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April 2014 |
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it’s creating a different backdrop to the
general discussions.’
But it’s at the side events where
the real debate takes place, she
points out. ‘This year they were
incredible. Uruguay had an event
where they presented their cannabis
regulation initiative and I’ve never
seen one that packed, and it wasn’t
just NGOs in the room – it was mostly
government. The US were in there,
furiously scribbling notes.’
Scheduling of substances was a
central issue, with many countries
worried about the proliferation of new
drugs. There was a debate around
ketamine, which WHO had been
asked to review but failed to
recommended for scheduling because
of the number of countries –
particularly in the developing world –
that rely on it for anaesthesia.
‘That’s particularly true for
emergency operations in conflict
situations because apparently it’s very
easy, if someone’s been shot, to just
give them an injection of ketamine
and then there’s no need for any other
complicated anaesthesia,’ says
Fordham. ‘Ketamine’s not under
international control so you can carry
it across borders but if you were to
put it under international control, and
this is a pretty serious indictment of
the international drug control system,
it would severely limit access. CND
can’t just schedule something that
WHO has recommended not to be
scheduled, but there’s this push from
countries like Thailand and China, and
WHO colleagues are very concerned
because many countries would be
severely affected.’
Did IDPC’s experience of the event
alter their expectations for the
milestone 2016 UN General Assembly
Special Session? ‘I’m not sure how
hopeful we should be, but it’s
heartening to see that some countries
genuinely no longer have the appetite
to just carry on with this charade of a
global consensus,’ she says. ‘There
really were some countries that have
just had enough of that. Places like
Uruguay and also Columbia said that
they have a duty to their citizens to do
the best they possibly can. That
involves looking at alternatives and
having countries put that on the table
is really important. Where people have
come away very pessimistic I can
understand that, but you also do have
to recognise that those things haven’t
been said in those rooms before.’
STATISTICALLY SPEAKING
, the majority of people who use drugs do it in a recreational and
generally functional way. Although motivational forces for any human act are of a complex
nature and cannot be reduced to a single component, their drug taking generally seems to
have more to do with seeking pleasure than escaping pain.
Since the main focus of my work and research is the phenomenon of drug use that is no
longer under control, I was, during my attendance of this year's CND session, primarily
interested in learning about practices that are being implemented on a national and
international level to address this target group’s needs and help make their lives more
manageable, more functional and generally less traumatic.
As it turns out, not much is actually done, although there was certainly an awful lot of
talking about it. The first casualty of CND-type of conferences that attract a bizarre mixture of
prohibition zealots, UN diplomats, treatment providers, harm reductionists and people who
use drugs, is probably any sort of terminological consistency. Language was all over the place:
drug use, drug abuse, drug misuse and drug addiction often seemed to be interpreted as
entirely synonymous terms. Moral notions and intense emotional baggage attached to at least
some of these words went mostly unacknowledged.
Discourse creates reality, and this terminological mess offered a pretty good hint of what
laid in store for the attendees of the convention. Although there was a certain level of
consensus among CND veterans that this year’s conference represented notable progress in
comparison to those a few years ago, which focused almost exclusively on drug war, the
speeches and plenary sessions routinely gave their audience an impression of having stepped
into an entirely different historical era.
The whole convention could be effectively summed up as an endless saga of ideological
ping-pong, essentially a dialogue of the deaf, with apologists of the drug war and zero
tolerance approach on one side and proponents of drug reform on the other. The members of
both camps appeared to be living in parallel worlds, half of them promoting the drug war as a
raving success, the other half interpreting it as a miserable failure. The speakers’ confidence
often tended to be in inverted correlation to their knowledge base, and statistics were rather
casually adjusted to their current needs.
CND is a political affair, I acknowledge that. But with all the endless talk, it is somewhat
hard to come to terms with just how consistently and thoroughly the psychological aspects of
the phenomena of drug use and addiction were avoided. If addiction could be primarily
understood as a coping mechanism and a compulsive repetition of a once-functional act that
is by its essence nostalgic, it would be helpful, but in reality it is not nearly enough to
exclusively address social and legal issues around it.
It is undeniable that it would be of great benefit to anyone involved with drugs to change
the current drug laws, tackle poverty and generally create more life opportunities, but what
remains to be persistently ignored is the vast psychological aftermath of long-term
compulsive drug use. I am not talking about brain changes here – although they definitely
occur and are a contributory factor. But is rather difficult not to acknowledge that the whole
medical paradigm, with its acute lack of compassion and fundamental enforcement of its
perspective as the one and only truth, did very little in terms of eradication of stigma and not
nearly as much as it would like to claim in terms of general improvement of the wellbeing of
people who use drugs.
The lifestyle of persistent preparation of the latest shot, scanning the streets for potential
dealers, frantic search for lost veins and eternal checking if the front door is still locked, takes its
deep psychological toll. Being originally an act of preservation and essentially an attempt to heal
trauma, compulsive drug use ends up to being additionally traumatic, and although the intensity
and manageability of the situation correlates with an individual’s pre-existing vulnerabilities,
this trauma is essentially structural, not incidental.
This is an issue that remains consistently neglected within the current drug policy debates, as
well as the vast majority of drug treatment services. And as far as this year’s CND goes, it
certainly did not accommodate any sort of illusions this will even begin to change anytime soon.
Lana Durjava is a postgraduate student of psychology at the University of Westminster.
COMMENT
A LITTLE LESS CONVERSATION…
Lana Durjava attended the CND meeting in Vienna and
found it woefully short on action, as she tells
DDN
‘The whole
convention
could be
effectively
summed
up as an
endless
saga of
ideological
ping-pong,
essentially
a dialogue
of the deaf.’
LANA DURJAVA