As a run-up to this event, the world had been divided into 10 sections:

1. Australia and New Zealand Consultation

2. Eastern Europe and Central Asia

3. Latin America and the Caribbean Consultation

4. N. Africa and the Middle East Consultation

5. North America Consultation (Vancouver)

6. South Asia Consultation

7. SE and E Asia and the Pacific Consultation

8. Sub-Saharan Africa Consultation

9. Western Europe Consultation

10. North America Consultation (St. Petersburg-attended only by supporters of the war on drugs)

Each section had their own Beyond 2008 conference, with between 100 and 150 NGOs from those sections of the world participating. From each of those consultations about 20 NGOs were chosen to represent their section in Vienna.

Much hard work went into struggling with Calvina Fay, the Executive Director of Drug Free America Foundation and Save Our Society From Drugs (S.O.S.) who was also there, acting for the US drug czar. They have a great deal of power and money. The good news is that their power is weaning. Fewer NGOs supported that side of the debate than I expected.

Representative NGOs from eight of the 10 formerly convened conferences reported that their consultations agreed much too much money is being spent on supply reduction (meaning drug interdiction, arrest and imprisonment of those involved in the drug culture). Those NGOs wanted to treat drug abuse as a health problem.

We spent three days hammering out a document which suggested the direction the United Nations take in world drug policy over the next 10 years. The document had to be arrived at through consensus opinion, which precluded any one voting on anything. You can imagine how hard that might've been.

Graham Boyd, ACLU Drug Law Reform Project, offered the following synopsis of the outcomes on his [url=http://blog.aclu.org/author/gboyd/ ]blog[/url]:

“Dispatch from Vienna, Day Three: A Global Consensus for Drug Policy Reform”

“The first-ever meeting of ordinary people, representing the entire globe and discussing the state of the world’s drug policy, concluded today in Vienna with a unanimous, united call for a new approach to drug control policy. Here are the highlights of our resolution:

• We recognized "the human rights abuses against people who use drugs"

• We called for "evidence-based" drug policy focused on "mitigation of short-term and long-term harms" and "full respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms"

• We called on the U.N. to report on the collateral consequences of the current criminal justice-based approach to drugs and to provide an "analysis of the unintended consequences of the drug control system"

• We called for comprehensive "reviews of the application of criminal sanctions as a drug control measure"

• We recognized harm reduction as a necessary and worthwhile response to drug abuse (harm reduction is a set of practical strategies that reduce negative consequences of drug use, incorporating a spectrum of strategies from safer use, to managed use to abstinence; harm reduction strategies meet drug users "where they’re at," addressing conditions of use along with the use itself)

• We called for a shift in primary emphasis from interdiction to treatment and prevention

• We called for alternatives to incarceration

• We called for the provision of development aid to farmers before eradication of coca or opium crops

“In other words, we voiced the need for a very significant shift in direction for drug policy at just about every level.”

Of course, whether the UN acts on any of it remains to be seen.

Please read Graham's full blog at http://blog.aclu.org/author/gboyd/.

Here are some pictures:

1. UN Drug Czar Antonio Marie Costa talking to assembly of NGOs—arrived quite late due to plane problems. Costa’s idea of useful statements were aimed at belittling the NGOs that leaned toward harm reduction; "We must move beyond these debates between a drug-free world and a free drug world," and “Legalizers say no to Marlboro but yes to Skunk.” It turned out the pro harm reduction NGOs were the vast majority of those represented in the assembly.

2. A tell-tale moment as Drug-warrior type NGOs (Calvina Fay in green representing those attending the St. Petersburg conference) and Daniel Reist of Center for Addictions Research of British Columbia & Gillian Maxwell of Keeping the Door Open (representing those attending the Vancouver conference) presented conflicting summaries of what NGOs from North America wanted the UN to do. This was the only one of nine sections of the world that had to have two different conference to represent their NGOs.

3. Rod Skager an award winner at the New Orleans DPA conference, representing Beyond Zero Tolerance and Jack Cole at a point where I tried to insert a particularly important point into the document. The original read:

Call upon the CND to:

c. evaluate its own work and identify ways in which its effectiveness might be improved.

I ask that “ways” be struck and “alternative paradigms” be inserted in its place.

Rod Skager is reacting to Calvina Fay’s howl from the far side of the room of “Oh no,” which could be heard by everybody.

The conference presented the possibility of entering “New Text proposed for inclusion in the Declaration or Resolutions.

The procedure adopted at the Forum was to review and amend the text of the draft Declaration and Resolutions first. New text and recommendations would be reviewed, time permitting, once consideration of the initial draft was completed. Where participants had completely new text they wished to be considered for inclusion, they were asked to submit the text in writing. The text in this document is provided for information. It was not reviewed, debated or adopted by the Forum.

LEAP had joined ENCOD and other NGOs in trying to get the following “New Text” to be inserted in the Resolution but the time for the insertion was used up by dilatory, absurd, and frivolous motions presented by those few NGOs in favor of continuing the drug war:

Proposed additional text – OBJECTIVE 3

Recalling that the 1997 World Drug Report contained an interesting chapter on the debate on legal regulation of drugs, which chapter could and should have served as the start of a more detailed discussion on this issue;

Regretting that this was the last we heard about it;

Noting that the term “control” is misplaced for a situation in which the market of illegal drugs is not controlled by UNODC or by governments, but by criminal organizations;

Noting that since 1997 no more effort has been made by UNODC or CND to consider alternative drug control strategies;

Mindful that in every organisation that is dealing with complex problems, everyone involved is being stimulated to “think outside the box”, except in the drugs issue; Mindful that Executive Director Costa regularly belittles this issue by portraying proponents of legal regulation as being in favour of a world of free drugs – whereas this not seriously being proposed by anyone;

Call upon Member States, UNODC and CND to undertake a mature, rational and thorough study of alternative drug control policies, and consider ways forward that are more humane, just and effective than the current prohibitionist framework. (ENCOD)

A presentation of the new text had been organized with backup from several “Legalize & regulate” organizations, however, the other side was successful in delaying the final resolution of the original document to the point where there was no time left to discuss the new text we wanted to insert into the resolution.

4. Caitlin Padgett of Youth Rise and Kris Krane of Students for Sensible Drug Policy battling Calvina Fay and her group of supporters of the drug war, for inclusion of a statement that young people are the main portion of drug users. It would seem innocuous but the drug-warriors fought its inclusion for about half an hour. I think the real reason for the arguing was to run out the clock so there would not be time to add passages of new text to the Declaration. (see Proposed additional text below)

5. Michel Perron in the pink tie chaired the conference. He is CEO of Canadian Center on Substance Abuse. I can’t say enough about the abilities of Mr. Perron in obtaining a consensus opinion, virtually on every word of a 12 page final document. There were no votes taken. Consensus meant that there could not be one person who continued to voice disagreement out of 300 representatives as diverse as Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and Drug Free America Foundation. Do you have any idea how hard it was to forge a consensus from that mass of NGOs? The man on the right of the picture is David Turner. David was also essential, as he quickly molded each new statement into a workable sentence for presentation for possible consensus. As we worked the entire screen behind the facilitators was filled with a word document that had been created by the facilitators as a summary of all of the suggestions that had already been submitted by the nine sections of the world reporting. That was the starting point, so we instantly saw the changes we were making to that document. Up would go a new set of two to three words only to be instantly challenged and replaced with four or five other words, to be replaced with others, and so on. Sometimes after many minutes of this the sentence would suddenly revert back to its original and the consensus would be that we could all live with that.

Click here to view Graham Boyd's blog in its entirety.