The war on drugs is unjust and ineffective.
Prioritising communities, health and justice works.
But governments continue to fund the war on drugs and fail to invest in justice.
The War on Drugs is Wasting Money
Between 2012 and 2021 narcotics control cost $266,703 per day
An equivalent investment could fund:
329,263syringes per day
AN INTERSECTIONAL MOVEMENT FOR JUSTICE
The drug war disproportionately affects women, trans and gender diverse people.
While 1 in 3 drug users are women, they make up only 1 in 5 accessing drug treatment. Trans women are 49 times more likely to be living with HIV. These punitive laws also fuel mass incarceration—33% of imprisoned women globally are jailed for drug offences, with female imprisonment rates rising sharply, especially in Asia, the Pacific, and Latin America.
The drug war upholds racist structures.
This leads to systemic discrimination and devastating health outcomes for Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities. In the USA, Black individuals are 4 times more likely to be arrested for drug possession than white individuals. In the UK, Black people are 9 times more likely to be stopped and searched under drug laws. Indigenous and Black communities in Canada, Australia, and the USA face higher incarceration rates and worse health outcomes due to lack of harm reduction services.Colonial-era drug policies continue to criminalise Indigenous communities and traditions, exacerbating health crises like HIV and hepatitis C.
The drug war destroys the environment.
Punitive drug policies like aerial fumigation of crops drive deforestation, toxic pesticide use, and pollution.Laws and treaties that criminalise drugs are threatening ecologically fragile areas.
RESOURCES
Criminalising drugs doesn’t decrease drug use or sale, and it doesn't help to reduce drug-related harms.
However, these punitive laws result in human rights violations, the spread of infectious diseases like HIV and hepatitis, and the avoidable loss of life. They fuel stigma and discrimination, especially towards people from marginalised communities.
We know that public health programmes that prioritise community and justice are effective and save public funds. Yet governments and donors around the world continue to waste vast amounts of money on funding punitive responses to drugs, with little transparency or accountability.
We must divest from this ineffective and unjust response to drugs. When we do, we free up essential funds to invest in programmes that prioritise community, health and justice. This includes harm reduction as well as other social and community programmes that benefit marginalised people and lead to healthier, safer societies.
Join our campaign to invest in justice.
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Divest from the unjust drug war. Invest in justice.
We spend over USD 100 billion on drug law enforcement each year, but at last count investment in harm reduction totalled only USD 131 million. This is merely 5 percent of what is needed in low- and middle-income (LMI) countries. Decades of punitive drug laws have not decreased drug use or sales. Instead, they have resulted in human rights violations, increased HIV and hepatitis, and the loss of life. These laws stigmatise and criminalise people, particularly those from marginalised communities. Globally, drug laws have upheld racist and colonial structures and resulted in poor health for people and communities.
At the international level, prominent global powers exert influence over drug policy in low-and middle-income countries via funding flows, the provision of resources and technical assistance, and the promotion of prohibition. A striking example of this is the use of public funds for narcotics control, as governments use official development assistance (ODA) budgets to fund the global war on drugs.
As part of the advocacy leading up to the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on Drugs in 2016,we called for a redirection of funds from punitive drug law enforcement to harm reduction. However, a campaign to divest from the unjust drug war is about more than just harm reduction. When we divest from the drug war, we free up essential funds to invest in programmes that prioritise community, health, and justice.
People working on racial justice, criminal legal reform, women's rights, sex workers’ rights, and LGBTQIA+ rights are our natural allies in challenging exclusion, criminalisation, stigma, and discrimination. With this campaign, we want to build a broad and diverse coalition of people working in allied social justice movements calling on governments and donors to divest from punitive approaches so that we can invest in community, health and justice.
- We call on government and donors to divest from the unjust drug war and related punitive drug law enforcement at the international, national, and subnational levels, and invest in programmes that prioritise community, health and justice.
- We call on donor countries to stop using money from their limited development aid budgets for narcotics control, which often violates human rights and undermines health and development goals.
- We call on donors and governments to be transparent about their national and international spending on drug policy.
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