The writer, a former prime minister of New Zealand, chairs the Global Commission on Drug Policy
Coronavirus has shone a new spotlight on an old problem: the questionable usefulness of policies that criminalise certain drugs.
During the pandemic the US, normally well supplied with painkillers, suffered shortages of opioids needed to anaesthetise intubated patients. One reason for this alarming shortfall was because the Drug Enforcement Agency had mandated the reduced manufacture of medicines, such as morphine and fentanyl, as part of its attempt to grapple with the US’s opioid-abuse crisis. Another reason was because of supply chain bottlenecks in the manufacture of needed painkilling drugs.
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