U.N. development chief flags failings of 'war on drugs'

        
There is increasing evidence that the war on drugs has failed, with criminalization often creating more problems than it solves, said Helen Clark, the head of the United Nations Development Program.             

Speaking ahead of Thursday's presentation of the UNDP's 2013 Human Development Report, Clark, a former New Zealand prime minister, said Latin American leaders should be encouraged to develop different policies to tackle the drug scourge.            

"I've been a health minister in my past and there's no doubt that the health position would be to treat the issue of drugs as primarily a health and social issue rather than a criminalized issue," Clark told Reuters in an interview.             

"Once you criminalize, you put very big stakes around. Of course, our world has proceeded on the basis that criminalization is the approach," she added.             

Clark did not prescribe remedies to the Latin American governments but said they should "act on evidence," noting that she favored treating drugs as a public health problem.          
In recent years, many Latin American governments have begun to openly challenge the 40-year orthodoxy of the U.S.-led "war on drugs" that seeks to stamp out the cultivation and distribution of drugs like marijuana and cocaine.           

Clark declined to comment on the responsibilities the United States should shoulder in any new drug policy and advised Latin American governments against adopting an "us-and-them" stance when dealing with the United States and consumer countries.            

UNDP spokeswoman Christina LoNigro later said in a statement that Clark had not criticized the U.S. policy on the so-called war on drugs.           

"She was speaking about the negative effects the drug trade has had on development in some Latin American countries in the context of the Human Development Report," she added.            

"The countries in the region that have been ravaged by the armed violence associated with drug cartels are starting to think laterally about a broad range of approaches and they should be encouraged to do that," said Clark.            

"They should act on evidence," she added.             


REUTERS