If you really want to know what's going on in
an organisation or even within the UN system,
it's a good idea to follow the money trail.
If you follow the money trail within countries,
you find that most countries spend most of their money in response to
illicit drugs in trying to reduce the supply of drugs,
trying to reduce their availability,
trying to push up the price,
that's where the emphasis goes.
Now, about half a dozen countries have allowed people to pore over
their records and make estimates of what proportion of government expenditure in
response to those drugs as is allocated to
supply control that is trying to reduce the supply of drugs,
as opposed to demand reduction trying to reduce the demand for drugs or harm reduction,
triying to reduce the adverse consequences of drug use or drug policy.
About half a dozen countries have done those estimates,
my country Australia has allowed those to be done twice.
Results through are very similar and
the results around the world are broadly very similar.
My country, 66% of
government expenditure in response to illicit drugs is allocated to supply control,
that is things like courts,
customs, police, courts and prisons,
that gets 66% of expenditure,
21% in my country goes to drug treatment,
9% to preventing drug use and only 1% to harm reduction.
Even harm reduction has been
explicitly part of my country's national drug policy since 1985,
only 1% of government expenditure goes to things like needle syringe programs.
So, the bulk of it really does go to customs, police,
courts and prisons, so it really does help to follow the money trail.
Third point is that it helps to also pay
attention to the words that people use when they could use other words,
and you'll notice for example,
even within the UN system,
UN system refers to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime,
it doesn't refer to the United Nations Office on Drugs
and Health or Drugs and Social Well-being.
No, it's United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
So, our question is pretty well framed as a criminal justice question.
If you look around the world in most countries,
you'll see that the politicians are also quite
selective about words that they like to apply when referring to drug users.
They're often very harsh,
very negative, very pejorative terms,
drug addicts, scumbags, they
use terrible language to refer to people who have a drug problem.
We don't use terminology like that for people who can't
stop smoking cigarrettes or can't stop drinking alcohol.
We have some sympathy for those people,
are at least the politicians do,
but in most countries around the world politicians,
have no time for drug addicts and they make that very clear.
So again, that's framing this very much as a supply problem,
as a criminal justice problem.