Abstract

Condemned to Death

The author claims that harsh anti-drug policies in many of the world's AIDS/HIV hotspots encourage the spread of the disease among injection drug users. Conference organizers and UN officials alike seem to want to forget that, to the group at highest risk for HIV across Asia--injection drug users--what Thailand offers looks less like innovative AIDS prevention than old-fashioned, barrel-of-the-gun repression. In February 2003 the governing Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thais) party launched an all-out war on drugs that has included forced urine testing at nightclubs and bars, arrest quotas and mass roundups of alleged dealers and addicts. [T]he crackdown's effect on programs serving drug users, including HIV prevention and research efforts, has been immediate and ugly. As a result, while rates of HIV have fallen among Thai sex workers, they have been climbing steadily among injection drug users. In addition to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which implements UN drug programs on the ground, the conventions are backed up by a substantial political apparatus: the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), which sets UN drug policy, and the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB), which monitors international compliance. In theory the conventions, which do not specify penalties for drugs or even require that the laws against possession be enforced, are flexible. But in the drug war, as in other conflicts, the United States has expended significant energy to muscle the UN into endorsement of its belief that the only strong intervention is a strongly punitive one.