Ensuring Public Health and Safety while Guaranteeing Individual Rights

Abstract

The balanced approach between supply and demand reduction is based on a false dichotomy. What is needed is a fair balance between the demands of the general interest of the community and the protection of the individual’s fundamental rights. Balancing supply reduction with demand reduction efforts is the result of a political process to bring about more attention and funds to deal with the health and social consequences of illicit drug use and interdiction. It was a political compromise between different ideologies and geopolitical interests brokered in the diplomatic sphere, and achieving more coherence between drug policy aspects was not the aim. While the “balanced approach between supply and demand reduction” brought more political prominence to the health-related aspects of the world drug problem, it manifested tensions between supply side advocates and supporters of demand reduction.