Jun 23 - ERG Calls On Government To Reform Drugs Legislation
The Equality Rights Group has called drug legislation to be reformed following the publication of the UN World Drug Report.
A statement from the ERG Chairman Felix Alvarez said: “The 2017 UN World Drug Report is a stunner, and it’s a stunner because, in stark and objective statistics, it illustrates to what scale and extent, the drug war which has been waged for too many decades now fails to reduce, let alone ‘end’ the consumption of drugs worldwide, as it was originally intended to do. It’s nothing more than an admission of failure.
“The Report specifically acknowledges the legalisation of cannabis in several areas of the world, and, significantly, does not now condemn this development.
“Governments worldwide are failing abysmally in moving to stop mafia criminals not only selling and marketing drugs internationally, but creating and inventing new and more lethal substances, fuelling crime, terrorism, corruption and money-laundering throughout the world.
“All this is happening whilst hundreds of thousands of drug-related avoidable deaths continue to be a reality. The little people, not the big-time profiteers get away with the illicit industry they have built, whilst small-time runners take anonymous instructions on their mobiles, and the flow just carries on with prison and worse facing their small-time employees.
“The Report is also a stunner because it shows how new psychoactive drugs have been developed and marketed by the mafias at an unprecedented rate across the world. Laboratory-based, their potential for danger and worse is truly worrying.
“The UN outlines an encouraging position with regard to the medicinal use of currently illicit use of drugs by explicitly pointing out that this need not be constrained by existing frameworks. Instead, it says that ‘Too many people lack access to pain medication. The implementation of the international drug control conventions need not be an obstacle to the availability of such medication’.
“We expect the Government of Gibraltar to start moving on plans to get to grips with this soon. It makes little sense to delay any further on an issue as important to this Community as this is.
“We hope also that means will be put in place to gather hard evidence and information on prevalence of drugs in our own, local market. Yet we would advise Government to centre on an assessment of harm, not simply prevalence. It is in the harmful effects of drugs, not their level of consumption that objective assessment must rest. And this is not some strange notion we bring forth – rather it is already an approach in place in the way Government deals with alcohol, tobacco and other substances. Prevalence, whilst useful in assessing the breadth and scale of what we’re dealing with specifically here in Gibraltar, can only be one limited parameter in a scientific analysis of the drugs situation locally. We have said it over and over again: our approach must be customized to suit our own reality, whilst learning from the depth of expertise to be found in the UK and elsewhere and which it is difficult to match on such a complex knowledge area as this is here in Gibraltar.
“ERG and Stay Clean, in our Connected Health Campaign and proposals have spearheaded demands in Gibraltar for drugs laws to be reformed so as to allow Government and the caring professionals to regulate their supply and use. We will continue and persevere in those demands. Regulation of drugs and drugs reform do not mean or herald that all drugs are to be freely available.
“Ironically, that’s what actually happens already today! No, that means taking control and administering and continuously monitoring a system which, today, has allowed criminal mafias to grow so rich that they can equip themselves with, as the UN admits in its Report, ‘advanced technology, semi-submersible vessels, drones and modern telecommunications equipment for trafficking to the use of the darknet for the purchase and sale of drugs.’
“Enough is enough! This community needs Government to take action and work to bring more science, more objectivity and more compassion to the situation, and seize control of the situation once and for all.”
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