On
Drugs, UN Urges More Government Control, Even in Myanmar, Dodges Crack
Disparities
Byline:
Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis
UNITED NATIONS, March 4 -- While celebrity
drug use is the hook to the
UN's
International
Narcotics Control Board's new
annual report, INCB's analysis of disparities in sentencing dodges
issues that impact many more people, for example the racial disparate
sentences imposed on users of powder versus crack cocaine. Inner City
Press asked INCA board member, and former U.S. Ambassador to Bulgaria
Melvyn Levitsky about this, and he responded that the UN's INCB "doesn't
try to dictate" countries' sentencing schemes. But the INCB report
pointedly recommends that high-profile drug users not be coddled. Why
not recommend that racial minorities not be disproportionately
imprisoned for their use of one form of cocaine rather than another?
Levitsky's responses at the report's launch at UN
Headquarters were more detailed than is usual the case. Asked by Inner
City Press about the INCB's missions to Bolivia and elsewhere, Levitsky
criticized Bolivia for not yet banning the use of coca for traditional
purposes. Of the decline to zero of opium production during the last
year of Taliban control, Levitsky said this was attributable to the
Taliban trying to drive up the price of heroin. The basis of this
convenient theory wasn't disclosed -- a stray page of laptop found in a
cave at Tora Bora, perhaps. At the University of Michigan, Levitsky
teaches a class on Drugs, Crime and Terrorism, which he made a point of
saying, including
online, is called Drugs & Thugs.
Levitsky and report
Levitsky also seemed to parrot the Bush
administration line when he referred off-handedly to the "shady area of
harm reduction" and needle exchange. What' so shady? Particularly when
the UN itself is on record as prioritizing stopping the spread of HIV /
AIDS?
Levitsky said that INCB recommends that central
governments assert more control over their territory, to control drugs.
Inner City Press asked if this is the UN's recommendation with respect
to Myanmar, where those with "close
ties to the military regime" are subject to sanctions for
involvement in the heroin trade. While Levitsky cited back to Shan and
Ha warlords, he did not answer on current government involvement. He
acknowledged that anti-drug and human rights imperatives could sometimes
be at odds. That's a start.
* * *
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Click
here for a
Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army.
Click
here
for an earlier
Reuters AlertNet
piece about the Somali National Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's
$200,000 contribution from an undefined trust fund.
Video
Analysis here
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