The War on Drugs: Mission Not Accomplished

Most of the world’s top experts at the AIDS conference, held between the days of July 18 to 23, 2010, considered the 50-year war on drugs to be a complete failure. It’s a pity that no one even gave it a second thought during this conference.

The need for this AIDS conference, one of the largest public health meetings held in recent times, is due to events that have led to the rapid spread of AIDS in Eastern Europe, Asia and Russia. In not acknowledging that the war on drugs has failed, the Vienna Declaration discussed at this conference, which calls for drug users to not be arrested while being supplied with clean needles, methadone and treatment if they have AIDS, has also been ignored outright.

And while a third of those infected by AIDS get it from drug injections, one wonders if the writing is pretty much on the wall.

According to this latest report in the New York Times, experts cited Portugal’s approach to legalize the possession of any drugs up to 10 days which was a resounding success as its AIDS rate fell by 50 percent as well as the number of overdose victims, and have used elements of this successful plan in “the Vienna Declaration” which if not implemented by governments, will lead to drug addicts going into hiding and spreading the disease even more.

And to add insult to injury, ignoring the Vienna declaration didn’t seem to be enough as the recession has caused a severe drop in donor money for AIDS leaving people frustrated. According to officials, with the amount of funding available, only one-thirds of the 33 million people infected with this deadly disease globally have any hope of being treated.

The effects of this Declaration if implemented can cause a shake-up in American politics and their policy on drugs and their users made here in the United States, and perhaps, this is why the large delegation of American officials have remained silent on the matter at the International AIDS conference.