By Ellie Harding, MA candidate in Applied Criminal Justice and Criminology, Swansea University
‘We are cutting the head off the snake and taking down the kingpins behind these deadly supply lines…Drug abuse and addiction ruins communities, devastates lives and tears families apart.’
So announced Priti Patel in her speech to the annual Conservative Party conference earlier this month. Strong words from the Home Secretary, and certainly a standpoint that will strike fear in the electorate. This is arguably what the speech was intended to do. To generate fear and concern in the populace, rather than inform a discussion about a complex and multifaceted topic of drugs, crime and society.
A ‘moral panic’ is a criminological concept which suggests that stylised and stereotypical media reporting of a ‘threat’ to society results in a panicked response from the public, often leading to knee-jerk policy responses. In 1998, Kenneth Thompson identified several essential elements of a moral panic. These include (a) something is defined as a threat, (b) the threat is portrayed in the media, (c) the threat emerges rapidly in the public consciousness and (d) the threat provokes a response from the authorities.
Drugs as a moral panic in the UK is not a new phenomenon, and Priti Patel’s framing of the issue of county lines is certainly in keeping with that troubling tradition. As most audiences do not experience crime first-hand, they instead develop their understanding of criminality through media depictions. Since 2017, county lines drug trafficking has increased as has high profile media attention of the issue. This raises the concern of whether the representation of county lines in the British media is fuelling fear rather informing debate, and whether it meets the threshold of a ‘moral panic’.
Existing research around this topic lacked depth, therefore I conducted a study to examine whether media portrayal of county lines in the UK met the definition of a moral panic. To test this question, this research reviewed 132 online news articles from five major media outlets (BBC, Daily Mail, The Guardian, ITV and Sky News) and studied the language and imagery each used to report county lines. It examined how different players in the situation are represented – young people, ‘gang leaders’, police – and drew conclusions about the impact of these characterisations on public understanding of county lines. The results of the analysis concluded that the representation of county lines can comfortably be described as a moral panic.
The research documented the common use of terms such as ‘exploited’ (used 210 times) or ‘vulnerable’ (used 192 times) to describe the young people involved in the county lines drug trade, paired with stylised images of drugs (used 38 times). It found that the articles were empathetic to these individuals, who were often referred to as ‘victims’ (used 58 times) rather than criminals, with a focus on their vulnerabilities and associated risks. For example, one article described the children involved in county lines as “the disposable foot soldiers of crime”.
On the other hand, dehumanising descriptions were evident of those described as controlling or directing these trafficking operations. It was common to find the use of gang terminology such as “professional gangsters exploiting vulnerable minors”, despite the societal stigma associated with such language. The articles’ language often focused on the control and coercion associated with county lines (combined use of 64 mentions). This representation was paired with the use of mugshots (being featured 59 times), giving the audience a voyeuristic look into the criminal consequences of county lines. The impact of county lines was typically depicted using violence and weapons (mentioned 139 times with nine images of weapons), overall adding to public fear.
Articles also focused on the response from the government and law enforcement. This included language such as ‘crackdown’ (used 35 times) and images of the police (featured 60 times). Articles emphasised that policing county lines is a priority for government and law enforcement, using statistics of arrest rates and seizures of drugs and money to prove to the public the success of the police. This, combined with the repeated use of images of the police reinforces to the public that county lines is a threat to society, contributing to a sense of moral panic.
The research also examined the extent to which the media offered support and protection to the vulnerable individuals involved in county lines (both the children used as drug couriers and the adult victims whose homes may be ‘cuckooed’ and taken over for drug dealing activities). Only two out of the five media outlets (BBC and ITV) consistently used their platforms to promote support and protection services. This included profiling organisations that offer services and other ways to promote the support and protection of the vulnerable individuals.
The overall conclusion from this research suggested that the manner in which county lines is portrayed in the British media meets the definition of a moral panic. The study indicates that the media are more focused on selling a story using a ‘scary’ narrative rather than supporting vulnerable people involved in county lines. This moral panic arguably gets in the way of the more important discussions about the context of county lines, drug markets and criminalisation.
The research found that the contributing factors driving county lines (although alluded to) need further emphasis from the media, as this would allow the public to better understand the issue and potentially have a more empathetic response. For example, the socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds of many of the individuals involved in county lines needs to be further featured in media news outlets. This includes more focus on issues such as poverty, lack of employment opportunities and the impacts of austerity, which are often drivers of county lines involvement. Similarly, the increasing rates of school exclusions (especially racially motivated ones) need to be addressed by governing bodies as well as the media, as this highlights the vulnerability of children who are then exploited by county lines organisations.
Regardless of reporting, while there is demand there will be supply of drugs. The counterproductive ‘war on drugs’ therefore needs to be addressed, but the moral panic surrounding county lines gets in the way of discussing bigger policy issues. The ‘war on drugs’ is driven through law enforcement, however these efforts against county lines often result in displacement, whereby “one county lines closes another quickly opens”. Therefore, the media reporting of county lines may not highlight the true extent of the problem, or the limitations of a law enforcement centred approach.
Within the county lines discourse there is also little discussion of the negative short and long-term impacts of the early introduction of the young people involved into the criminal justice system. Prevention/education and harm reduction programmes are not represented, and the issues of decriminalisation or legalisation are often the subject of their own moral panic.
Overall, not only the media but society as a whole need to support and protect the vulnerable individuals involved in county lines, rather than the moral panic style reporting which is more focused on selling stories rather than the potentially damaging effect of their reporting styles.
In 2011, when the multi-billion-dollar Plan Colombia had officially come to an end, the UNDP described the “rural development model” in Colombia as “highly inequitable and exclusionary.” The model “causes innumerable rural conflicts, does not recognize the differences between social actors, and leads to the inappropriate use and destruction of natural resources.” Any attempt to improve the situation, the UNDP argued, must be based on changes to “structural factors”, among which were “the concentration of rural property, poverty and misery, and an unjust and exclusive social and political order.” A year later a Free Trade Agreement with the United States came into effect, and the incomes of hundreds of thousands of farmers fell as subsidised foreign goods entered the local market. This coincided with an economic slowdown, and GDP growth fell steadily from 6.9% in 2011 to 1.4% in 2017, the year coca cultivation reached record levels. Over roughly the same period, global drug use is considered to have risen by 30%. Today around half of Colombians work in the informal sector. In the countryside, where one in three people are classified as poor, this figure may reach 85 %. The economy revolves around extractive industries, mono-crop agriculture and financial services, a combination that concentrates wealth and cannot provide stable employment for a large segment of the population. In a country rich in natural resources the level of inequality is comparable to resource-starved Haiti, the poorest country in the hemisphere. Land concentration, the historic grievance of the insurgent movements, is today the most unequal in Latin America.
These are the structural factors to be kept in mind when we discuss the country’s many problems. To claim in this context that a rise or fall in the amount of coca being cultivated is a ‘success’ or a ‘failure’ is a false economy. For hundreds of thousands of people coca is an important cash crop, and a reduction in cultivation levels means a reduction in their income. It could also imply a technological improvement and better productivity. In an environment where demand is fixed, reductions in cultivation may ultimately lead to a rise in prices and an even greater incentive to cultivate. It would be difficult to classify any of these outcomes as a ‘success’. A genuine success would be led, first and foremost, by the movement of large numbers of people into the formal sector, either through job creation or subsidised agriculture. The reduction in cultivation would then be a consequence of this structural change.
For American and Colombian policy makers, who are both committed to the economic status quo, the question is how to reduce cultivation without changing the structural factors. This is a difficult problem and no one has yet found an answer. In December, President Ivan Duque announced the government would in 2021 resume aerial fumigation of coca crops with glyphosate. This policy, of which Colombia was one of the world’s few practitioners, ended in 2015 when the WHO stated the popular weed killer could be carcinogenic in humans.
The damaging environmental and health effects of aerial fumigation are well documented. In the past it has led to protests and violent repression. It also doesn’t work: through the 1990s cultivation rose along with fumigation; in the early 2000s cultivation levels decreased slightly as fumigation continued, although exports of cocaine increased; and between 2007 and 2012, while aerial fumigation decreased sharply, the hectares under cultivation was reduced by half. If we search for alternatives, Bolivia provides an example of what could be achieved with investment, decriminalisation and a recognition of the farmers’ plight.
Yet all of this is considered irrelevant. The decision to use aerial fumigation must, therefore, be based on other considerations. Cost is clearly not one of them: it has reached such a point that analysts in Colombia claim it would now be cheaper to purchase the entire coca crop than to undertake a year of counter-narcotics operations. The human suffering and the environmental damage are also not considered relevant, neither is the woeful efficacy of the policy, which is today rejected everywhere else in the world for good reason.
Colombian President Ivan Duque, announcing the return of fumigation, said less coca was cultivated in 2014 than in 2000, and for this reason aerial spraying was necessary. It is unlikely Duque himself could be convinced by this. (It could just as easily be argued that, because cultivation and fumigation both increased in the 1990s, fumigation caused coca cultivation). Duque described aerial fumigation as part of a “tool kit” of policies. Among them was Alternative Development, which tries to help farmers to switch to cultivating legal crops. Such initiatives generally meet the same fate in Colombia: they are under-funded and branded failures. Every journalist who makes the journey to coca growing regions reports hearing from farmers the same tired lament: the government promises much and delivers very little. Meanwhile, aerial fumigation, which is expensive and requires the participation of the military, does receive the necessary funds. This gives some sense of whether reducing cultivation in a sustainable way is a genuine aim of government policy.
If fumigation fails by the standard measures, what does it do well? At the very least, it creates the impression, primarily in the United States, that a major strategic ally is ‘doing something’ to try and reduce coca cultivation. For a long time it also ensured cooperation between the US and Colombian military and granted the US, via private contractors, a covert entry-point into the civil war. Today, we do not know whether the United States is, behind the scenes, predicating further aid on the re-adoption of spraying.
Aerial fumigation has also proven an effective means of displacing people. When coca was being grown in areas controlled by the guerrilla, destroying the plant was a thinly concealed attempt to undermine their finances and, in counter-insurgency jargon, to ‘drain the sea’. After its experience in Colombia, Washington had similarly proposed aerial fumigation be used in Afghanistan, as part of a counter-narcotics initiative very openly aimed at the finances of the insurgency, but the policy was rejected by the Afghan government.
How sincere is the Colombian government’s concern with coca cultivation? The past record suggests counter-narcotics policies have been a tool used to achieve other objectives, rather than to decrease the needs or incentives that lead people to break the law. The same can be said of Washington, which pushes the onus onto supplier countries, when the real issue is the demand coming from the US for an illicit product. As Colombia turns again to fumigation, we can expect a tirade of analyses that criticise this ineffective and costly policy. But for the Colombian and American governments, their past experience with fumigation has convinced them it should be used again. The harmful, criminal policy is, in their eyes, achieving something close to success.
In a recent report for GDPO, I discussed the links between national economic models and illicit cultivation, and the way this important context has been largely ignored by the drug policy community; localised projects – amounting to rural development aid – have instead been the focus of attention. In this blog I would like to address an important but often overlooked issue: the way the proceeds from criminal activity interact with the national economic model, and vice versa. The focus will be on the kinds of “Washington Consensus” reforms that have been applied in many developing countries since the 1970s.
In 1994, the US Drug Enforcement Administration produced an interesting report on this topic, looking at the case of Colombia. The report opens with the following statement:
“Like many Latin American countries, Colombia recently has liberalized its economy through a series of reforms and relaxed import restrictions on foreign goods and services. Although Colombia may be benefiting from the resultant increase in international trade and exchange, criminal elements, including major drug kingpins, also are profiting from liberalization of the Colombian economy.”
The liberalisation of the financial services sector and the privatisation of many commercial facilities gave traffickers a new means of laundering their income. These reforms, the report notes, “will make it much more difficult for drug law enforcement officials to conduct financial investigations pertaining to drug money laundering in Colombia as well as in other countries.”Cases soon emerged of drug money being laundered through privately owned currency brokerage houses. The reforms also allowed Colombian citizens to hold dollar accounts. This meant “hundreds of millions of dollars worth of drug-related U.S. currency has been flowing into Colombia.”[1] When the government issued fixed-rate treasury securities, “these securities were sold to Colombian investors and informed sources reported that some securities were purchased with drug money.” The report comments:
Ironically, a large percentage of the foreign currency reserves that are flooding the Colombian Government’s international reserves accounts (especially the majority of U.S. dollars) are believed to stem from the repatriation of drug proceeds from U.S. and European drug markets. The revenue generated by the influx of drug proceeds into the economy has provided the Colombian Government with funds for debt payments and national infrastructure development. Furthermore, through the purchase of government-issued securities, Colombian drug kingpins are investing in their country’s future economic development.
The implications of an inflow of large amounts of US dollars could be significant, for a number of reasons. The dollar flow removes one of the persistent problems of developing countries: the shortage of foreign reserves necessary to finance imports, particularly of machinery and other capital goods needed for the development of domestic industry. Under normal circumstances, this leads to pressure to either increase exports – usually of raw materials – in order to earn the necessary currency, or to take measures to depress national demand, causing imports of consumer goods to fall (a currency devaluation, which also decreases real wages, could have such an effect).
In Colombia, the enormous amount of dollars entering the reserve accounts eliminated this balance of payments problem. In other countries, the shortage of reserves could serve as an incentive to improve the economic structure, particularly domestic export capabilities, which would create new sources of foreign exchange. In Colombia there was no such pressure. In fact, the government was able to run persistent current account deficits – imports exceeding exports – because the capital account was in surplus, thanks to the revenues from the drug trade. The DEA report refers to this as “the substitution of export revenue with revenue from illicit sources.”
In 1996, a UNODC study noted that:
In situations of reduced money growth, an infusion of hard currency can bolster a country’s foreign reserves, ease the hardship associated with expenditure-reducing policies, and moderate foreign indebtedness. Drug money could in this light be perceived as a potentially stabilizing force, a source of capital without the strings of conditionality attached … Clearly, there are “benefits” which accrue to countries which serve as reservoirs of the revenues from the international drug trade.
After the economic liberalisation in Colombia, there followed a boom in private spending – and indebtedness – and, later, government deficits. A study of this period by the Banco de la Republica, which makes no mention of illicit incomes, instead discussing “hidden capital inflows,” remarks:
Both the rapid process of fiscal deterioration and the excess of private expenditure over disposable income were greatly facilitated by huge foreign capital inflows. They allowed the economy to keep a large and increasing current account deficit of the balance of payments between 1992 and 1997. At the same time, they implied that, during most of the nineties, the foreign exchange market was characterized by excess supply of dollars and by a pressure towards a real appreciation of the Colombian peso. A vicious circle was then created. The process of appreciation of the peso promoted a further increase in expenditure and made it apparently cheaper to increase foreign indebtedness and to bring foreign assets into the country.
From a development perspective, this is a crucial issue. The demand for the domestic currency, as traffickers convert dollars into pesos, causes it to appreciate.[2] As the OAS has recognised, “The influx of large volumes of foreign exchange directed toward activities showing sudden, artificial growth could cause the currency to appreciate and produce “Dutch disease”-type consequences by making other legitimate activities less competitive.” The appreciation will make imports cheaper, but it will also mean exports are less competitive. Domestic industries, particularly manufacturing, will find it difficult to compete internationally, given the relative increase in the price of their goods. If the appreciated exchange rate persists, domestic industry could suffer significant losses. The DEA report, in fact, had observed this unfolding anti-development tendency: “The appreciation of the peso and subsequent increase in the peso’s “real value” have significantly hurt manufacturing and agricultural producers in Colombia.”[3]
In the 1990s, the appreciated peso led to inflationary pressures, and the government responded by contracting the money supply. “However, due to the constant flow of drug dollars, this action caused the value of the peso to appreciate and, in turn, domestic production costs have increased. This increase has reduced demand for export from overseas markets; at the same time, the stronger peso has increased demands for imports.”
In this sense, the presence of drug trafficking on the national territory is similar in development terms to a low-value export industry or unproductive Foreign Direct Investment (FDI): While it provides foreign reserves, the revenues are not invested in productive capacity. Drug money is traditionally laundered through real estate (a hedge against inflation), casinos, car dealerships, construction, and so on. Any associated increase in demand is consumption-based and unsustainable. Hence Medellin once experienced enormous investments in the construction sector linked to the drug trade. But once the boom subsided, the city “suffered an economic decline and high unemployment because little alternative productive investment had been made.” Similar tendencies have been noted in other regions by the UNODC:
In West Africa, in recent years, significant amounts of criminal money seems to have been invested in the construction of casinos. Recent examples of arms and drug dealers in some of the western Balkan countries revealed major investments in large-scale construction, ranging from apartment houses, shopping malls and business centres to yacht ports, officially financed by foreign banks, though with criminal funds.
These kinds of consumption patterns, created by illicit income, mimic the historic problem of Latin America: the wasteful use of much-needed foreign currency to purchase luxury goods from abroad. The DEA report, for example, found “the importation of luxury goods by Colombia and their subsequent sale has increased suspiciously by 105 percent since 1992. Many of the purchases have been luxury automobiles and four-wheel-drive vehicles that have saturated the Colombian automobile market.”
In 1991, a New York Times article noted that drug trafficking in Colombia was contributing to deindustrialisation and, therefore, unemployment in the manufacturing sector:
A big problem is that the drug profits are repatriated as contraband goods. Colombia’s two largest cities, Bogota and Medellin, have large shopping centers, both called San Andresito after Colombia’s San Andres Island in the Caribbean. Most contraband passes from the island to these bulging inland malls. Contraband sales are estimated at $1 billion a year. But the large contraband trade has contributed to the country’s “disindustrialization,” a study by the Bogota economic research group Fedesarrollo, has found. Local industries compete with the goods and are consequently forced out of business. And the drug barons walk away with local currency to spend on luxuries: fleets of sports cars and motorcycles, exotic animals and art works. Since most of those goods are imported, there is no expansionary effect on the Colombian economy.
Today, the estimates of the value of illicit financial flows related to drug trafficking in the western hemisphere are between $80 – $90 billion a year; enough, that is, to have an impact on currency values or influence macroeconomic policy.[4] One of the obstacles to combatting these illicit financial flows is that traffickers now take advantage of the same mechanisms used by the very wealthy and corporations, including tax havens. To crack down on laundering of illicit gains would mean addressing the loopholes in the legal system which allow for financial secrecy. A drug trafficker, for example, will launder money using the same means as a corporation sending bribes to government officials. As one study observes, while officials have constantly promised reform, “We have waited long enough now to conclude that they are insincere.” The American justice system in particular demonstrates “a curious indifference to white-collar crime.”
Another UNODC study has discussed the way drug trafficking – through its macroeconomic effects and, citing the DEA, “short-run positive effects” – can influence policy decisions:
[T]he political dilemmas posed by the illicit drug industry are not limited to personal enrichment. For some Governments, even with the best of intentions, worsening terms of trade mean that hard currency revenue – drug-tainted or not – have special appeal even at the official level. For those faced with seemingly untenable debt-servicing burdens, drug money can be seen as a panacea for a vast array of other public commitments. In 1992, the proportion of external debt to GNP was 84 per cent for Bolivia, 48 per cent for Pakistan, 95 per cent for Peru and 386 per cent for Zambia. In such desperate situations, officials find themselves caught in a dilemma between looking the other way in order to finance governmental expenditures and enforcing laws against drug trafficking. In financial markets, Governments often find themselves in an analogous situation: by relaxing controls and establishing safe-money havens in order to woo investors, they run the risk of attracting illicit funds, losing creditworthiness and lowering prospects for long-term financial stability.
Drug trafficking, therefore, may lead to circumstances that condition the kinds of macroeconomic policies that are pursued. And there may be other ways in which economic reforms benefit local groups reliant on illicit incomes. The obvious example is Afghanistan. Soon after the occupation, the country adopted – or, more correctly, the occupying forces and the international financial institutions imposed – an economic model based on the “Washington Consensus” reforms.[5] A long-recognised effect of a free trade regime in a poor country is that it will hold in place the existing production structure: a country that exports rugs and grapes, and adopts free trade, will most likely be exporting the same kinds of products ten years later. The economic model, noted a World Bank report, had led to a “market-oriented overall policy environment, few legal constraints on labour markets, and a generally untrammelled informal sector.” Commenting on the beneficiaries of such a model, Erik Reinert, an economic historian and development economist, writes: “Warlords in the world periphery may appreciate free trade [because it] locks a nation in a pre-capitalist and backward economic structure that prevents democracy.”
The privatisations and the economic liberalisation that followed the occupation of Afghanistan were, it seems, a great boon to the political and business elite involved in the drug trade. There are other dynamics to be considered. In Colombia, for example, the paramilitary forces are financed by the drug trade. These groups have historically been the shock-troops of the government’s economic model. By assassinating trade unionists, they contributed to the extremely low rates of union membership and stifled calls for changes in the economic model. The murder of progressive politicians, by paramilitaries and traffickers, had a similar effect. Land grabs by paramilitaries also helped consolidate land ownership and the model of development based in large part on oil, mining and monoculture; studies have even shown that “violence perpetrated by armed groups sympathetic to the interests of the oil sector – namely, the public armed forces and right-wing paramilitaries – have facilitated FDI in Colombia’s oil sector.” We therefore have a self-reinforcing system: an economic model beneficial to criminal groups, combined with violence funded by illicit income that serves to perpetuate that model. A coalition of NGOs in Colombia have referred to the national economic model as “pro-rich.” For a number of reasons outlined here, it may also be “pro-criminal.”
In my report, I discussed another neglected area: the relationship between economic reforms, deindustrialisation and criminal gangs. Throughout Latin America, economic liberalisation has led to the decline of manufacturing industries that were a source of relatively well-paid jobs. Medellin, for example, was once an important textile centre. When the industry disappeared, young people were left with few viable options for employment. Criminal gangs offered an alternative. Similar phenomena are observed across urban areas of Latin America. And the same issues exist in the countryside: it is in the interest of the traffickers and their facilitators to have a large proportion of farmers rely on an illicit cash crop in order to survive.
Identifying the sources of such problems guides us towards possible solutions. As I write in the policy brief:
“From the perspective of a development economist, the fact that in Guatemala City thousands of young men decide to join local gangs cannot be separated from a production structure which revolves around exports of bananas, coffee and sugar. In Colombia, the key to the perennially high levels of coca cultivation is the government’s exclusionary economic model focused on extractive industries, monoculture and finance, which cannot absorb the labour abandoning the countryside and leaves around half the working population in the informal economy. If Afghanistan continues to focus on exporting carpets, rugs and dried fruits, its farmers will never have any other option than to produce illicit crops to survive.”
[1] A related issue is the liberalization of capital accounts, a policy that has been embraced by a number of developing countries. These measures increase the economic vulnerability of a country, and go far beyond the original recommendations of the so-called ‘Washington Consensus’. Allowing the free flow of capital out of the country grants investors the power to ‘discipline’ governments who make economic policy decisions to which they are opposed. It will also facilitate money laundering. As one study notes, capital account liberalization should not take place until the government has made sufficient strides against “corruption, crime, illegal businesses and money laundering.” This was clearly not the case in countries like Colombia or Brazil. http://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM//ead/ptepf/daianu_ptepf_28_06.pdf
[2] In Colombia, foreign currency, primarily dollars, flooded the black market. And this caused an inversion of the normal arrangement: buying pesos on the black market was more expensive than the official rate. This suggests a surplus of foreign currency, and a willingness of traffickers to pay a premium to convert their currencies, without uncomfortable questions being asked.
[3] And, it should be remembered, what harms agriculture is beneficial to those who need farmers to rely on illicit sources of income to survive.
[4] One of the results of the pandemic has been a worldwide increase in cash holdings. Part of this development could be attributed to less retail activity, meaning criminal groups have been unable to launder their money, and are forced to hold cash. See here for discussion.
[5] For an excellent analysis, see: Del Castillo, G. Guilty Party: The International Community in Afghanistan, Xlibris Corporation, 2014
Traditionally, the UN and governments have measured progress in drug policy in terms of flows and scale; principally the numbers of people arrested, hectares of drug crops eradicated and the amounts of drugs seized. For years now, IDPC and many civil society colleagues (in particular the Global Drug Policy Observatory (GDPO), CELS, the Centre on Drug Policy Evaluation, and the Social Science Research Council among others), have advocated against such an approach, because of its inability to truly assess the real impacts of drug control policy – especially for communities affected by the illicit drug trade on the one hand and by drug policies on the other.
The 2016 UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) was instrumental in pushing the boundaries of UN drug policy to consider issues related to health, human rights, social inclusion, criminal justice reform and how all of this might contribute to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. However, while recent years have seen a welcome increase in focus on the adverse health consequences of drug use and interventions aiming to reduce them, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and many member states have thus far been resistant to incorporate these critical elements into their main data collection tool – the Annual Reports Questionnaire (ARQ). The ongoing review of this tool has so far been a missed opportunity to fully reconsider what success in global drug policy should look like.
In 2018, IDPC published our landmark Shadow Report ‘Taking stock: A decade of drug policy’, in which we assessed the progress made – or rather, the lack thereof – in global drug policy since the adoption of the 2009 Political Declaration and Plan of Action on drugs, to inform the Ministerial Segment of March 2019. Collaborative work by the IDPC network and other civil society experts was instrumental to obtaining a full picture of the global situation relating drug control approaches on demand and supply, but also on the impacts of drug policies on the broader UN priorities of promoting human rights, development, and advancing peace and security. What we found was extremely worrying. While the UN was in many ways side-stepping difficult questions, drug policies in many parts of the world had become responsible for increased HIV and hepatitis C infections among people who inject drugs, half a million drug use-related deaths in 2015 alone, and tens of thousands of people falling victim to extrajudicial killings, as well as arbitrary and compulsory detention. In the meantime, the prevalence of drug use, the hectares of crops cultivated for the illicit drug trade, and the tons of drugs trafficked had reached record highs. But far from being a wake-up call, UN drug policy debates in Vienna have mainly continued to rely on the business-as-usual approach.
Faced with the clear lack of appetite from both governments and the UN to evaluate the impacts of drug control on communities worldwide in any meaningful way, it seems likely that civil society will once again need to take a proactive stance. The critical role played by civil society in holding governments accountable by creating transparent and informative policy evaluation tools is not a new idea. This has been done before in various policy areas. For instance, Transparency International has, for some time now, been tracking progress made by countries across the world in reducing corruption, with the Global Corruption Perception Index. Journalists without Borders has done the same with their World Press Freedom Index. And the list continues. Indeed, it is now widely recognised that the ‘soft power’ of indices is capable of exerting considerable social pressure and can – via a number of interrelated process – be a potent lever for the generation of policy change.
With this in mind, IDPC and GDPO have now embarked on a similar endeavour, faced with the urgent need to develop a tool that would enable us to track drug policy developments worldwide in a systematic and scientific way, as well as to assess how effective these turned out to be on the ground. The results of this analysis would enable us to compare policies adopted between various countries, and track evolution over time, as well as rank countries according to how well their drug policies have been able to foster improved health, human rights protection, gender equality, social inclusion or violence reduction.
Learning from other composite indices, the proposed Global Drug Policy Index (GDPI) would be a collaborative civil society endeavour (as was the case for the Shadow Report), with the aim of increasing transparency in decision making processes around drugs, promoting new indicators to evaluate drug control, facilitating the participation of civil society in data collection, and ultimately supporting more humane policies and reforms.
We are still in the preliminary stages of development and fundraising for this ambitious tool, but we are excited by the advocacy opportunities that a carefully designed Global Drug Policy Index will bring to the global and national debates on drug policy for the years to come. Stay tuned for more information!
Preparing for 2019: Drug Policy Objectives and Indicators, System-wide Coherence and the Sustainable Development Agenda
Side event held at the 60th Commission on Narcotic Drugs offers insights into how drug policy indicators could aid in achieving the sustainable development agenda.
Nazlee Maghsoudi, Knowledge Translation Manager at the ICSDP
Click here to visit the CND Blog’s live reporting from this side event.
With the UNGASS on the World Drug Problem now a year behind us, member states are looking towards the next international drug policy milestone, a High Level Ministerial Meeting in 2019. Simultaneously, member states are over a year into efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of global targets to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity by 2030. Given increasing recognition that the impacts of global drug policy are intrinsically linked to a number of SDGs, the Government of Switzerland, Health Poverty Action (HPA), International Drug Policy Consortium, Centro De Estudios Legales Y Sociales (CELS), Social Science Research Council, Global Drug Policy Observatory (GDPO), and the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy (ICSDP) came together at the 60th Session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) to explore how drug policy indicators could aid member states in more effectively achieving the sustainable development agenda.
Natasha Horsfield, Policy & Advocacy Officer from HPA, outlined crucial ways in which drugs and drug policy interact with several of the SDGs, and suggested that metrics for measuring how drug policies are contributing to the SDGs should be prioritized in preparations for 2019. Speaking about goal 1 on poverty, goal 2 on food security, and goal 5 on gender equality, Ms. Horsfield explained that marginalization and inequality are important elements in the drug trade, with poverty and food insecurity a frequent factor in involvement in illicit drug markets, and women particularly becoming involved as drug couriers because of their gendered social and economic vulnerabilities. Gender inequality is reflected in the disproportionate and alarming increase in the incarceration of women for minor drugs offences. Given these and other intersections between drug policy and the SDGs, the clear, measurable, and internationally agreed framework of targets and indicators contained within the sustainable development agenda could be adapted to measure drug policy outcomes. For example, new indicators could be adopted at national level under goal 5 to measure women and girls involved in the drug trade or incarcerated for drug crimes. Ms. Horsfield also stressed that the High Level Ministerial Meeting in 2019 presents an opportune moment to align the timeline for the next drug policy framework with the 2030 deadline for implementing the SDGs. Elaborating on Ms. Horsfield’s remarks, Luciana Pol, Senior Fellow in Security Policy & Human Rights from CELS, pointed to improvements that could be made to drug policy indicators to support the achievement of SDG 5 on gender equality. Ms. Pol noted that the Special Rapporteur on violence against women has identified anti-drug policies specifically as a leading cause of the rising rates of incarceration of women globally, and data demonstrates that a portion of women incarcerated for drug offences are coerced into trafficking and others engage as a result of lacking viable economic opportunities. Ms. Pol described concrete ways to improve the quality of data on how drug policies impact women. First, prison data should have a gender perspective by including, for example, information on the amount of pregnant women, of children incarcerated with their mothers, and access to health services for these groups. Second, since laws in many countries don’t distinguish between different types of drug offences, small and large scale trafficking are categorized together. Differentiating between the conduct for which they are incarcerated and the roles women play will improve our understanding of incarcerated populations. Ms. Pol reminded the audience that improving our understanding of how drug policies impact women is not only essential to ensuring the achievement of SDG 5, but is also a central component of last year’s CND resolution 59/5. Ms. Pol therefore called on member states to take these and other concrete steps to mainstream a gender perspective in their collection of data relevant to drugs and drug policy, and urged UN agencies to guide member states in this process of broadening and expanding their drug policy metrics.
As a contributor on law enforcement indicators to the World Drug Report, Christian Schneider, Strategic Analyst at the Federal Office of Police in Bern, Switzerland, shared his firsthand knowledge that the incomplete nature of data on drug markets can prohibit efforts to derive meaningful policy recommendations. In addition to communicating uncertainties, Mr. Schneider proposed that gaps in the data could be addressed by adopting a more comprehensive set of indicators. Sharing technical recommendations for implementing Mr. Schneider’s suggestion, Dave Bewley-Taylor, Director of GDPO, focused on how a review of the Annual Report Questionnaires (ARQs) could support the achievement of the SDGs by aligning drug policy metrics with the sustainable development agenda. According to Prof. Bewley-Taylor, despite the limitations of self-reporting, the ARQs are a useful mechanism through which member states report on their efforts to address the world drug problem. As the nature of the world drug problem has evolved, however, there have been increasing gaps in the data collected by the ARQs. This recently came into sharp focus, as the UNGASS Outcome Document included an operational recommendation to use relevant human development indicators in alignment with the SDGs to increase understanding and improve impact assessments. Within this context, Prof. Bewley-Taylor stressed that there is a clear need to review the structure and questions of the ARQs to bring them into alignment with the SDGs by incorporating indicators related to human rights, public health, and human security. Such a review could be conducted through an interagency expert group established by the Statistical Commission, which has already begun considering these issues.
Discussions on drug policy indicators and their relationship to the sustainable development agenda are undoubtedly of utmost importance at the CND, and in other forums, such as the meeting of the high-level political forum on sustainable development in July 2017. Yet, much more than discussion is needed. As Ms. Horsfield said, advancing past this critical juncture will require political will from member states beyond simply reaffirming their commitment to SDGs, but towards deemphasizing drug control efforts that undermine the SDGs and funding those that contribute positively to their achievement. Aligning drug policy metrics with the SDGs is an important step in this direction.
Click here to visit the CND Blog’s live reporting from this side event.
Following exploratory fieldwork in the rural coca growing fields of Colombia, GDPO followed the cocaine supply chain to Panama. Most recently, time spent on the Northern Caribbean coast soon revealed the permeation of drug trafficking into the already complex socioeconomic context that many perceive as paradise.
Paradise of Bocas del Toro (MandingA 2013)
First impressions of Bocas del Toro – the name of both the 7,000+ person settlement on Isla Colon, just off the north eastern seaboard of Panama, but also the wider surrounding Province – largely confirm its international reputation as an accessible tropical ‘paradise’. With sympathetic afternoon light, the final leg of the 1-hour flight from Panama City reveals aqua marine water lapping at golden sands backed by lush green forests. Once established in the area, other widely talked about attractions of Bocas quickly emerge. There is a wealth of outdoor activities. Many international tourists, largely backpackers, and domestic visitors come to enjoy the Caribbean Sea: to scuba dive and snorkel, surf the notorious waves of Playa Bluff, or to take things a little easier with sunbathing and guided tours to spot the charismatic wildlife.
Party goers in one of Bocas’ bars open late into the morning (Taken by Author 2015)
Another attraction of Bocas del Toro for many, and particularly backpackers, is undoubtedly the opportunity to mix Salsa and Reggaeton music, with low cost national beers and regional rum cocktails, as they enjoy the party life offer on Isla Colon (primarily in BocasTown) and the surround islands. Many of the bars and clubs in Bocas town are right on the water: making it very possible to ‘live the dream’ of enjoying beers in a hammock, dancing off the alcohol, and when things get a little too hot back-flipping off the dock into the cooling sea.
In this hedonistic environment, it is seemingly easy to forget the volumes of boat traffic and not think about the dubious quality of the sea water while enjoying a midnight swim. Another undercurrent in the town is the availability cocaine and cannabis. Sellers freely mix in the nightlife with various degrees of subtly in communicating their offerings. During the day, it is unusual to walk the length of town without being offered ‘weed’ – sometimes as a follow up to the initial list proposal of taking a boat tours to the beach – although there is little menacing about time spent in Bocas, and disinterest is well-accepted by opportunistic sellers.
Part of the reason for the level of supply is the demand of international tourists and more permanent life style migrants willing to pay higher prices than local consumers. However, Bocas del Toro is also well supplied with drugs as one of the recognized points of refuge for traffickers making the journey up the EasternCoast from Colombia to North America
Originally founded as a settlement of concentrated population by foreign banana producers, the region remained disconnected from administration in Panama City due to a lack of a reliable road connection: and therefore, the centralized government administration has lacked a presence in many respects. The archipelago is also composed of some highly remote islands that fall well beyond almost all government services and authority: and as in many cases across the world, the lack of state institutions supports the trafficking of drugs.
View of coastal geography from the air (Author 2015)
Despite limited resources, local law enforcement officers in Bocas confirm that they have been involved in interdiction operations in partnership with central authorities and the US Coast Guard: furthermore, these operations have yielded high powerboats used by the traffickers that are then repurposed for local counter narcotics operations. Discussions with the local police support existing knowledge that traffickers use the inland water ways of the Panamanian coast to evade the authorities during the day, and then make their staged journeys under the cover of night (UNODC 2012). In some cases it is believed that small shipments of drugs are consolidated in Panama before being moved on (UNODC 2012). Local testimony also identified that during chases, traffickers will jettison quantities of drugs in attempts to bribe the police.
It is through a combination of these mechanisms that trafficked drugs enter the Bocas economy. The availability of drugs then provides relatively easy returns for those willing to become involved. This option is especially attractive so some due to the poor quality of education, high levels of poverty and general limitations on livelihood opportunities in the Bocas region. Despite Panama’s average national economic growth of 7.2% between 2001 and 2013, of the mainly indigenous population of the Bocas del Toro province, 25% are classified as poor and 11% as extremely poor (Omar and Moreno 2014). Many of these people live on subsistence agriculture and fishing on outer islands. There is therefore a potentially strong pull incentive to become involved in the distribution of drugs. In this case, as was found in Colombia, rural development will likely be as important an anti-trafficing policy as strengthening governance capacity for interdiction operations.
In conclusion, while the vast majority of visitors to Bocas del Toro find their expectations of fulfilled, the reality is that the international trafficking of drugs is playing into a complex socioeconomic situation, which many of the ‘poor’ permanent residents might well not accept as ‘paradise’. Again, genuine investment in enhancing the life opportunities of those currently motivated to support drugs distribution will likely contribute to a reduction in the global trade in narcotic drugs.
Sources
Omar, A. and V. Moreno ( 2014). Pobreza e Indigencia. Panama, Ministerio de Economia y Finanzas.
UNODC (2012). Cocaine from South America to the United States. Transnational Organized Crime in Central America and the Caribbean A Threat Assessment. Vienna, United Nation Office on Drugs and Crime.
In mid-May 2015, Ross, Dave and I left the relatively comfortable climate of Bogotá and headed to the humidity of South East Colombia and the Department of Guaviare to conduct fieldwork. Leaving the Department’s capital, San José del Guaviare, Pedro Arenas – the city’s previous mayor, current director of the Observatory of Declared Illicit Crops and Cultivators at the NGO INDEPAZ, and our guide for the weekend – explained that although Guaviare has been settled since time of Spanish conquistadors, the rural population greatly increased during and after the period of Colombian history known as ‘The Violence’. This was a ten year period (1948-58) of civil war in Colombia when the Colombian Conservative Party and the Colombian Liberal Party fought for dominance, and during which it is estimated that some 200,000 lives were lost. In an effort to flee the problems that came to San José, much of its population moved further into the countryside both temporarily and permanently. Pedro further explained that after the upheaval, the government offered land titles and investment to those moving to the rural area. However, as the government failed to honour these promises, an increasing population was left with little other than subsistence farming for their survival (Ortiz, 1984). As a capitalist economy grew around them, campesinos became aware of the opportunities to sell the traditional crop of coca for conversion into cocaine. For the first time, the communities were faced with the opportunity to stabilise their subsistence existence and offer a decent future to their families – although they lived nothing like the extravagant lifestyles synonymous with processors and traffickers working higher in the supply chain.
Moving through the countryside, the panoramic pasture with its sparse population of cattle – apparently underused for productivity, as powerful interests accumulate land primarily as an investment and a status symbol – began to merge into patches, and then significant areas of uncleared jungle. As we sat in the rear of our 4×4, cushioning ourselves against the contours of the dirt track road (only reasonably passable with such a vehicle or motorbike, and the expert manipulation of Freddy our driver), our travel companion, a local community leader, explained the basic truths of coca production. His language was human, straightforward and non-technical; yet he eloquently outlined a situation which formal national and international drugs policy in Latin America and Colombia, has always, and continues to largely disregard.
The community has been born into a context where the possibilities of development constantly fail to emerge due to a lack of even the most basic of investment. While there are major roads that connect San José to Bogotá and other large regional centres, the majority of communities remain connected only by dirt tracks, which are in a volatile state due to the local climate. Our own travel time consumed four hours in both directions, despite moving only 60km into the interior. As explained by other community leaders, the lack of reliable and passable roads drastically impede the sale of legal agricultural produce to local urban markets: long travel times undermine the ability to provide a reliable supply and drastically increase the transport costs associated with the purchase of inputs and sale of the final products.
In the country as a whole, 75% of roads are paved and generally in good condition (Ministerio de Transporte, 2014). However, those in the countryside are the least developed and least well maintained. A quick comparison, undertaken back at our hotel, identified something of a correlation between the UN 2013 estimates of coca growing and government statistics on the existence and quality of roads. To take one example, in Putumayo, the second biggest producer of coca, only 54% of roads are paved, and over 57% of the remaining dirt track routes are currently evaluated to be in “bad” or “very bad” condition (Ministerio de Transporte, 2014)
In the morning we were lucky enough to have met with the Governor of the Department of Guaviare, José Octaviano Rivera Moncada. Moving from a campesino family into politics, inspired he said by the lack of representation that he witnessed as he travelled the region as a rural health worker, the Governor explained that his department was critically underfunded, pointing out that while his administration had been able to make investments, it was almost entirely the result of locally raised funds. The central Government does not provide sufficient support for development in his view. One reason for this, as suggested by a number of people we met during our time in Guaviare, is that there is little incentive for politicians and government officials to provide for the isolated communities. By way of explanation, people point out that the political support in the region is of little consequence, and there is better status (and some say money) to be generated (through corruption and kickbacks) by focusing efforts elsewhere.
By generous invitation we accompanied the Governor to a village where we had the opportunity to participate in a momentous event in the community’s history. In the year 2015, this village was to be connected to the electricity grid: meaning that until that day, the households there had been among the 6,300 in the department, and 435,500 nationwide, officially estimated to be living without an electricity supply of any kind (MMEUPME, 2014). Again, reviewing numbers of households without electricity in the departments where coca is grown reveals a potentially telling pattern. Indeed, talking at the event, we met with further leaders from surrounding villages also still without this basis economic input. Talking of their current economic situation, they posed the rhetorical question: ‘How are we to generate income for our communities without electricity?’ ‘How are we expected to store food crops in a way which keeps them suitable for market?’ The answer they immediately follow with is the logically obvious one: ‘We simply can’t’. It is perhaps partly for this reason that coca tends to be grown in areas with notable levels of poverty (see Table 1, below – although, it should be noted that statistical analysis correlates coca with mid-levels of poverty, likely because of the need for some capacity to engage in the activity). Overall, we encountered the same position in all the communities we visited: the people are desperate for alternative livelihood options, but without roads and electricity, from which one leader noted many other opportunities would come, the only rational option for those seeking to provide for their families is to grow coca leaf. After all, in contrast to others, this crop grows easily in the region, and can be transported by the buyers on motorbikes.
Back in San José, we talked with a corn dealer, who elaborated on the impact of what we had seen and heard in the countryside. Although the man had dedicated himself to trading corn – partly in order to help small farmers in the region, Pedro suggested – the ageing trader is only able to pay a price to farmers that is barely, if at all, sufficient to cover their costs of production. While this ratio is impacted by competition from industrial producers and growing imports under Colombia’s free trade agreements, there is little chance that market incentives drive efficiency in Guaviare given the constraints imposed by a lack of basic rural infrastructure. Here, I am reminded of my work in the field of international development, and the need to compliment policies to develop market incentives (the primary focus of the trade agreements and market liberlisation pushed by international institutions, such as the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund), with investment in building the economic capacity that people need to respond (Smith 2009).
Finally then, on the issue of investment in development, the other topic at the centre of many conversations on our trip to Guaviare, was the Colombian Government’s policy – heavily backed by the United States – to reduce the production of coca through aerial fumigation. Recent news reaching the communities supported previous analyses demonstrating that the fumigation programme, estimated to have cost between US$1 billion and US$2 billion since its launch in 1994 (Isacson, 2015), has done little to reduce cultivation (ONDCP, 2015); aside from the heinous damage inflicted on human health and the environment, as recently identified by the WHO (2015). In this situation, campesinos, well aware of the financial cost of each fumigation flight, ask a very logical question: Why does the government not direct investment into roads and electricity, instead of dropping chemicals that along with killing coca, destroy legal food crops, cause cancer and damage our natural resources? Indeed, undertaking statistical analysis of the characteristics associated with growing coca, nationwide studies find that while fumigation is little associated with reducing coca cultivation (with a minor and statistically insignificant association) there is a strong statistically significant correlation between the size of the coca crop and transport infrastructure (for example see: Dion and Russler, 2008). On the basis of the evidence then, a clear conclusion emerges: if the Colombian and US Governments are serious about reducing coca cultivation, it is essential to invest more seriously in the kind of economic development needed to support legal livelihood opportunities for the rural populations of Colombia. Indeed, if the balance between investment in fumigation and development does not change, it is high time the international community asked more critical questions about the continuation of such an ineffective and inhuman drugs policy in areas such Guaviare.
Table 1: Basic infrastructure for largest coca producing regions in Colombia (DANE 2014; MMEUPME 2014; Ministerio de Transporte 2014).
Dion, M.L., Russler, C., 2008. Eradication Efforts, the State, Displacement and Poverty: Explaining Coca Cultivation in Colombia During Plan Colombia. Journal of Latin American Studies 40 (03), 399-421.
Isacson, A. 2015. Even If Glyphosate Were Safe, Fumigation in Colombia Would Be a Bad Policy. Here’s Why. Washington: Washington Office on Latin America. http://www.wola.org/commentary/even_if_glyphosate_were_safe_fumigation_in_colombia_would_be_a_bad_policy_heres_why.
Smith, A.M., 2009. Fair Trade, Diversification and Structural Change: Towards a Broader Theoretical Framework of Analysis. Oxford Development Studies 37 (4), 457-478
This post was originally published here by the School of Public Policy at the Central European University.
Julia Buxton, Professor of Comparative Politics at the School of Public Policy (SPP), outlined key conclusions from her forthcoming report on the relationship between drugs and development in a stimulating faculty research presentation on Thursday, October 16. “Drugs are a development issue,” emphasized Buxton, “and this needs to be recognized by development actors.” The report, Drugs and Development: The Great Disconnect, will be published by Global Drug Policy Observatory at Swansea University as part of a portfolio of work that is being prepared ahead of the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on Drugs in 2016.
Buxton analyzed United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) alternative development (AD) projects. Since UN endorsement in 1998, these projects have become a counter to traditional law enforcement strategies of drug crop eradication and drug interdiction. She highlighted multiple UNODC failings that have resulted in a 36% increase in opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan between 2012 and 2013, an increase that is even more shocking given the more than $7.5 billion that has been spent in counter narcotics efforts. Some of the examples of failed efforts include the use of generic AD approaches across regions and communities, a lack of pre- and post-project monitoring and evaluation, a dearth of development experts on staff, the absence of development and human security metrics (with AD projects evaluated only on the basis of short-term drug supply reduction targets), and, most crucially, the failure of AD to target the poorest of the poor and identify motivations for engagement in drug crop cultivation. Ultimately, “Alternative development is unworkable within the framework of drug criminalization, a focus on the sources of drugs, and ongoing militarized enforcement,” asserted Buxton, all of which serves to drive up the price of illicit drugs and the incentives to participate in supply.
Citing “profound institutional sclerosis” in the UNODC, Buxton asked how alternative development can be successful if the end goal is drug prohibition. “The more the UNODC is involved in alternative development, the more it risks doing more harm than good,” she argued. According to Buxton, drug policy and also the drug policy reform lobby pay too much attention to raw narcotics (opium poppy and coca leaf) rather than synthetics such as MDMA and amphetamines manufactured in the Global North. This underlines the bias in the international drug control model and the risk of further problematic interventions that exacerbate rather than alleviate poverty and insecurity in drug crop cultivating regions.
Ultimately it is development and not law and order factors that enable drug crop cultivation. As such, Buxton concluded, drug crop cultivation should be the concern of the development community and NGOs. Unfortunately, development actors often treat drugs as a taboo subject preferring that they be handled within the portfolio of law enforcement. This works against the achievement of development objectives, with counter narcotics responses generating violence while distorting security priorities and democratic systems.
Watch Buxton discuss her latest research on drugs as a development issue here.
The proliferation of drug trafficking in West Africa, as measured by drug – and most specifically cocaine – seizure data, has drawn considerable attention from the United Nations drug control bodies, and from West European and North American countries that are engaged in anti-poverty, state stabilisation and counter terrorism activities in the sub-region. Underscoring concerns as to the rise of West African ‘narco states’ and penetration by South American drug ‘cartels’, drug seizures in the first three quarters of 2007 were 60 times higher than in 2002, with 33 tons of cocaine seized.
In its 2007 report, ‘Cocaine Trafficking in West Africa: The Threat to Stability and Development‘, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) highlighted the challenges posed to West African peace and security by the transit of an estimated $1.8 billion of cocaine (at wholesale prices) through countries such as Guinea Bissau, where the entire national budget for 2006 was just $304 million. Specific impacts related to increased trafficking volumes detailed in the 2007 report included corruption of poorly remunerated local security sector officials (police, military, customs and judiciaries), politicians and national governments; the distorting impacts of the illicit economy on development prospects and economic stability; rising domestic drug consumption linked to an increase in availability; and drug related violence.
The latest report by the Global Drug Policy Observatory explores how West Africa has become a new ‘front’ in the drug ‘war’ (see GDPO Briefing ‘West Africa: A New Front in a Losing War’). The report explores how donors and other external actors and institutions stepped up financial support to, and political pressure on, West African countries for strengthened counter narcotics activity. This has included the training of local security sector officials, robust domestic anti-drugs legislation, judicial reform and demand prevention measures. While this was in part influenced by the negative domestic implications of drug trafficking for the achievement of peace, security and development objectives in West Africa, it was also informed by traditional ‘supply side’ approaches that seek to prevent drugs reaching consumer markets in Europe.
This bias toward the priorities and approaches of wealthy, Western consumer states has led to the formulation and implementation of drug control measures that do not always take into consideration African concerns. Furthermore, policy responses are based on limited and very often poor data, while the use of contestable statistical indicators to legitimise the reorientation of public and donor spending toward counter narcotics activity obscures rigorous assessment of the dimensions and implications of West Africa’s drug ‘problem’. As an example of the ‘bad practice’ in counter narcotics responses, statistics relating to levels of drug consumption in West Africa are discussed below.
In its Annual Report for 2012, the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) highlights cannabis as the ‘most widely abused illicit substance in Africa’, with a prevalence rate for the entire continent of 7.8% (range: 3.8 – 10.4%). This is considerably higher than the global average, which is estimated at 3.8% (range: 2.8 – 4.5%). West Africa, the INCB adds, is the sub-region with the highest prevalence rate within the continent (12.4 %, range: 5.2 – 13.5%) with Nigeria showing the highest national annual prevalence: 14.3%. These cannabis consumption statistics are extrapolated from the limited data sets of just 6 of West Africa’s 16 states: Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Togo, of which three (Burkina Faso, Liberia and Togo) show prevalence rates slightly below the global average according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime World Drug Report Statistical Annex.
In the case of cocaine prevalence rates the INCB estimates that there are1.5 million cocaine users in West and Central Africa, with Nigeria having the highest prevalence rate in the region. However, as with the cannabis consumption statistics, projections of cocaine use are based on data provided by only 2 of the 23 Western and Central African countriesNigeria (0.7%) and Cape Verde (0.23%). Moreover the figures for these two countries are from different years (2008 in the case of Nigeria, 2004 in Cape Verde).
In relation to heroin, the INCB sets out that ‘heroin abuse is perceived [emphasis added] to be increasing and is mainly concentrated in East and West Africa’. This assessment is based on East Africa’s emergence as a transit zone for Afghan heroin and not detailed epidemiological surveys of heroin use in East Africa. The most recent prevalence rates for opioid use in the region are from 2004 with only Senegal and Nigeria updating their statistics – in 2006 and 2008 respectively. Without reliable, robust data on contemporary heroin use, the assertion that there is rising heroin consumption lacks empiricism. It should be further noted that the INCB’s report does not detail the source of evidently influential ‘perceptions’, nor does it provide citations for all data sources within the report.
All aspects of the drug market, including drug use, within West, Central and East Africa are clearly areas worthy of concern. The region undoubtedly has significant drug related problems that merit an energetic response. However, effective, targeted interventions in the interest of public health and human security require a radical enhancement of the collation and processing of statistical information, and improved support to information gathering by sub Saharan states. Conversely, debates and strategies based on limited and archaic data runs the risk of doing more harm than good, which is to say replicating ineffective and inappropriate policies imported from other parts of the world.
In recent years, the media has applied the contentious term ‘narco-state’ to a number of West African countries, including Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, on account of the increased volumes of cocaine being trafficked through the region and the impact of this illicit activity on governance and security. The heightened prominence of West Africa in the trafficking of cocaine from South America to Western Europe follows from the strengthening of European interdiction efforts along the established cocaine routes in the Caribbean, which has led to a displacement of trafficking activity through the politically and economically fragile states of West Africa. However, as highlighted in a GDPO interview with Chief Inspector Daniel Carril, Attaché for Home Affairs in the Spanish Embassies in Bissau and Praia (Cape Verde) there is a paucity of data and empirical information on the volume of trafficking, with implications for the conclusions and recommendations that have been all too quickly drawn about the ‘threats’ facing West Africa, and the ‘narco state’ of Guinea Bissau in particular.
The interview began with Carril outlining that there are only three Western European Embassies in Guinea Bissau: France, Portugal and Spain, with the Spanish Embassy only recently established in 2007. According to Carril Spain’s initial interest in the country was motivated by the significant increase in Sub-Saharan immigrants arriving on the Spanish coast during the so-called ‘cayucos crisis’ – cayucos referring to the small boats landing African migrants on the Canary Islands.
However, the attention given to this issue was quickly re-focused as a result of the increase in cocaine trafficking through Guinea Bissau. This alarmed Western governments in that it opened up new routes to West European drug markets, offsetting the ‘success’ of strengthened interdiction efforts in the Caribbean. The subsequent strengthening of radical Islamist movements in the wider sub region in turn produced a swift re-ordering of priorities. In Carril’s analysis: ‘’the concern about drug trafficking is more related to the financing of terrorism than with the problem of drug consumption in Western countries’. However, Carril continues that: ‘From my point of view, the international agencies do not have a big interest in understanding the problem in depth but at the same time they are interested in maintaining the high threat level in order to justify their presence and levels of funding’.
Information about the levels of drugs transiting West Africa remains scarce and existing material lacks reliability and consistency. Even the World Drug Report published annually by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) fails to give a comprehensive picture of the region (see, for example, sections focused on West Africa in the World Drug Reports for 2012 and 2013). Acknowledging the paucity of data, the 2012 World Drug Report outlines that: ‘Considerable challenges also remain in the reporting of trend data on illicit drug use, production and trafficking. The main challenges continue to be the availability and reporting of data on different aspects of illicit drug demand and supply in Member States. The lack of data is particularly acute inAfrica [emphasis added]and parts of Asia, where data on the prevalence of illicit drug use and trends remain vague at best.’WDR 2012, Executive Summary pg. 3
Nevertheless, despite the lack of empirical quantitative or qualitative information, the 2013 World Drug Report forges a nexus between drugs, organised crime and state failure: ‘The trends in new emerging routes for trafficking of drugs and in the production of illicit substances indicate that the continent of Africa is increasingly becoming vulnerable to the drug trade and organized crime, although data from the African region is scarce[emphasis added]. While this may further fuel political and economic instability in many countries in the region, it can also lead to an increase in the local availability and consumption of illicit substances. This, therefore, requires the international community to invest in evidence-informed interventions for the prevention of drug use, the treatment of drug dependence, the successful interdiction of illicit substances and the suppression of organized crime. The international community also needs to make the necessary resources available to monitor the drug situation in Africa.’ WDR 2013, Preface pg. iv
Carril noted that ‘most of the references to the levels of drug trafficking in Guinea-Bissau are speculative, not even estimates. None of the international agencies in the country seem to be conducting fieldwork. So I don’t really know where the data used by international bodies comes from.’
Carill is not alone in questioning the data and his analysis is in line with others such as the West African Commission on Drugs and also the UNODC itself, which support the call for better data gathering and analysis on illicit drugs in Western Africa. For example, one of the key objectives of the West African Commission on Drugs is to develop evidence-based policy recommendations, as set out by the Commission: ‘In order to fully understand the scale and impact of trafficking and growing drug consumption, and to be able to make evidence based policy recommendations, the Commission will use available data and analysis, which will be compiled into a series of background papers to help shape the direction of the Commission’s work programme. New research work would only be initiated if gaps are clearly apparent in the currently available information.’
Unlike many journalists and international civil servants working in the region, Carril is reluctant to consider Guinea Bissau a ‘narco-state’: ‘Guinea-Bissau is not a ‘narco-state’ and drug trafficking is not the main problem in the country. What is happening in this country is not a consequence of drugs. The problems of poor governance and corruption occurred before drug trafficking organizations arrived, and will continue to happen in the future even if the level of drugs transiting through decrease or disappear’.
For Carril, labelling Guinea-Bissau a ‘narco-state’ deflects from serious scrutiny of the drivers of the country’s economic, political and security problems. Moreover the use of the term is highly politicised and discriminatory: ‘If Guinea-Bissau is a ‘narco-state’, then Gambia, Senegal and Guinea (Conakry) could also be seen as ‘narco-states’ as well. Even Spain. I doubt very much that more drugs transit through Guinea-Bissau than Spain. This analysis seems to be self-interested’.
As Carril concludes: ‘It’s easier to blame a little country for what is happening in the region while there is neither any solution on the table nor the courage to demand explanations from the more powerful states’.
This interview formed part of the research for GDPO’s forthcoming briefing ‘Telling the story of drugs in West Africa: The newest front in a losing war?’ that will be launched on 2nd December 2013 along with our new website.
