The fall out from Indonesia’s execution of Chan and Sukumaran for drug trafficking continues. In their unprecedented press conference on 3 May, the leaders of the Australian Federal Police argued that under existing laws and guidelines, they were obliged to share intelligence with their Indonesian counterparts. Moreover, under similar conditions in future, the AFP expects that similar decisions will be made. The basic problems are that many young Australians travel to countries that still retain the death penalty for drug trafficking (and some other offences) and prohibition is still the global drug policy. So the execution of Australians and citizens of other nationalities for drug trafficking in future are inevitable.
As so often happens with tragedies, the search is now on for someone or some organization to blame. The problem is that everyone is responsible while no one is also responsible: this is in reality a system problem.
The members of the firing squad weren’t really responsible as they were just carrying out orders. The Indonesian police and court officials weren’t really responsible as they were merely implementing laws that their parliament had passed. President Widodo wasn’t really responsible as he was, like any good democratic leader, merely responding to overwhelming popular opinion in his country. Howard and Rudd weren’t responsible either because in their earlier support for the execution of the Bali bombers they reflected overwhelming popular opinion in their country at the time. Abbott and Bishop weren’t responsible as they inherited this mess from their predecessors. And Chan and Sukumaran weren’t really responsible because they were merely pawns of higher-level criminals who managed to evade detection. The seven mules weren’t responsible either because Chan and Sukumaran had coerced them. As is so often the case in drug trafficking cases, the fall guys who got caught and paid the ultimate price came from poor minority families.
Compounding the tragedy is the ineffectiveness of drug prohibition, now acknowledged with increasing frequency. More than half a dozen retired and now even serving Australian Police Commissioners have conceded that drug law enforcement has minimal impact on the drug market. A year ago, Prime Minister Tony Abbott admitted that the war on drugs is a war we cannot win but nevertheless argued that it is a war we should keep fighting. In June 2011 the Global Commission on Drug Policy, consisting of more than twenty retired world leaders, released a report documenting the failure of drug prohibition and called for a consideration of options. In the last four years, the Global Commission on Drug Policy has recruited more world leaders and issued more reports. Some countries are now starting to reform their drug policy. In April 2016 in New York, a United Nations General Assembly Special Session will consider the growing crisis in global drug policy.
The seizure of 390 kg of heroin off the coast of Part Macquarie in 1998 did not affect the price or purity of heroin in Australia. Chan and Sukumaran were executed for their role in the attempted trafficking of 8 kg of heroin. What these executions may have done for a time is increase the perception of risk for drug traffickers. That might then get translated into higher prices and greater profits which might in turn convince some wavering wannabe drug trafficker to try their luck. Whatever else drugs might be, they are also a market with buyers and sellers agreeing on a price for a quantity of a commodity. But unlike most markets, drugs are bought and sold in a pyramid market where buyers are also sellers.
If drug prohibition was to ever be effective anywhere it should be in prisons. Yet drugs are available in most prisons. A few years ago on an international assignment I asked a prisoner in an Indonesian drug prison near Jakarta whether inmates could still obtain drugs. ‘Yes’ he replied, ‘but they are usually more expensive than in the community though sometimes drugs are less expensive inside than outside prisons’.
So why do we keep fighting a war on drugs when an increasing number of prominent members of the community accept that this is futile?
Professor Craig Reinarman, a US academic concluded that ‘drugs are richly functional scapegoats. They provide elites with fig leaves to place over unsightly social ills that are endemic to the social system over which they preside. And they provide the public with a restricted aperture of attribution in which only a chemical bogeyman or the lone deviants who ingest it are seen as the cause of a cornucopia of complex problems.’
We continue to fight a war on drugs for several reasons. Drug wars are still useful politically. Many politicians still think the transitional costs of changing drug policy are too high. But there are now supporters of drug law reform among politicians of virtually all parties. Law enforcement aimed to reduce the supply of drugs employs many people. The costs of continuing the current failed policy are increasing while the costs of changing policy are declining as more countries move out from the crumbling straightjacket of international drug control.
Australians who wish to avoid more tragedies like Chan and Sukumaran should support drug law reform and the universal abolition of the death penalty.
Dr. Alex Wodak AM, President, Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation, Director, Australia21
Dr Alex Wodak, AM, is a physician and has been a Director of the Alcohol and Drug Service at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital, President of the Australia Drug Law Reform Foundation, Board Member of Australia21 & the Australian Tobacco Harm Reduction Association.
Emeritus Consultant, st Vincent’s Hospital, Darlinghurst, NSW, 2010 Tobacco Harm Reduction Adviser to the Harm Reduction Australia Board.
Comments
3 responses to “Alex Wodak. Prohibition and its discontents: who really killed Chan and Sukumaran?”
This article is premised upon a fallacy of composition. It is true that the current “war on drugs” is a failure, but that is because the major players are never targeted, only the traffickers and users. How is it that international banks like HSBC, for instance, can get caught laundering funds for Mexican, South American and middle-eastern drug cartels (not to mention al-Qaeda affiliates!) and get off with a paltry fine, when they ought by rights to be shut down and their executives jailed? Why on earth have American, British and, sad to say, Australian forces in Afghanistan been protecting the opium fields (you need not take my word for it, there are plenty of photos floating around of US Marines walking foot patrols through the poppies), instead of torching them and protecting the farmers from the cartels whilst they grow much-needed food crops instead? And why is it that when Viktor Ivanov, head of the Russian Federation’s Drug Control Service (FSKN), took a workable proposal to the UN to eliminate the production and distribution of Afghan heroin and prosecute the afore-mentioned drug-money-laundering banks, Barack Obama responded by placing him on the sanctions list (thereby prohibiting any inter-agency co-operation between FSKN and the FBI, DEA etc) despite his having no possible connection to the events in Ukraine, upon which the sanctions are ostensibly premised? Answer these questions honestly and you will see why the so-called “war on drugs” has failed.
This article is a considered opinion on the problems of Drug Law Reform.
As I write this Ken Lay (former Head of Victorian Police) is saying on national radio that drugs.and “ice” in particular are out of control in our community and wreaking havoc. The War on Drugs is not working and as this article points out, it is hiding the real problems in our society like poverty, poor educational opportunities and social isolation.
“And Chan and Sukumaran weren’t really responsible because they were merely pawns of higher-level criminals who managed to evade detection. The seven mules weren’t responsible either because Chan and Sukumaran had coerced them.”
That is the most pathetic denial of personal accountability I’ve ever read.
Chan and Sukamaran were not victims. As per The Guardian:
“In just two weeks in April 2005, the syndicate was responsible for the arrest, and later the incarceration, of 17 young Australians for heroin trafficking in three countries.
Chan enlisted Sydney teenager Rachel Diaz, 17, and Chris Vo, 15, both from western Sydney, as drug couriers to smuggle $1 million worth of heroin in condoms, which they were to swallow in Hong Kong and bring back to Australia.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2869230/Bali-Nine-ringleader-Andrew-Chan-mastermind-international-drug-deal-went-horribly-wrong-threatened-17-year-old-mule-Hong-Kong-jail-mouth-shut.html
Chan and Sukamaran were not unsuspecting victims, which you are trying to portray them as. They were indeed ‘responsible’ for their actions. Worse, they encouraged others who were in far more vulnerable circumstances to join their criminal syndicate, knowing they could also lose their lives.