The Global Commission on Drug Policy has launched a new report, Stop Punishment: From Criminal Justice Responses to Drug Policy Reform. Earlier this week, I interviewed one of the report’s co-authors, Anand Grover, a former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health and a senior advocate to the Supreme Court of India.
We covered a lot of ground over the course of an hour (getting kicked out of Zoom once because yours truly doesn’t have a Pro account), from the huge amounts of resources poured into policing and criminalisation to how it’s the war on drugs, and not drug use or universal human rights, that’s the real “Western import” to Asia. The following is a shortened transcript of our conversation, edited for clarity and length, interspersed with additional context and relevant links.
Thank you for your time! This interview will go out to a mainly Singaporean audience, and that’s really important because Singaporeans haven’t had many opportunities to encounter these kinds of conversations about harm reduction and drug policy reform. In Singapore, we pretty much only ever talk about the war on drugs.
Yeah, but that’s been the situation internationally for a very long period of time. It started with a completely arbitrary notion of drug use. You know, the President of the United States, Richard Nixon, he actually started [the war on drugs]… It was totally arbitrary and it was based on a cultural notion that it’s very much okay to drink alcohol, but not have, say, cannabis.
From 1920 to 1933, the production, importation, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages was banned in the US. But this didn’t stop people from drinking, and this demand created opportunities for bootleggers, smugglers and organised crime. Moonshine—liquor made at home and completely unregulated—was also incredibly risky and dangerous, sometimes killing those who consumed it.
I would say primarily in Asia and Latin America, because we have history to document it, and even in Africa, there was a lot of use of traditional plants like cannabis, coca, which were never misused because cultural practices were such that they were allowed. In fact, even till this day, a portion of the cannabis plant is actually taken as a drink, which we call bhang, during very auspicious Hindu celebratory days, like Maha Shivaratri, the day of Lord Shiva, and Holi. My father-in-law, who was a teetotaller, never smoked, never drank alcohol, he used to drink bhang on Maha Shivaratri.
Drugs like cannabis have medicinal value. In India it was traditionally used, in all sorts of Asian countries. But because of the war on drugs, it became a huge problem. Because we were not allowed to experiment with these drugs, even do proper research, for so many years, we lost a lot of knowledge about the medical use of these drugs. So you can have alcohol, which is actually more deleterious to health and kills more people all over the world than any other psychotropic or narcotics drug, but not cannabis. We’ve allowed this to go on forever!
Just imagine, the country which started the war on drugs—the United States—[parts of the country] have legalised cannabis, but we’ve adopted their [war on drugs] culture and they’re [still] perpetuating that culture, which is really silly and foolish.
Although parts of the US are waking up to the harm and injustice of the war on drugs, the country still pours huge amounts of money into “counternarcotics” activity around the world. A 2023 report by Harm Reduction International, Aid for the War on Drugs, highlights the way development aid is used on narcotics control around the world. A new report by Harm Reduction International and the Drug Policy Alliance, also launched this week, examines the US’s role more specifically: A World of Harm: How U.S. Taxpayers Fund the Global War on Drugs Over Evidence-Based Health Responses. One of its key findings: “The U.S. government spends more on international ‘counternarcotics’ activities than it does on education, water supply, sanitation, and women’s rights in low- and middle-income countries.”
The real drug lords have never been picked up. They’re flourishing; the number of drug users and people convicted or incarcerated for drug use or possession is just increasing every year all over the world. It’s a conclusive thing to say that the war on drugs has completely failed. Billions of dollars on the war on drugs, for what? It’s not working! So what do we do?
I don’t think many people are familiar with the international drug control conventions. Can you give us a brief idea of how these conventions came about, and why the report argues that they need to be reviewed?
The initiators of these conventions are the Western countries. The three drug control conventions were initiated in 1961, 1971 and 1988, and they pushed through the notion of criminalisation of possession and use. And the rest of the world took them and had to implement that.
Just imagine, if I’m in my private bedroom drinking alcohol, it’s not illegal. But if I take a drug like cannabis, which has some medicinal value, it’s criminalised, contrary to my culture and heritage.
As you know, in Singapore we have the mandatory death penalty for drug trafficking. I’ll just read you a quote from our Minister for Home Affairs and Law, K Shanmugam. He said: “…you remove the death penalty, drug trafficking will go up significantly. There will be more robberies, house breakings and so on because drug abusers will need money to buy drugs. There will also be, evidence shows, more sexual assaults, more homicides, and definitely, many more people will die in Singapore.” What is your response to this?
I respect his point of view but it’s totally without any evidence. We have to base ourselves on evidence, not our arbitrary thinking. For example, Portugal, when they decriminalised, there was no increase in the proliferation of crime. For the first time, people who were drug users found that they were dependent [on drugs] or that they had problems with their life, and people were there to assist them. Portugal could divert the resources [spent on policing and criminalisation].
You know how much is being spent on the war on drugs internationally? 100 billion USD a year! That’s huge! You could spend that, even a fraction of that, on healthcare for people who need it.
Let me give you an example of how some people become drug dependent (there are many different reasons). In India, in the province of Punjab, there’s a major problem of drug use. And the same sort of words [as in Singapore] are used by the state government of Punjab: we are not going to tolerate drugs, we have zero tolerance. It’s not working. It’s not worked for years, anywhere in the world, and it’s not going to work in India or Singapore.
Take Punjab as an example: People from communities who were landowners, over a period of time—over six, seven decades—their lands have been split up. They don’t want to work on agriculture, so they find themselves without jobs. They take alcohol, then they start taking ‘soft’ drugs, then ‘hard’ drugs, and they’re all criminalised. [If there was decriminalisation] you could actually be having recreational use of cannabis, but not go into ‘hard’ drugs. But because they’re criminalised, they’re associated with criminals right from the beginning [who aren’t interested in their safety or well-being]. As a result, they become dependent on drugs and they can’t do any work, they might start stealing from their own family [to sustain their use].
What options are there? You have what is called Opioid Agonist Therapy (OAT). You give a substitute which has similar effects, but not a high. You get the person on OAT and they can start living ‘normally’, going to work. That’s the way to do it. For that you need to have harm reduction or substitution therapy, and it works. Singapore can do this; you have the money.
The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Canada has a handy explainer. From this explainer:
“Opioid agonist therapy (OAT) is an effective treatment for addiction to opioid drugs such as heroin, oxycodone, hydromorphone (Dilaudid), fentanyl and Percocet. The therapy involves taking the opioid agonists methadone (Methadose) or buprenorphine (Suboxone). These medications work to prevent withdrawal and reduce cravings for opioid drugs. People who are addicted to opioid drugs can take OAT to help stabilize their lives and to reduce the harms related to their drug use.
Methadone and buprenorphine are long-acting opioid drugs that are used to replace the shorter-acting opioids the person is addicted to. Long-acting means that the drug acts more slowly in the body, for a longer period of time. By acting slowly, it prevents withdrawal for 24 to 36 hours without causing a person to get high. OAT also helps to reduce or eliminate cravings for opioid drugs. Treatment works best when combined with other types of support, such as individual or group counselling.”
Singapore has shifted a little away from sending people to prison (at least on the face of it, as documented in the Transformative Justice Collective’s report You Don’t See The Sky: Life Behind Bars in Singapore). Instead of going to prison, people who use drugs go to a Drug Rehabilitation Centre (which is, actually, basically still a prison—that’s why I said “on the face of it” before) and they don’t have a criminal record but upon release they have electronic tagging and compulsory drug testing at supervision centres. I noticed that, in the report, you write about how this sort of compulsory treatment with surveillance is not ideal.
Not only is it not ideal, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because you’re doing the cold turkey sort of treatment. You withdraw the drug from the person’s environment. But the point is that when they go out they’re associated with the same people! So relapse is very common. Whereas if you have substitution therapy, the person can actually decide for themselves, I want to do this.
It’s always very important, if you want to change a person’s behaviour, that they actually decide for themselves. You can’t force these things. It’s just the mind. You can’t force this thing. You’re actually driving a person to a particular end; it doesn’t work. If I accept that I want to be treated, then I will resolve to make sure it happens. But if it’s forced externally, I won’t be able to do it. It hasn’t worked anywhere and it’s not going to work in Singapore.
It doesn’t work and it’s violative of human rights, because you’re tagging, you’re actually destroying their privacy. It may be one step forward, you’re not sending the person to prison [with a criminal record], but it’s two steps backwards because you’re not going to achieve what you want.
It seems like there are these two big ideas: deterrence and abstinence. Like we try to deter people from using drugs or participating in the drug trade, and for those who have used drugs, we push abstinence as the only solution. These two notions are very prevalent in Singapore and elsewhere.
We have to first think why alcohol is allowed. Alcohol is actually deleterious to your health. It leads to so many accidents and deaths. Alcohol is a drug.
Most people, about 90% of people [who use drugs] don’t become dependent. Only about 10% become dependent because of their social circumstances. Only about 10% internationally are known to become dependent on drugs, which is a real problem and they can be treated.
Rich people all over the world take drugs; they can do it in the safety of their industrial complexes, businesses. Because they have lawyers, they can get off [if they’re caught]. But if you’re poor… you see all the sentences imposed, they’re all poor people, foreigners, marginalised, discriminated.
I know a lot of Singaporeans who are very intelligent. And I think they should look at it objectively. As far as the three drug control conventions are concerned, they were imposed by the Western countries. We can’t agree to these things, they’re not right. They actually cause havoc in our communities on account of—as far as drugs are concerned—incarceration, criminalised, impoverishing people who are just users or couriers.
Another thing that leapt out at me in the report is the mention of presumption clauses and thresholds. These are very key to Singapore’s Misuse of Drugs Act. For example, if you have more than 2g of heroin you’re presumed to have it for the purposes of trafficking, and if it’s more than 15g it’s the mandatory death penalty upon conviction. The government justification is that these thresholds prove that it’s a significant amount of drugs, allowing them to distinguish between people who use and people who are part of the drug trade.
In India, we have similar provisions. We have what is called “small quantity”. There is a table for the thresholds of each drug. And then there are “commercial quantities”. Then there’s the “intermediate quantity”.
To your question: these things have no meaning. Because a courier, you see, a lot of the people who are dependent, they also sell. That’s how they fund their use. That is not understood by most legal systems.
In Singapore, you say, drug use is bad, these people have to be jailed. But actually you’re creating a bigger problem. Most of the people who are using drugs are using not because they’re bad people. They’ve got into this situation because of the circumstances they face and you have to address them. There’s a way of addressing them: decriminalisation and providing health services, making sure that people can go back to work.
How is it that, in 2023, 11.5 million people were imprisoned for drug offences—a 24% increase from 2000? What are we doing? The war on drugs has failed completely. Why don’t we see that? [The Global Commission on Drug Policy] is not giving an abstract answer, saying “just do this”. It’s worked.
It really struck me that many of the recommendations in the report—relating to equality and housing and social protections—are not actually about drugs. They’re about something more fundamental about the way our societies operate. I feel like that requires a mindset shift, right? It’s not just about drugs, it’s about opportunities and equality and social provision so people are not homeless, people have the support they need. Have you found it challenging to persuade governments and people of this?
It’s not just about drugs. People don’t become drug dependent purely because of drugs. There’s a host of other issues, so you have to address them. It’s a social justice issue. You must address all of them.
These are the recommendations the report makes for the way forward:
Establish and promote access to high-quality, tailored, integrated harm reduction and drug treatment services on a voluntary basis, both in communities and in deprivation of liberty settings. Core to this is Opioid Agonist Therapy (OAT), including diamorphine as a medication choice, as well as Needle and Syringe Programs (NSPs), naloxone, drug checking, and Overdose Prevention Centers (OPCs), which save lives, support public health and safety, and reduce crime, bloodborne infections and public drug use.Fully decriminalise drug use, as well as possession, cultivation, acquisition, and social supply of drugs, and possession of paraphernalia. Expunge the records of those who have been criminalised historically.Support and implement “safer supply” models to provide regulated, pharmaceutical-grade drugs to individuals who would otherwise use contaminated or illicit substances, thereby preventing avoidable deaths and overdoses.Regulate all drugs. Ensure regulatory models are equitable in practice and dismantle laws that risk criminalising those communities that have been historically over-criminalised.Ensure people who use drugs, other affected groups, and civil society are meaningfully involved in the review, design, implementation, and evaluation of all relevant laws and policies.Prioritise social equity models for regulated markets for cannabis and other drugs and consider the increased role of government in the operation of the market, including price controls, to reduce the over-commercialisation of the market and the undue influence of private actors, achieving better public health outcomes.Challenge misinformation and disinformation on drug use, drug policies, and drug-related harms at the local and national level.Adopt housing strategies that support people who use drugs and reduce homelessness. Ensure access to stable and secure housing, regardless of drug use or drug-related convictions, as a fundamental aspect of any national drug policy. Abstinence should not be a condition of housing.An effective social safety net addressing wider economic and social needs is vital—this should be underpinned by enforceable legal rights ensuring people who use drugs are treated equally.In adopting reforms, governments must adopt an age- and gender-sensitive approach and prioritise those who have been harmed by drug law enforcement. Reforms must protect public health, promote public safety, and uphold human rights.
That’s what the government takeaway [has to be]. It’s not just criminalising. You’re spending millions of dollars on a huge police force, jails… all those can be closed down and you’ll be spending on productive things. So you won’t be wasting money. You’ll actually be using them for productive purposes. People will be healthy, they will actually be able to work. They’ll actually help the economy. It’s a win-win for everybody, even for the government.
I don’t see why the government is not looking into the issue properly and answering these questions. I think there’s a genuine need to have a proper debate rather than a prejudiced debate. All the members of the Global Commission are very open to debate and explaining their point of view, not because it’s ideological, but because it has worked.
When you engage governments in Asia, do you find that they’re receptive?
You see, within governments, you have people who are receptive and they say, “Well, you know, like you were saying, but our government…”
No, let’s talk about it. You know, things change because we actually have a discussion. Things change because we show examples that work. Things change because we know it is good for us in terms of healthy societies. We are not saying that drugs should be made openly available to everybody to misuse. We are looking at the objective evidence and saying cannabis is not a bad thing. It doesn’t do what you think it does. We’ve had a false notion about it.
Everybody has prejudice. I have prejudice. So we have to discuss with each other to avoid prejudice. For me, it’s always been: let’s talk to the drug users and find out from them what they think.
When you sit and talk and drink with a person affected, you will know what the real story is. Don’t sit in your isolated air-conditioned rooms, you will not learn anything. I’ve also been an ivory tower armchair revolutionary, as it were, but that is not the way. I work with very vulnerable communities: drug users, sex workers, people living with HIV. I’ve sat with them, eaten with them, drunk with them. And I’ve been wrong. I’ve been told by them that I’m wrong and they’re right sometimes. So you have to be humbled enough to learn and then you can do better for society. Don’t be in your ivory tower and think because you’ve been to Oxford or Cambridge or London then you know better. I’ve studied in England; I can’t pretend I know better than other people. You have to learn from people, the real society, and then you actually become a better person. And more so for government officials—it’s their job to learn from people and do something right for them.
The report makes clear that there’s no ‘one size fits all’; even in the countries that have decriminalised drugs, they’ve done it differently. What would you say is the best approach?
How do you go about decriminalisation? It’s difficult. The easiest way is to go for the ‘soft’ drug, like cannabis. And on that basis, you have more experience, then you can go forward.
Nobody’s dictating. It’s not a treaty that’s mandating you do ABCD. But the best and easiest way is to decriminalise cannabis use and possession for recreational purposes, in my opinion. Start with that, and then you can go forward.
And it’s not one thing. You also have to make sure that it’s a regulated market. You can’t have a free-for-all.
So you have to have multiple things prepared: you decriminalise, and you regulate, and you have harm reduction services, so you cover different aspects. It all has to happen together.
You have to decriminalise with a regulated market. You can’t have one without the other.
Thank you for reading! I hope Anand Grover’s comments have given you some food for thought. Let’s keep reading, learning, talking and working together towards a more just world with a more compassionate, evidence-based drug policy. And remember you can catch up on TJC’s webinar on drug policy from October here!
An interview with Anand Grover, one of the authors of the Global Commission on Drug Policy’s latest report. Read More
