General Assembly message to world: reduce drug demand!

The UN General Assembly has agreed to make an all-out effort to reduce drug demand in consumer developed countries and to aid developing countries trying to eradicate narcotic crops and production.

At the end of a four-day special session (20-23 February, New York), marked by "passionate intensity" in its calls for action-as Assembly President joseph N. Garba put it-the world body unanimously adopted a Political Declaration and a Global Programme of Action against the drug scourge.

Preventing the diversion of precursor chemicals and equipment used in the manufacture of narcotic drugs and aiding transit countries in controlling illicit trafficking were also emphasized in the 30-point Declaration and the 100-paragraph Programme of Action.

The Assembly, in adopting resolution S-17/2 at its seventeenth special session, also proclaimed a UN Decade against Drug Abuse (1991-2000). States Members committed themselves to give high priority to the fight against drugs and to increase efforts and resources in order to intensify international co-operation and concerted action in key areas.

Drug-producing developing countries should receive stronger international economic and technical support for viable alternative income schemes, such as crop substitution, the Assembly declared. Increased health, social, judicial and law enforcement assistance should be provided to affected countries.

At the national level, special emphasis should be placed on

stronger measures to eliminate demand for narcotic drugs", the Political Declaration states.

The far-reaching Global Programme of Action-an international blueprint in the fight against drugs-deals with all aspects of the problem, from elimination of illicit demand and addict rehabilitation to steps to be taken against the illegal use of the banking system and diversion of arms and explosives by the drug lords. UN asked to do more

Although asking that more be done in the war against drugs, the Assembly did not set a specific dollar figure to pay for this increased effort. Current UN antidrug activities are reportedly already facing a $33 million to $35 million biennial resource gap. mi

Secretary-General javier Perez de Cuellar warned on 20 February that resources for new programmes could not be found by mere redeployment and asked that more money in the regular budget be considered. Among many other new tasks.. the UN is now expected to act as an advisory information centre on demand reduction.

Mr. Perez de Cuellar's assessment was shared by Assembly President Garba, who said that the expectation that UN agencies could perform well their assigned tasks without an increase in resources was unrealistic.

"In their war against many societies, the drug cartels and their henchmen ask no quarter and give no quarter", he said. The UN should be provided with financial resources "to match the challenge at hand".

UN drug control activities coordinator Margaret J. Anstee went even further. At a press conference on 23 February, she said that the war against drugs might be lost for lack of adequate funding.

"We're being asked to do very much more with less", she said, adding that at some point the UN might be forced to say that it could not do everything it was being asked to do without proper funding. A high-level forum

A total of 111 speakers addressed the session, among them the Prime Ministers of Trinidad and Tobago and Peru, and high-level ministers from 45 countries.

An Ad Hoc Committee chaired by Peter Hohenfellner of Austria formulated the final texts of the Political Declaration and the Global Programme of Action before sending it to plenary for adoption.

The groundwork for the session had been laid by a Preparatory Committee, also chaired by Mr. Hohenfellner.

Tighter co-ordination of all UN anti-drug efforts is one goal of the 'system-wide plan of action" requested by the Assembly last December resolution 44/141). A draft outline of the plan is being completed.

Among other documents, the seventeenth session considered a report of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs. At its eleventh special session (29 january-2 February, Vienna), the Commission placed six "designer drugs'-all analogues of fenatyle-and four psychotropic substances under strict international controls. Drugs know no boundaries

The World Health Organization (WHO) on 16 February reported an upsurge of drug abuse in all regions. While the situation in Africa was deteriorating, in the Americas the abuse of cocaine, cannabis and multiple drugs, often involving alcohol and psychotropic substances, continued to increase.

Heroin abuse was increasing in Asia and the Far East, reaching epidemic proportions in some countries. Europe's main problem involved abuse by injection of heroin, with cocaine and amphetamine use rising rapidly. In the Near and Middle East, cannabis abuse was now accompanied by the use of heroin in several countries.

"Crack" cocaine and "designer drugs" had become deadly popular in North America and Western Europe, WHO reported. In both developed and developing countries, psychoactive drugs, such as tranqualizers, depressants and stimulants of the central nervous system, endangered the health of peoples.

WHO has estimated there are more than 5 million injecting-drugusers in the world-all vulnerable to the deadly human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). It is associated with the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) which has claimed thousands of lives on all continents.

And children are becoming involved with drugs at even earlier ages. Many babies are born in the developed world already addicted to heroin or cocaine. Although the majority of drug users are male, "the proportion of women abusing drugs continues to increase in both developed and developing countries", the WHO report concluded. Acting on a tip from an informant, United States Drug Enforcement Administration agents moved in on a warehouse in Tarpon Springs, Florida, in May of 1988 and seized nearly 3.5 tons of powder cocaine. The drugs were hidden inside a shipment of 40,000 planks of Brazilian hardwood timber-the ends of selected planks had been sawn off, the cocaine inserted, and the ends glued back and planed down. They arrived in Florida after a journey that began at the source of coca leaves in Peru's Upper Huallaga Valley, progressed through process laboratories hidden in the Amazon jungle of southern Colombia, and almost resulted in making available "cut" cocaine worth $1.25 billion on the street. Instead, the drugs were confiscated in the largest seizure of cocaine leading to arrest and conviction in United States history.

Halfway around the world, in 1986, police in Pakistan intercepted a car driving to the city of Karachi with 220 kilograms of heroin. It was the largest heroin seizure in their country up to that time. Two months later, another arrest netted an identical amount of the potent drug. Together, the two shipments are estimated to have had a street value of up to $4 billion.

The Political Declaration against drugs adopted at the seventeenth special session of the General Assembly is both a statement of intent and principles. In unusually strong language, the six-page document conveys the international revulsion against drug abuse and the decision to end that scourge.

"We condemn the crime of illicit drug trafficking in all its forms and reaffirm our political commitment to concerted international action" it states.

Significantly, the Declaration recognizes that the overall drug problem-from demand and consumption to trafficking and distribution-is linked to economic, social and cultural conditions in affected countries. It also acknowledges links between drug abuse and the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and the spread of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), as well as the growing connection between drug trafficking and terrorism.

"We shall expand the scope and increase the effectiveness of international co-operation" against illegal drug abuse and trafficking, the Declaration states, adding that the principle of shared responsibility should guide all such action.

The international fight against illicit trafficking "should be pursued in full conformity with the principles of non-interference in internal affairs and respect for the territorial integrity of States and free from unrelated political motivations".

States are urged to ratify or accede to all UN conventions regarding drugs and to apply provisionally the 1988 UN Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.

"We shall strengthen and enhance the capability of the UN" to deal with the drug problem, the Declaration says, stressing the need to increase the effectiveness and status of UN structures for drug abuse control. To this end, the structure of existing Vienna based drug control units will be examined, the Political Declaration concludes.

The Global Programme of Action sets out to translate the Declaration's good intentions into practice.

In 100 short, specific paragraphs it offers a blueprint for world-wide action against drug abuse. Among other things, it suggests:

Higher priority to drug abuse prevention and reduction;

An analysis of social causes generating drug demand;

UN financial support to prevent drug abuse by children and use of children in the drug trade in developing countries;

* The UN act as a global information clearing-house on treatment and rehabilitation of drug addicts;

* Using high-resolution satellite imagery and aerial photography, with the agreement of the country concerned, to identify illegal narcotic cultivation;

* Calling an international conference to better prevent diversion of precursor chemicals used in illicit drug production;

* Establishing joint border checkpoints against drug trafficking;

* Developing mechanisms including international agreements -to prevent drug-money laundering and confiscate funds and property acquired with drug money;

Using forfeited property and proceeds to combat drug abuse and trafficking and to pay for UN drug related activities;

Asking the UN to promote exchange of information among States on flows of drug money and coordinate anti-drug operation training and equipment provided by some nations to others;

Giving higher priority to UN drug control activities. A delightful absence of acrimony ...

In an opening speech, Mr. Garba urged the session to send a clear message to the "merchants of death" that their cause will not prosper, that "if they continue along that evil path it will lead only to their own destruction". Combined efforts of the international community "will ensure that when they are beaten in one country they will find no sanctuary elsewhere". The fight against drugs is indeed a war in which the battle lines are drawn worldwide, he said.

Mr. Garba said that as long as demand for illegal drugs existed, there would be criminals to exploit it. "Simple economics dictate that while demand remains high, the more successful we are in the task of reducing production, the greater the rewards to undetected traffickers will be."

Secretary-General Perez de Cuellar told the Assembly that drug abuse was "right at the top of the list of priorities requiring urgent attention from the international community". Asking the Assembly to "tackle the issues head-on", Mr. Perez de Cuellar said that there was no time to spend in "simply redefining the problem or making statements about what we have done up to now". Instead, "we must focus our minds from the outset on the need to achieve real results", he said. Paymasters to

murderers.

The first speaker, julio Londono Paredes, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Colombia, said that at an historic meeting in his country on 15 February in Cartagena de Indias, the United States the world's biggest consumer of drugs'-had recognized its own responsibility, heretofore said to be the responsibility of only one or two developing countries.

The best support for developing countries was to improve their economies, he declared. It was time to set up a working group on drug consumption and demand within the UN, he added. james A. Baker, Secretary of State of the United States, said that drugs were the number one problem facing his country, and curbing domestic consumption was the most critical challenge. As long as demand for drugs by Americans remained voracious, his country would face an endless, uphill struggle to halt supply.

American users act as paymasters to organized murderers. Profits from every kilo of cocaine bought in the streets of America buy the bullets that rob democracies of their dignity and freedom", Mr. Baker stated. Coca farmers had destroyed acres of forest lands and traffickers had dumped millions of gallons of precursor chemicals into rivers, he went on. The United States had just ratified the UN Convention against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances and urged all countries to do the same as soon as possible. Its ratification would foster world-wide co-operation in such areas as money laundering, intelligence gathering and information sharing. Coca economy:

Skyrocketing'

More than 61,000 peasant families are involved in Bolivia's skyrocketing coca economy, that country's Minister for Foreign Affairs, Carlos Iturralde Ballivian, told the Assembly. It was imperative to replace that illegal economy with a legitimate one. No solution to the drug problem would be found against a background of critical poverty and underdevelopment.

In producing countries, the emphasis should be on alternative development; in areas where marketing took place, the emphasis should be on interdiction. But that double-pronged action could only be effective if vigorous steps were taken to slash consumption and demand. that coca production was helping to reactivate the Peruvian economy. The greatest profits in the cocaine trade were made from processing and commercialization, both of which took place outside his country, he said.

As one of three countries in the front line of the battle against cocaine, Peru was incurring a sacrifice disproportionate to its capabilities. The punitive approach employed so far ignored the shared responsibility for drug crime. Without overlooking its own responsibility, Peru believed that illicit drug production required precursor chemicals, a money-laundering system and a demand for drug products.

Mr. Larco Cox stressed that the war on drugs had to be conducted within the framework of respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of States and non-interference in their internal affairs.

A similar view was expressed by many other speakers in the debate and ultimately strongly reflected in the Political Declaration.

Mexico's Attorney-General Enrique Alvarez del Castillo said that half the budget of his office and a third of the armed forces' budget were spent fighting drugs. His Government had also stiffened penalties for drug criminals. Over the past 14 months, 43,551 marijuana fields and 48,776 poppy fields had been destroyed and 38,519 kilograms of pure cocaine seized, along with 697 kilograms of opium gum and heroin and 644 tons of dried, packaged marijuana. Total market value of the drugs destroyed or seized would have exceeded $50 billion. Opium crop reduced

Pakistan had over 2 million drug addicts, half of whom were heroin addicts said that country's representative Kalim Dil Khan. However, opium production had been reduced by 36.5 per cent-from 203 to 130 tons-and the area under cultivation had been brought down from 11,590 to 5,850 hectares.

India faced a serious drug-transit traffic problem, said India's Representative, C.R. Gharekhan. Intensified countermeasures by India had resulted in a decline in the quantity of drugs seized during 1989, after an earlier rising trend.

Traffickers changed routes if they were under enforcement pressure in a particular area. Corroborating India's successful enforcement effort, INTERPOL had recently determined that almost 70 per cent of the heroin seized in Europe in 1988 had travelled along the Balkan route and that the same trend continued during 1989. This brought into focus the need to take stringent measures in all drug-producing and consuming countries. Thailand was being used as a gateway for the drug trafficking from "the infamous Golden Triangle" (which spans parts of northern Thailand, Burma and Laos), said Thailand's Deputy Prime Minister Pong Sarasin. While intensive interdiction activities undertaken by his Government had so far "substantially disrupted" the flow of drugs, in view of the alarming increase in drug output from that area, success remained doubtful without stronger, more generous international support. The Caribbean: dangerously exposed

The Caribbean aichipelago was dangerously exposed to illicit drug operations, located as it is between two continental areas of drug cultivation and drug consumption, said Lionel A. Hurst of Antigua and Barbuda.

The offshore banking industry, which provided thousands of Caribbean people with jobs, was now a sophisticated financial system, eminently capable of expeditiously handling large monetary transactions. There was fear that the industry could become a prime target for drug traffickers looking for ways to hide their "narco-dollars" as it guaranteed customer confidentiality.

His Government intended to remain vigilant and introduce new banking laws capable of handling effectively the constantly evolving money-laundering schemes of drug barons. Arthur N.R. Robinson, Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, said: "Let us make the 1990s ... a decade dedicated to combating drug dependency and to eradicating this scourge of mankind."

New levels of regional and international co-operation to overcome the problems posed in the prosecution of such criminal offences as illicit drug trafficking across national frontiers were now a matter of grave and urgent necessity. The proposal for an international criminal court with jurisdiction over certain categories of offences was now a matter for urgent consideration by the international community. Unified efforts among States would spell problems for the drugs lords, as it would leave them few avenues of refuge and little opportunity to further entrench their global networks. Criminalize 

money laundering ...

Money laundering should be criminalized everywhere, said Ray Burke, Minister for justice of Ireland, speaking on behalf of the 12 member States of the European Community. He urged all Governments to introduce appropriate domestic legislation to trace, freeze and confiscate the proceeds of drug trafficking and to criminalize money laundering. Mr. Burke suggested a link between increased funding for national and international anti-drug efforts and "increased confiscation of assets derived from illicit trafficking". .. and change social

conditions

Removing conditions conducive to drug abuse was crucial, stated Victor G. Komplektov, Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union. Tens of thousands of persons currently abused narcotic drugs in his country. His Government was concerned with the significant growth in drug abuse in recent years.

Strict measures were taken against drug traffickers, he went on. But since 1987, a different approach had been taken to deal with drug addicts. Criminal sanctions were not applied to those who voluntarily gave themselves up to law-enforcement agencies.

The Soviet Union suggested setting up a multilateral system to control transboundary drug traffic. It favoured international programmes on treatment and social rehabilitation of addicts, and development of effective techniques to detect illicit drug plantations and eliminate them in an ecologically safe way.

Demand reduction would be the focus of the World Ministerial Summit that the United Kingdom, in association with the UN, was to host in London from 9 to 11 April, said Douglas Hurd, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of the United Kingdom.

He called for consolidation of the three existing major UN drug units-the Division of Narcotic Drugs, the secretariat of the International Narcotics Control Board, and the UN Fund for Drug Abuse Control. Such a merger would streamline UN anti-drug activities and leave no time for them to quarrel over responsibilities. Massive fund drive

A mutual assistance treaty for eradication of illicit drug trafficking in Western Africa was being negotiated by Nigeria, Benin, Ghana and Togo, said Bola Ajibola, Nigeria's Attorney-General and Minister of justice. UN drug related activities should be coordinated. But "a more effective approach to the issue would be the mounting by committed volunteers of a massive drive for needed funds, rather than the appointment of yet another body of experts", he stated.

Ghana's ports were increasingly used by international drug traffickers, said that nation's representative, N.K. Dumevi. National antidrug activities had intensified in order to deal with the disturbing incidence of international heroin traffickers slipping undetected through its ports only to be tracked down and arrested elsewhere. Cartagena: Call for war on three fronts

In the Caribbean port city of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, in the heart of a vast drug empire, the Presidents of the United States the biggest drug consumer in the world-and of three of its main suppliers-Bolivia, Colombia and Peru-agreed on 15 February on a simple, yet momentous principle: if it is to succeed, the war against drugs has to be simultaneously waged on three equally important fronts-demand reduction, consumption and supply.

These activities "are interconnected and self-reinforcing", they declared. "Progress in one area will help achieve progress in others. Failure in any of them will jeopardize progress in the others." None should have any particular priority over another.

The Presidents-jaime Paz Zamora of Bolivia, Virgilio Barco of Colombia, Alan Garcia of Peru and George Bush of the United States-also called for a world conference on drugs in 1991 and vowed to meet again within six months.

"It is clear", the Presidents stated, "that to be fully effective, supply reduction efforts must be accompanied by significant reduction in demand."

That represents a sharp shift from the mostly single-front war on drug supply being waged, with mixed results, in recent years. The changed perceptions emanating from the Cartagena summit presaged the global sense of responsibility that marked the General Assembly's special session on drugs, which took place only a few days later.

The Cartagena Declaration commits the United States to financially support alternative development, designed to replace the coca economy in Peru and Bolivia and illicit drug trafficking in all three Andean countries.

It was clearly recognized that the poor in those countries in many cases would be directly affected. To mitigate the social and economic impact, the United States "is prepared to provide balance-of-payments support to help meet foreign exchange needs" and will also consider "funding for emergency social programme Declaration stated.