Lead International Drug Policy

International efforts to reduce illegal drug use are making progress in containing the increasing global threat posed by drug trafficking and drug use. These efforts have evolved over the past century to include a balance of supply reduction (which focuses on the illegal drug supply) and demand reduction (which focuses on reducing the use of illicit drugs) and been adopted by the international community with leadership from the United Nations. The future of global drug policy builds on this foundation, using new ideas to make tomorrow’s drug use prevention strategies even better than those of today.

The goal of this balanced strategy – both prevention and treatment – is recovery, including non-use. Only stopping substance use will curtail the social and economic costs associated with drug use. Illegal drug use causes negative outcomes such as workplace accidents, traffic crashes, school failures, developmental problems, mental health disorders and crime. Many crimes result from the intoxication produced by illegal drug use. 

There are some who argue that the balanced strategy is not working and that substance non-use is a hopeless goal. These critics want to contain or eliminate the role of law enforcement in drug policy. In the name of compassion and realism they call for the international community to help illegal drug users by ensuring safer injection sites, purer drugs, and easier drug availability. This point of view is known as Harm Reduction because it seeks to reduce some of the harms from drug use without reducing illegal drug use itself. It is the unwitting road back to an earlier era of more open drug markets that created massive worldwide drug problems. Global efforts to reduce illegal drug use was the result of the failure of the earlier approach which treated these drugs similarly to other commercial products.

Why has drug use become a growing global problem in recent decades? Addictive drugs produce a powerful brain reward that promotes repeated use of these chemicals despite the harm they cause to individuals, families, communities and nations. Substance use disorders hijacks the brain to prioritize continued substance use and to minimize the evidence of the negative consequences of that use. The widespread availability of illegal drugs by potent routes of administration by large populations, especially young people, is a direct result of globalization’s fast, easy supply routes accompanied by rapid changes in the social, economic, cultural and religious efforts that previously monitored and sought to reduce drug use.

Sweden, a country with a well-earned history of being a compassionate welfare state, has adopted a powerful and thoroughly modern vision of a drug-free society. During an intravenous amphetamine epidemic that rapidly swept the country in the late 1960s, Sweden initially authorized the distribution through medical channels, of amphetamines and opiates. The objective of this policy was to reduce the crime associated with drug use, as well as to wean individuals with substance use disorders from their severe drug habits. Amphetamine and opiate use increased directly as a direct result of this program. Many patients, after obtaining the medically prescribed drugs from physicians, sold them to others thereby increasing substance use and subsequent addiction. The Swedish government then reversed itself and adopted restrictive drug policies and the intravenous drug use epidemic abated.

Today a drug-free society is a stated goal in Sweden and elsewhere in the world. Drug education programs start early and regularly appear throughout the school curriculum. They do not teach “moderate” or “responsible” use of illegal drugs. They teach abstinence from illegal drug use. Drug tests are regularly used to detect those suspected of drug use in settings such as in the workplace and on the highways. The criminal law is widely used to discourage drug use and to promote treatment and recovery as well as to reinforce prevention messages. (See for example US Needs to Follow Sweden’s Lead in Drug Policy published in DrugNews.) 

IBH encourages collaboration between nations to promote a balanced global drug strategy that encompasses law enforcement, prevention and treatment to reduce both the supply of illegal drugs and the use of illegal drugs.

IBH Activities

IBH is a proud member of the World Federation Against Drugs, a multilateral community of non-governmental organizations and individuals working toward a drug-free world.  IBH President Robert L. DuPont, MD, helped found the organization in 2009 and proudly serves on the Board of Directors representing North America.

IBH is also a member of Drug Policy Futures, a global platform for a new drug policy debate that is based on health that rejects the dangerous false dichotomy of drug policy as a choice between “a failed war on drugs” and “legalization.”

In September 2021, IBH President Robert L. DuPont, MD presented the problem of marijuana-impaired driving to an international audience at the Nordic Summit on Cannabis held in Copenhagen, Denmark.

On June 26, 2019 IBH joined forces with the World Federation Against Drugs (WFAD), Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) and Drug Free America Foundation (DFAF) to organize a Global Drug Policy Summit, in Phoenix, Arizona, bringing together an impressive list of powerful voices for effective and innovative policy and practice to combat today’s drug epidemic.

In May 2018 Dr. DuPont participated in the 6th Annual World Forum Against Drugs in Gothenburg, Sweden and presented closing plenary remarks.

In November 2016 IBH President Robert L. DuPont, MD participated in the first narcotics workshop hosted by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (PAS) at the Vatican entitled, "Narcotics: Problems and Solutions of this Global Issue." In February 2017 PAS released a Final Statement making clear recommendations for actions by the international community. More IBH Events.