The Alternative World Drug Report was created as an alternative counterpoint to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s 2012 World Drug Report (12.5mb PDF).
According to the Alternative World Drug Report’s website,
In its 2008 World Drug Report, the UNODC acknowledged that choosing an enforcement-based approach was having a range of negative “unintended consequences”, including: the creation of a vast criminal market, displacement of the illegal drugs trade to new areas, diversion of funding from health, and the stigmatisation of users.
It is unacceptable that neither the UN or its member governments have meaningfully assessed these unintended consequences to establish whether they outweigh the intended consequences of the current global drug control system, and that they are not documented in the UNODC’s flagship annual World Drug Report.
This groundbreaking Alternative World Drug Report fills this gap in government and UN evaluations by detailing the full range of negative impacts resulting from choosing an enforcement-led approach.
The 108-page Alternative World Drug Report is available as a PDF (2mb PDF) and is released under a Creative Commons license.