Drug policy

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Drug policy includes the policy area that deals with the social framework conditions in dealing with drugs . Traditionally a domain of domestic policy , health and social policy is meanwhile shifting the approach from pure repression policy to a more holistic perspective.

history

While the need to address the use of psychoactive substances has been documented since biblical times, an independent drug policy has only existed since the late 1960s. The beginnings go back internationally to the 1920s and 1930s, when many of the substances previously legal and sold as medicine, some of them plant-based, cocaine , cannabis , and some semi-synthetic substances such as heroin , were banned and banned internationally.

Important moments in the development of drug policy were:

  • since 1839: the attempt by the Chinese government to stop the opium trade by foreign companies in China. The main motive was to stop a negative foreign trade deficit . Great Britain forced the reopening of the Chinese market in the Opium Wars (1839–1842 and 1856–1860), which resulted in around 20 million opium addicts in China in 1880.
  • March 25, 1872: Regulation on cannabis in Germany - the "Ordinance concerning the trade in pharmacy goods" stipulates that certain "drugs and chemical preparations" may only be sold in pharmacies, including "Indian hemp - Herba Cannabis Indicae" , there are no further regulations.
  • 1909: The International Opium Commission is founded in Shanghai.
  • October 23, 1910: The imperial governor of South West Africa, today's Namibia, writes: “The only strong narcotic intoxicant that is consumed here is the 'Dagga', a type of hemp that was imported from the Cape Colony, partly here in the Land being grown by Bushmen. The import duty of 10 M (Mark) for raw 1 kg is supposed to have a prohibitive effect. "
  • 1911/1912: First International Opium Conference . A “drug-free world” is decided. It was mainly about opium and its derivatives (morphine, codeine, heroin), but for the first time also about cocaine and, at the request of the Italian government, a ban on cannabis. The Italian government withdrew the proposal, however, and the delegates noted that too little information and statistics on cannabis were available.
  • 1920: As a result of the First World War, Germany has to enact the first opium law. The initiative for this came from the " International Association for the Fight against Opium in Beijing and England ", at whose instigation the Versailles Treaty was supplemented in Article 295 I with the obligation of the loser states to ratify the International Opium Convention of 1912 - in accordance with it Article 295 I within 12 months. In this law, opium, its derivatives, and cocaine were strictly regulated, but cannabis was still legally available in pharmacies.
  • 1924/1925: The Geneva Opium Conference passes a global cannabis ban. This was due to the persistence of the head of the Egyptian delegation, El Guindy (in addition to Egypt, South Africa and Turkey had made similar proposals, but both countries did not pursue their proposals at the conference). On December 13, 1924, after the conference had already met for less than a month, he applied for cannabis to be added to the list of controlled substances.
  • On December 10, 1929, the opium conventions of the Reichstag came into effect in Germany in the form of the amended Opium Act. Since then, cannabis has been banned in Germany. However, it was still possible to obtain cannabis from pharmacies. Gradually, the medicinal use of cannabis also disappeared.
  • Dec. 13, 1964: The UN standard convention on narcotics comes into force.
  • December 22, 1971: In the course of the international student movement, especially in Germany in the 1968 movement, cannabis becomes known again. The legislators were not long in coming, in 1971 an all-party amendment to the Opium Act was passed. The law came into force on December 25th and was republished on January 10th, 1972 after some editorial changes.
  • 1972: Richard Nixon coined the term " War on Drugs ".
  • 1996: The American newspaper San Jose Mercury published a series of articles by the Muckraker Gary Webb under the title Dark Alliance , in which the involvement of several US federal agencies in drug smuggling from Latin America was documented and criticized. The article caused quite a stir in the USA.
  • Thailand : From February to May 2003, the government of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra carried out an "anti-drug campaign" that killed around 3,000 people. Human rights organizations suspect that a large proportion of the murders were carried out by members of the police force.
  • In April 2004 the Afghan interim President Hamid Karzai declared the " jihad on drugs" after the opium harvest reached a record 3600 tons in 2003 (three quarters of the world supply).
  • Great Britain , July 2005: An official investigation report concludes that the " war on drugs " has failed.

In June 2011, a high-ranking international body (member including ex-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan ) criticized the repressive drug policy and came to the conclusion that the global fight against drugs has failed.

Drug debate

The American philosopher Michael Huemer names the following main arguments in the drug debate and assesses them with the aid of moral intuition :

Damage to the consumer as a reason for prohibition

Huemer explains that people are usually not punished for harming themselves or exposing themselves to harm - for example by smoking tobacco, riding a motorcycle, having unprotected sex or marrying a bastard. The amount of damage is also unsuitable as a delimitation criterion: the risk of a tobacco user to die of his passion is significantly higher than that of a user of illegal drugs.

Drug use can lead to the breaking of human relationships. Huemer's objection is that someone who does not use drugs can also alienate his fellow human beings without anyone wanting to jail him for it. The same applies to financial damage that drug use can cause. A person can harm himself financially in other ways, such as quitting his job and squandering his savings, for which no penalty is required either. In the same way, Huemer invalidates the charge that drugs deprive people of their sense of duty and responsibility as a reason for prohibition.

Damage to third parties as a reason for prohibition

According to Huemer, driving under the influence of drugs and using drugs during pregnancy are rightly prohibited. On the other hand, punishment for other behavior that one only fears of a drug user is absurd: namely to be a bad student, husband, worker, etc., for which no one demands punishment.

Right to use drugs

Huemer says people have a right to use drugs because their own body is theirs . Since drugs primarily affect the consumer's body, drug use is a prime example of exercising the right over one's own body.

The objection that drug users do not act on their own responsibility because of their addiction has the consequence that they cannot be held criminally responsible.

Drug Policy in Germany

In the 2014 report of the national REITOX hub of the German Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction to the European Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction , the term drug policy for Germany is defined as follows:

“Until the end of the last century, the term“ drug policy ”only referred to illegal drugs that were the focus of political interest. There was no comparable concept for an alcohol or tobacco policy or for a cross-substance “addiction” policy. For some years now, there have been disorders caused by legal psychotropic substances (e.g. alcohol, tobacco and drug abuse) and cross-substance aspects (e.g. in universal prevention or in patients with multiple abuse) as well as for some time non-substance-related addictions (e.g. pathological gambling) more at the center of political interest. For this reason, the terms “drug and addiction policy” or “addiction policy” are increasingly used instead of “drug policy”. Because of the differences in political goals and strategies with regard to legal and illegal substances, the term “drug and addiction policy” is preferred in Germany. In addition, the field of vision has expanded from the original main interest in substance addiction to risky and harmful consumer behavior and thus to a more extensive understanding of health policy for substance-related disorders and risks. However, the German language does not have a short term for this, so that the (inadequate) term “addiction policy” continues to be used. For the annual reports of the German Monitoring Center for Drugs and Drug Addiction (DBDD), this means that legal substances and common strategies for legal and illegal substances have to be discussed in some cases. A separation is no longer possible in many places due to the technical and political development. "

- Tim Pfeiffer-Gerschel, Lisa Jakob, Daniela Stumpf IFT Institute for Therapy Research, Axel Budde, Federal Center for Health Education, Christina Rummel, German Central Office for Addiction Issues: 2014 report from the national REITOX hub to the EMCDDA 1.1.1 Definition of terms; P. 33

Drug Policy in Switzerland

The Switzerland has 1929 Opium Convention ratified as the government of the League of Nations announced binding.

Swiss drug policy is known as the four - pillar policy. The four pillars are:

  1. Prevention
  2. Therapy and reintegration
  3. Harm reduction and survival support (this also includes substitution therapy for opioid addicts , i.e. the supply of methadone and heroin to severely addicts )
  4. Repression and control

This differentiated policy was developed after the repressive drug policy in the early 1990s had led to unsustainable open drug scenes , for example on the Platzspitz in Zurich .

Swiss drug policy has been confirmed in various referendums . For example, the amendment to the Narcotics Act was adopted on November 30, 2008 with a 68.1% yes vote.

Dutch drug policy

The Dutch drug policy and the Dutch Opium Act (nl. Opiumwet ) differentiate between “soft drugs ” and “hard drugs”: the acquisition, possession and consumption of these “soft drugs” do not lead to criminal prosecution in certain cases .

See also

literature

  • Thomas Szasz : Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts, and Pushers . London 1974, German The ritual of drugs. Fischer Tb, Frankfurt am Main 1982. (Szasz was one of the first to radically criticize the established drug policy)
  • Timothy Leary : On Criminalizing the Natural. The Green Branch, 1993, ISBN 3-922708-39-0 .
  • Andrew Weil : Drugs and higher consciousness. AT Verlag, 2000, ISBN 3-85502-684-X
  • Günter Amendt : No Drugs - No Future. Drugs in the age of globalization. Europa Verlag, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-203-75013-9 .
  • Michael Huemer : America's Unjust War on Drugs In: Against the presumption of politics . Verlag, ed. U. Translator Thomas Leske, Gäufelden 2015, ISBN 978-3-9817616-0-3 , pp. 85-102.
    • America's Unjust Drug War in The New Prohibition , ed.Bill Masters (Accurate Press, 2004), pp. 133-144
  • Frank Nolte, Stephan Quensel, Anja Schultze: Against better judgment. The hypocrisy of drug policy. Ed. Temmen, Bremen 1996, ISBN 3-86108-295-0 .
  • Jürgen Neumeyer , Gudrun Schaich-Walch (ed.): Between legalization and normalization. Exit scenarios from repressive drug policy. Schüren Presse, Marburg, ISBN 3-89472-249-5 .
  • Jens Kalke: Innovative state parliaments. An empirical study using the example of drug policy. 2001, ISBN 3-531-13615-1 .
  • Ted Galen Carpenter: Bad Neighbor Policy: Washington's Futile War on Drugs in Latin America. Palgrave, 2003, ISBN 1-4039-6137-9 .
  • Tilmann Holzer: The birth of drug policy from the spirit of racial hygiene: German drug policy from 1933 to 1972. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2007.
  • Natalie Mayer: The US drug war in Colombia. To the “inside of foreign policy”. Hamburg 2008, ISBN 978-3-8300-3840-5 .
  • Jack Herer: The rediscovery of the useful plant hemp . Edited by Mathias Bröckers. Two thousand and one, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-86150-026-4 .
  • Gundula Barsch : The history of drugs in the GDR 1. Neuland publishing house, 2009, ISBN 978-3-87581-273-2 . (Barsch, teaches "Drugs and Social Work" at the Merseburg University of Applied Sciences )
  • Federal Commission for Drug Issues (EKDF) : Drug policy as social policy. A look back at thirty years of Swiss drug policy. Seismo Verlag, Social Sciences and Social Issues, Zurich 2012, ISBN 978-3-03777-114-3 .
  • Johann Hari : Drugs: The History of a Long War , S. Fischer, 2015, ISBN 978-3-10002-442-8 .
  • Wayne Hall, Rosalie Liccardo Pacula: Cannabis Use and Dependence. Public Health and Public Policy , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, New York, USA, 2003, ISBN 978-0-521-80024-2
  • Mark AR Kleiman, Jonathan P. Caulkins, Angela Hawken: Drugs and Drug Policy. What Everyone Needs to Know? Oxford University Press, 2011, ISBN 978-0-19-983138-8

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Tilman Holzer: Globalized drug policy. Protestant ethics and the history of the drug ban. VWB, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-86135-245-1 .
  2. ↑ Ordinance, regarding the traffic with pharmacy goods - Wikisource. Retrieved January 21, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Federal Archives, Berlin / R 1501/110393/128
  4. ^ International Opium Conference, Summary of the Minutes, 1912, The Hague, p. 76.
  5. ↑ Ordinance on the traffic in opium and other narcotics of July 20, 1920 (RGBl. I p. 1464) and in particular the First German Opium Act of December 30, 1920 (RGBl. 1921, I p. 2)
  6. ↑ "Those of the high contracting parts that have not yet signed the Hague Opium Convention of January 23, 1912 or have not yet ratified it after it was signed, declare their consent to bring the agreement into force and for this purpose as soon as possible and to enact the necessary laws at the latest within 12 months after the current contract comes into force. "RGBl. 1919, II p. 1103.
  7. ^ League of Nations 1925; Records of the Second Opium conference, Volume I, Plenary Meetings, pp. 132-135.
  8. ^ The law on the international opium agreement of February 19, 1925 was declared in the German Reich by law of June 26, 1929 to be national law (RGBl. 1929, II p. 407); Law on the traffic in narcotics (Opium Law) of 10 December 1929 (RGBl. 1929, I p. 215)
  9. ↑ The new Narcotics Act was signed on December 22, 1971, published on December 24, 1971 in the Federal Law Gazette (I p. 2092) and put into effect on December 25, 1971. After some editorial changes, the law on the traffic in narcotics was published on January 10, 1972 (Federal Law Gazette I, p. 1).
  10. ↑ Great Britain: Secret Report declares anti-drug war a failure , Wikinews
  11. ↑ Antje Passenheim: The fight against drugs has failed , taz.de, June 3, 2011, accessed on June 15, 2016, page 2
  12. ↑ Tim Pfeiffer-Gerschel, Lisa Jakob, Daniela Stumpf IFT Institute for Therapy Research, Axel Budde, Federal Center for Health Education, Christina Rummel, German Central Office for Addiction Issues : 2014 report from the national REITOX hub to the EMCDDA 1.1.1 Definition of terms; P. 33 ( Memento of February 4, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  13. ^ Accession to the Opium Convention , Vossische Zeitung , April 5, 1929, p. 2.
  14. ↑ Federal Office of Public Health - Four Pillar Policy. Federal Office of Public Health (BAG), archived from the original on August 21, 2011 ; Retrieved March 15, 2011 .