I'd like to talk in this video about a debate around
the nature of human rights abuses in relation to drug control.
But let me start by saying this,
in an earlier video I asked you to look at
human rights treaties and again I would advise you to do that,
and once you do it you can pick any human right that you read there
and it can be connected to a problem in drug control very easily.
So, for example, the right to life and the fact that
33 states or territories retained the death penalty for drug offenses.
We can talk about the right to privacy and strip searches in schools for drugs,
or the ban on private behavior, for example.
We can talk about religious freedom and the ban on the use of cannabis by the Rastafiri,
for example, or indigenous rights and the ban on the use of the coca leaf.
We could look at freedom from
arbitrary detention and drug detention centers in Southeast Asia,
or the freedom from cruel inhuman and degrading treatment and the use of
police violence to extort from air to extract information or extort money from suspects.
Of course, the right to health and the denial of
harm reduction services such as needle and syringe programs methadone and so on.
Pretty much any human right you want can be connected to a problem in drug control,
and what's interesting is that for those that argue for
reform and that those that argue against drug law reform,
everybody agrees that these abuses are taking place, nobody denies that.
The nature of the disagreement that I want to talk about is to what
extent drug control laws and
international drug control treaties are part of that problem.
On the one hand, there's the argument goes that, "Well,
this is not a drug control problem,
all of those human rights abuses are
human rights problems that exist in those countries anyway."
So, the death penalty,
well, that's a death penalty problem.
The police violence is an issue of police corruption and
wider criminal justice problems in the country and that drug laws don't cause that.
A lot of states and a few scholars hold to that reasoning.
I don't, I would describe human rights abuses in drug controller as systemic,
not just systematic which they are but systemic.
I want to give two or three main reasons for why I think that's the case,
and why that previous argument I think fails.
The first is that for decades the drug problem or drugs problems,
we should say, has been described as an existential threat.
So, if we look at those treaties again,
the drug control treaties,
or if you listen to any political speech or read general assembly resolutions,
you will see drugs described as a threat to security and a threat to the fabric of
society as a social evil to be combated.
Now, the problem is when you pitch any problem in that way,
then it's very easy to justify repression,
and it's very difficult to follow up with voting public with
measures that seem progressive or somewhat counter-intuitive like harm reduction.
A threat gets followed by law enforcement responses and heavy-handed responses to
protect people from the very threat that was established. That's the first reason.
I think there is a systemic problem,
it's the narrative of drugs.
The second though comes back to the drug control treaties,
and the obligation states have.
Now, I use these a bit as a proxy because
our national drug laws are are widely modeled on that system,
and they adopt the same strategies.
What states are required to do under the current legal regime and
the current theories and strategies of drug control carries inherent human rights risks.
In an earlier video, I called these tensions between the treaty regimes,
but we can call them human rights risks.
So, for example, states have to arrest people.
They have to prosecute them.
They have to punish them in some way via prosecution.
They have to eradicate crops.
They have to seize property.
They have to control people's behaviors
via my own private behavior or religious behaviors or cultural behaviors.
They have to control certain forms of expression via incitement laws and so on.
These are all areas of considerable human rights risks.
If somebody is going to be arrested,
we need to know how that happened or if there
was surveillance used or their privacy issues involved.
If somebody is going to be prosecuted,
we need to know what kind of trial they had or what kind of punishment was meted out.
Again, we can raise the issue of the death penalty.