In the 1980s Poland had the most liberal drug policy in Europe. Because of this, Polish drug addicts did not ally with the criminal sub-culture, they were not afraid to seek help at public health care facilities, and it was much easier to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS among them. The Polish Minister of Health just started a public debate about changing our anti-drugs laws. He proposed that we not punish people who possess small amounts of prohibited drugs for personal use. In this discussion the most important element will be the voice of the public. According to the latest opinion polls, more than 80% of Poles support punishment of drug users. Such numbers reflect people s reactions to phenomenon about which we can do nothing. Usually, in such situations, we look for easy answers, like violence. We use psychical punishment against childrens, violence against our spouses, we want more punishment in the criminal code, including death sentences. Such solutions are especially visible in totalitarian societies or in societies that are going through times of transition. Communities populated by fearful and confused people do not seek to understand the sources of evil that surround them. They merely inflict punishment. However, only one in ten Poles feels that the best punishment for illicit drug possession is a prison sentence. Most Poles want to punish people by sending them to obligatory treatment, social work or educational programs. The result of this poll is very similar to research that was done several times in the past. In the past about 10% of Poles wanted prison sentences for addicts. More than 80% felt that the best answer is therapy, and around 10% ( in a recent poll, 18% - KANABA comment ) stated that we should not address drug use as a problem, but that we should allow drug users to do what they want to with their lives.
Across Europe we are observing the progressive homogenization of youth culture, which includes similar drug consumption patterns. Young people are making the choice to experiment with drug consumption, independent of more or less punitive legislation. Countries in which, at the beginning of the nineties, drugs weren t popular, today are very similar in drug consumption patterns to countries that have had very large drug consumption levels during this period. Poland s drug use is now very close to the European Union average. In the coming years we can expect to see a slow down of this trend and perhaps a stabilization, even if a more liberal approach is taken.
Prisons do not make any difference
Consideration of these results shows that public opinion polls - especially ad hoc polls - should not direct our decisions regarding social policies. More important than the public s emotionalism is the answer to the question, "What real effects on drug use will our decisions have?" Punishment for possession of drugs was enacted in Poland in 1997, with penalization of possession for personal use initiated in 2000. Reasons given for this regulations were, from one side, the proposed reduction of drug availability. From the other side, it was thought that punishment would discourage youth from using drugs. New regulations had an instant and unfortunate effect on police statistics. In 1998 the number of drug-related offenses was more than twice than in the previous year, growing from 7,500 to around 16,000 cases in 1999. Exaggeration of these laws in 2000 increased the number of such offenses, from 20,000 in 2000, to 50,000 cases three years later. Even faster was the growth in the numbers of people sentenced to prison time (from around 500 in 1997 to almost 5,000 in 2002). Last year there were almost 6,000 people taken to police detention rooms and prisons. In most cases these were young people arrested for very minor drug offenses. These numbers will increase because every month police catch more and more people that were already punished and are currently on probation. Behind these numbers are hidden thousand of human tragedies. There is also a huge backlog in the justice system. Paying for the activities of our justice agencies takes 93% of the money that Poland spent on drug prevention. There is no data regarding the amount of time that police spend on catching drug users in Poland, but we can reasonably extrapolate on British numbers. We can expect that pursuing only Cannabis offenses in Poland probably takes 177,000 working days. This amounts to about 500 police officers who need to spend all their time just dealing with Cannabis-related offenses. Does this huge judicial effort and the immense cost of socially stigmatizing tens-of-thousands of young Poles have any effect in limiting people s access or desire to use to drugs? Every 4 years, research from the European Schools Project on Alcohol and Drugs (ESPAD) is reviewed. These studies have not shown any decline in the demand for drugs. The number of young Poles (17-18 years) admitting to the use of Cannabis went from 17% in 1995, to 22% in 1999, and then went up again, to 37% in 2003.
ESPAD researchers also studied the availability of drugs. Between 1999 and 2003 the percentage of school students who felt that psychoactive substances were easier to obtain had grown, on average, by a factor of three. The greatest growth was observed in the availability of ecstasy , which increased from 2.5 to 12%; amphetamines incraesed in availability from 6.5 to 17.5% and hashish increased from 10 to 23% during this period of time. These observations by young people are confirmed in the prices of these drugs on the black market. Whenever the supply of drugs is reduced, then, in accordance with market economics, the price on the street ought logically to increase. However, research shows that unit prices of most drugs dropped between 1999 and 2003. Amphetamine prices went down, from 20 Euros to 10 Euros per dose, heroin from 50 Euros to 45 Euros, and hashish went from 10 Euros to 7-8 Euros per dealer dose . Data cited in this article shows that punishing people for possession of drugs did not have any of the expected results. Besides the social costs, and a huge effort by police that cannot be expressed in simplistic financial costs, the levels of drug consumption grew significantly, while availability of illegal drugs is growing substantially.
Going in the opposite direction of the European Union
Poland could avoid these tragic costs if we were to learn from the experiences of other European countries. After decades of repressive and counter-productive drug polices, for the last ten years Europe has begun to liberalize its drug policies. May of of these countries were inspired by the success of Polish drug laws dating from 1985. During that period, Poland decriminalized possession of all drugs ( and cultivation of psychoactive plants - KANABA. ). Opponents of Polish legislation -- that, judging from its success in achieving the government s stated goals, was the most rational in Europe -- declared their expectations of a huge increase in drug production and consumption. This in fact did not happened at all. In the years between 1985-89 drug use in Poland stabilized. In the early nineties Poland observed slight increases in drug use. The reason for this growth was not because Poland had the most liberal drug laws. It was because of rapid transitions being created by the European youth culture. Also of significance was the shift to making Polish currency exchangeable, which facilitated Poland s increased participation in the European black market. Decriminalisation of personal use in 1985 allowed Poland to avoid the social exclusion of tens-of-thousands of young people.
We had no more than 500-600 drug users in Polish prisons throughout the eighties. They represented less than one percent of all prisoners. During this time, in countries that had repressive drug policies, 40-70% of prisoners were serving sentences for their use of drugs. The worst failures in the War on Drugs are seen in the United States. More than 1,500,000 (one million, five hunded thousand) people are currently being punished for drug offenses. In the years that Polish drug users were not driven underground, the drug sub-culture was not involved with the criminal sub-culture. Drug users were not afraid to seek clinical therapy and rehabilitation. It was much easier to distribute credible drug information, provide realistic drug education, and facilitate effective treatment. Thanks to Poland s more pragmatic drug policies, during the eighties and nineties we were able to effectively block the spread of HIV/AIDS between injecting drug users. After a year-and-a-half of steady increases in the number of infected users, the number of new infections dropped to around 250-400 new cases. To this day the figures are staying at about the same levels. The numbers of new HIV cases in Poland are not only much lower than in countries like Belarus or Ukraine, but also lower than in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and most of the "old EU" member states. In spite of our past successes with tolerant drug policies, Poland has returned to the repressive approach. Since the mid- nineties Poland has started to slip backwards into the opposite, more tolerant and realistic direction being taken by the rest of West Europe. When old European Union started to take a more effective approach to the problems of drug abuse, Poland turned toward repressive direction. Today the European Union is sending a clear message to Poland - You already tried being "hard on drugs" - let s be smarter now. It will be very bad for everyone in Poland, if we are forced to admit that WE WERE SMARTER BEFORE.
Ph.D Jacek Moskalewicz
Jacek Moskalewicz is the Head of the Department of Studies on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence at the Institute of Psychiatry and Neurology in Warsaw, Poland. He is also in charge of the Institute s collaboration with the World Health Organization and of the secretariat of the Institute s Scientific Council.
Translated by artur and PvH
