more
danger.
I am not the first former Ambassador who has served in a drug producing
country to call for an end to prohibition. In 2001 my colleague Sir Keith
Morris, former UK Ambassador to Colombia, did.
Since, the late Cabinet minister Mo Mowlam, former Defence Secretary Bob
Ainsworth MP, the last president of theRoyal College of Physicians Professor
Sir Ian Gilmore, the ex-head of MI5 Eliza Manningham-Buller and many more
have made the same plea.
I understand why some politicians are reluctant to take up this debate. Before
going to Afghanistan my own instincts told me decriminalising drugs cannot
be right.
But the time has now come for political parties to engage seriously in a
bi-partisan approach without trying to score points off each other.
For the sake of both Afghans and UK citizens, I urge today’s party leaders to
take responsibility for the failings of global prohibition and take control
of the drug trade through legal regulation.