Drug Policy Formation Must Include All Actors, SPP Panelists Say

Farmers who make a living growing opium are not the enemy, according to panelists at the debate entitled “Drugs and Development: Punishing the Poor,” held Feb. 20 as part of the CEU SPP`s debate series co-sponsored by the Open Society Foundations’ Global Drug Policy Program. These farmers are often poor and uneducated, living in isolated rural areas controlled by drug traffickers. They need to be brought into the dialogue about policy, the panel concluded.

“The cultivation of drugs is a sign of poverty rather than a sign of wealth,” said Julia Buxton, head of International Relations and Security Studies, Peace Studies, at the University of Bradford, U.K.  “Development policy emphasizes community participation, but we cannot engage with drug producers because they are viewed as criminals. We cannot develop inclusive strategies until they are viewed as participants rather than criminals.”

The conference concluded with a challenging question posed by SPP Dean Wolfgang Reinicke, who asked on which policy aspects SPP students should focus, and what they might seek to achieve if they choose to tackle this complex global problem. The panelists responded by saying students could make a difference on a number of levels, local, national or international, and in the social, economic, security or political fields. SPP’s inaugural class will arrive in September 2013 to begin a two-year Master of Public Administration program.

The next event in the series will take place at CEU on April 11 and will be entitled ‘The Global Drug Prohibition Regime: Half a Century of Failed Policy-Making?’.