UN Development Program Head Slams Drug War

It is increasingly clear that the “war on drugs” has failed and there needs to be room for new approaches, the head of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) said Thursday. UNDP head Helen Clark’s remarks ahead of the presentation of the organization’s 2013 Human Development Report came in a pre-ceremony interview with Reuters.

“To deal with drugs as a one-dimensional, law-and-order issue is to miss the point,” Clark said. “Once you criminalize, you put very big stakes around. Of course, our world has proceeded on the basis that criminalization is the approach. We have waves of violent crime sustained by drug trade, so we have to take the money out of drugs,” she said.

Clark didn’t go as far as calling for drug legalization, but she said she was encouraged by recent efforts by Latin American leaders to put the issue on the global agenda.

“The countries in the region that have been ravaged by the armed violence associated with drug cartels are starting to think laterally about a broad range of approaches and they should be encouraged to do that,” she said. “They should act on evidence.”

Latin American leaders have said “that the approach being followed has failed so we need a fresh set of eyes on this as well,” the former New Zealand prime minister added. “And I think the debate going on at the regional level is a very, very useful one.”

In addition to serving as New Zealand’s prime minister, Clark also served as the island nation’s health minister. That experience influenced her approach, she said.

“I’ve been a health minister in my past and there’s no doubt that the health position would be to treat the issue of drugs as primarily a health and social issue rather than a criminalized issue,” Clark explained.

Article republished from Stop the Drug War under Creative Commons Licensing