The Global Commission on Drug Policy (GCDP) is a panel of world leaders and intellectuals, with a Secretariat based in Geneva, Switzerland.
Contents
- Membership
- Former members
- Immediate
- Extended
- 2014 report
- Disappointment with UNGASS 2016
- 2016 yearly report
- References
In June 2011, the commission said: "The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world." The emphasis in drug policy on harsh law enforcement over four decades has not accomplished its goal of banishing drugs and has in fact spawned wide, dramatic eruptions of violence, the report continued. By way of alternative, the GCDP report "advocates decriminalizing drug use by those who do no harm to others."
The commission was formed to "bring to the international level an informed, science-based discussion about humane and effective ways to reduce the harm caused by drugs to people and societies. [It built] on the experience of the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy."
Membership
Members of the GCDP Board a/o December 2016 were:
Former members
Immediate
Gabor Maté, a Hungarian-Canadian physician who specializes in study and treatment of addiction, was interviewed on Democracy Now! about the report.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter wrote an op-ed in The New York Times explicitly endorsing the recommendations of the commission, saying they were in line with the policies of his administration; and saying it was the policies of the succeeding Reagan administration which had moved U.S. policy so far toward punitive alternatives. Carter's piece elicited several published responses, including one from an analyst for Common Sense for Drug Policy who drew attention to the current White House Office of National Drug Control Policy's immediate rejection of GCDP's recommendations and defense of the "balanced drug control efforts" of the U.S. federal government; and others which agreed and disagreed with Carter's views.
Brian Lehrer had Ethan Nadelmann, founder and director of the Drug Policy Alliance, on Lehrer's radio show to detail the GCDP report and how that might impact U.S. anti-drug policies.
Sir Ronald Sanders, a consultant and former Caribbean diplomat, wrote in favor of the recommendations and endorsement of President Carter's expressed views.
Extended
Peter Hakim prominently cited the GCDP report in an October, 2011, "rethinking [of] U.S. drug policy".
The Beckley Foundation's Global Initiative for Drug Policy Reform antedated the release of the GCDP report but integrated the GCPD into its November, 2011, British House of Lords meetings. Professor Robin Room (University of Melbourne) was preparing a "Rewriting the UN Drug Conventions Report" based on amendments to the UN drug control conventions of 1961, 1971 and 1988 for the Initiative; and Professor Stephen Pudney (Institute for Social and Economic Research) was preparing "the first-ever Cost-benefit Analysis of the control of cannabis through regulation and taxation in the UK" for it. Amanda Feilding of the Foundation and other peers led the effort and attracted some criticism for it.
According to the blog Sensi Seeds, "The Commission is now preparing another six papers covering its main areas of enquiry – the results of current drug-control measures, harm reduction and suggestions for improved policies. Naturally, more attention is focused on hard drugs due to the far greater damage associated with them; however, two of these papers will specifically address the issue of cannabis" legalization and decriminalization, including "Paper 4: Criminal justice challenges".
2014 report
On September 9, 2014 the Commission issued its new report, Taking Control: Pathways to Drug Policies that Work. "The report reflects the evolution in the thinking of the Commissioners, who reiterate their demands for decriminalization, alternatives to incarceration, and greater emphasis on public health approaches and now also call for permitting the legal regulation of psychoactive substances. The Commission is the most distinguished group of high-level leaders to ever call for such far-reaching changes."
Disappointment with UNGASS 2016
In April 2016, the GCDP reacted to the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) drug conference, saying the commission was "profoundly disappointed with the adopted outcome document". The Wall Street Journal lumped the attendees' positions "somewhat" in two camps: "Some European and South American countries as well as the U.S. favored softer approaches. Eastern countries such as China and Russia and most Muslim nations like Iran, Indonesia and Pakistan remained staunchly opposed." Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto said “We must move beyond prohibition to effective prevention” and that Mexico was considering legalizing medical marijuana and limited decriminalization of the drug. GCDP member Branson was quoted as saying the conference outcome was "out of step with world sentiment and doubles down on status quo”.
2016 yearly report
In November 2016 GCDP released its yearly report, Advancing Drug Policy Reform: a new approach to decriminalization.
Commission Chair Dreifuss said about the report:
After years of denouncing the dramatic effects of prohibition and the criminalization of people that do no harm but use drugs on the society as a whole, it is time to highlight the benefits of well-designed and well-implemented people-centered drug polices. These innovative policies cannot exist as long as we do not discuss, honestly, the major policy error made in the past, which is the criminalization of personal consumption or possession of illicit psychoactive substances in national laws.