By Dr Rachel Sutherland, National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre (NDARC)

There are multiple terms in use that refer broadly to new, novel or emerging drugs. This includes terms such as research chemicals, analogues, legal highs, herbal highs, synthetic drugs, designer drugs, bath salts, novel psychoactive substances, emerging psychoactive substances and new psychoactive substances. There is considerable variation in the terms used across countries and studies; to promote standardisation of terminology, the term ‘new psychoactive substances’ (NPS) has been adopted by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and the Australian Government Intergovernmental Committee on Drugs.

There remains no universally accepted definition of the term NPS, however they are most commonly defined as substances which do not fall under international drug controls, but which may pose a public health threat comparable to substances that are currently prohibited. However, the broadening of this definition in recent years means that, in practice, the term NPS can refer to psychoactive substances that: 1) are not scheduled under the 1961 United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs or the 1971 United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances; 2) are scheduled but have not previously been well established in recreational drug markets; or 3) have little literature relating to them.

To date, approximately 900 NPS have been identified by the UNODC. It is unknown exactly how many (and which) of these NPS have been detected in Australia, however the UNODC has reported the total figure to be somewhere between 101 and 200.

New psychoactive substances in Australia: Who uses them, how prevalent are they, and where are they sourced?

The improvements recorded in the HIV control may conceal the weaknesses suffered by the vulnerable and marginalized populations: sex workers (SWs), men who have sex with men (MSM), prisoners, and People Who Inject Drugs (PWD). Among those members of the key populations, People Who Inject Drugs remain more invisible and less known in Africa.

Out of the forty-nine (49) Sub Sahara African countries, only sixteen (16) of them have data on injecting drug use. Meanwhile, out of 2.3 million People Who Inject Drugs who are identified in this part of the continent, 564,000 of them are living with HIV.

The Regional Programme of Harm Reduction about HIV, Tuberculosis and other Co-Morbidities, and Human Right Promotion for People Who Inject Drugs (PARECO) which is implemented by ANCS (Alliance Nationale des Communautés pour la Santé) in five (5) West African countries (Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea Bissau, and Senegal) including the Republic of Guinea and Mali, in collaboration with the implementing partners, and funded by the Global Fund, aims at improving access to Harm Reduction services and human right promotion for People Who Inject Drugs in West Africa.

Declaration of Dakar on harm reduction among people who inject drugs in West Africa

What Russia’s younger generation fears more than anything else is not war or illness or going broke, but being picked up by law enforcers on the street and searched for drugs, according to Gleb Paikachov, an activist at the Foundation for Helping Drug Users, a Moscow-based human rights group. Russia’s anti-narcotics laws, he says, “have become a tool of police terror”.

The case of Ivan Golunov – an investigative journalist who was arrested by Moscow police on fabricated narcotics charges and then unexpectedly released last week – has resonated across Russia, stoking resentment about the country’s repressive anti-drugs laws and their implementation.

Activists like Paikachov are seizing the moment to press for reforms of the Russian criminal code’s notorious Article 228, which stipulates tough prison sentences even for minor drug offences.

Golunov’s ordeal – police beatings and pressure to confess to drug crimes – was not unusual in Russia. What was unprecedented was the massive protest against the case in Russian media that forced the interior ministry to back down and admit there was no basis to the charges. Others are not so lucky. Rights groups claim that tens of thousands of innocent people are serving time in Russian jails for drug crimes they did not commit.

Russia began tightening anti-narcotics laws in 2006 to flag determination to combat drug crime. Known as the “people’s law” because of its wide application, Article 228 accounts, at least in part, for a surge in convictions over the past decade, with almost 100,000 people jailed on narcotics charges in 2018 alone, according to official statistics. Most were young and underprivileged without the means to hire reliable defence lawyers.

Golunov case sheds light on Russia’s repressive anti-drugs laws

By The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime

As the UN moves ahead with the next decade of drug policy, combating drug trafficking will remain high on the international agenda. While states largely still agree to address this challenge together, the world around them is changing and the risk is that they will stick to the same old ways of doing business. This UN International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking, commonly known as World Drug Day, we ask whether the international community has learnt anything from the last 10 years of flawed drug-policy responses.

In March 2019, the UN rubber-stamped the next 10 years of international drug policy at the Ministerial Segment on drug policy at the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) in Vienna. Although it is technically a consensus document, the short ministerial declaration agreed upon by states sanctions a way forward that is likely to produce a number of outcomes around the world. Responses will become more divergent as regions and countries (as well as cities and provinces) take their own different approaches to drug markets.

While 2019 was significant as the 10-year target date of the 2009 Political Declaration and Plan of Action on countering the world drug problem, its policymaking significance became somewhat overshadowed by the 2016 UN General Assembly special session on the world drug problem (UNGASS 2016). Mexico, Guatemala and Colombia had asked for the 2019 high-level meeting to be brought forward to 2016 owing to the urgency of drug-related issues in Latin America, and the session produced an outcome document with policy guidance on wide-ranging problems.

As a result, the recent 2019 meeting lost some of its clout as a policymaking moment, but some steam was also lost due to gridlock over where drug policy should go. In 2016, the UNGASS outcome document was hailed by many as a stepping stone towards a more comprehensive perspective on drug policy – one that encompasses human rights, public health and development. Not soon after its adoption, a number of states that prefer the status quo began to lobby against this wider policy focus. This forced governments to seek out where they have common ground in 2019 and resulted in a brief ministerial statement that encourages the implementation of all recommendations from 2009 onwards with a tacit understanding that states and groups of states will choose their own directions going forward.

In the next 10 years, then, observers will see states employing diverse responses and policies domestically, bilaterally and internationally (take, for instance, Canada’s stated commitment to stop the illegal movement of its legal cannabis products across borders). Playing by the rules of the international system while operating outside of it, or reforming it, makes for complicated policy choices, and favours deference to the old ways of doing business, because decades of policy and the UN treaties point this way.

International cooperation on drug trafficking: 10 more years of the same?

Scientific reason broke through the dominant political rhetoric on drugs in Southeast Asia last month. Instead of the “war on drugs” narrative favored by the region’s populists, Malaysia’s government said it was time to put “science and public health before punishment and incarceration” as it proposed decriminalizing personal drug use.

The plan to remove criminal penalties for the possession and use of drugs in small quantities (as opposed to those involved in drug trafficking) is a bold move in a country that currently has some of the world’s most punitive drug laws.

“Malaysia is about to embark on a significant game-changer policy,” Health Minister Dzulkefly Ahmad said in a statement. “An addict shall be treated as a patient (not as a criminal), whose addiction is a disease we will like to cure.”

That the plan was jointly put forward by the health minister and the home affairs minister sent a powerful message of the government’s intent, said Professor Adeeba Kamarulzaman, dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur.

“For decades people who use drugs, whether recreationally or those who have developed an addiction, have been placed within the criminal justice system,” said Kamarulzaman, known for pioneering a harm reduction program among injecting drug users during Malaysia’s HIV epidemic in the 2000s. It’s a “paradigm shift,” she says, to treat rather than punish addiction.

Why Malaysia’s new proposal could change Southeast Asia’s drugs debate

Dave has been growing cannabis since he was 14 years old, when he began using it to treat his ADHD. Known in his part of New Zealand as a “green fairy”– someone who grows and supplies cannabis to patients suffering from pain and disability – he estimates he has supplied more than 1,000 people over the last decade.

With a few hundred plants on the go, the 33-year-old says what was once a hobby has morphed into a full-time occupation, mostly avoiding the attention of police.

“I have been doing it a long time and I have learned how to do it as carefully as possible,” he says.

But with a referendum on recreational use of cannabis looming next year, Dave might not have to be careful for much longer. He is one of several New Zealand growers preparing for a possible yes result by starting to emerge from the shadowy black market to share their expertise.

Last year the government announced an informal “amnesty” for growers to come forward and work with research and development companies. Now a nationwide search is under way for unique strains of the cannabis plant, with many varieties growing in isolation for decades on the fertile North and South Islands.

 Into the light: New Zealand's cannabis growers gear up for referendum

The Harm Reduction Consortium has an ongoing commitment to capacity building and organisational development, and is therefore seeking a consultant to undertake a capacity scan and review of the governance structures of the seven member organisations, and to consider our coordination and reporting mechanisms as a Consortium. The review will culminate in a report to the Consortium containing concrete recommendations and guidance, and a one-day governance workshop with members of the Consortium in January or February 2020 (exact venue and dates to be confirmed).

Request for proposals: Consultant for governance capacity scan and training

This statement follows the HRI letter on death sentences for drug offences in Sri Lanka, signed by IDPC and over a 100 other NGOs.

As part of the United Nations Secretariat, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) does not support the use of the death penalty.

Just last December, more countries than ever before - 121 Member States - supported a General Assembly resolution calling for a moratorium on the use of the death penalty.

The three international drug control conventions, which form the foundation of the global drug control system that has been agreed by nearly every country in the world, cannot be used to justify the use of the death penalty for drug-related offences alone.

Application of the death penalty may also impede international cooperation to fight drug trafficking, as there are national laws that do not allow the exchange of information and extradition with countries which may impose capital punishment for the offences concerned.

The dangers posed by illicitly-trafficked drugs are evident and lives are at stake. But use of the death penalty cannot provide durable solutions or protect people.

UNODC urges all Member States to adhere to their commitments to promote balanced, human rights-based approaches to drug control, and we stand ready to engage with all countries to bring criminals to justice with the appropriate legal safeguards, in line with international standards and norms, and to promote evidence-based prevention, treatment, rehabilitation and reintegration.

Statement attributable to the UNODC spokesperson on the use of the death penalty

By Alfredo Pascual, Marijuana Business Daily

A draft decree in Colombia is in the works that could substantially modify certain aspects of the current medical cannabis framework.

Among other things, the proposed changes would make Colombian medical cannabis companies more competitive internationally by allowing flower to be exported into free trade zones.

Another proposal is aimed at making it easier for small- and medium-sized cultivators to participate in the nation’s legal cannabis industry.

But other proposed changes would impose stricter controls on medical cannabis companies.

One, for example, would require applicants for cultivation licenses to ensure their operations won’t produce fallout for local “ethnic communities.”

The Ministry of Health published the draft for public consultation at the end of May, and the comment period ended in June.

The timeline for the publication of the final version is uncertain.

But those interested in Colombia’s medical cannabis industry should follow this development closely, because some of the proposals would impose significant changes for newcomers and already licensed companies.

Big changes in store for Colombia cannabis regulations, but final rules and timeline uncertain

In April of this year, Portugal, a country well known for having decriminalized all drugs in 2001, got its first safe consumption site—on wheels. It’s a brand-new, shiny white Peugeot Boxer van.

 video, I spoke with Adriana Curado, a psychologist from Grupo de Ativistas em Tratamentos (GAT; Group of Activists in Treatment) and Diana Gautier, a social worker with Médicos do Mundo (MdM; Doctors of the World). The two women are co-coordinators and staff members of the Lisbon-based van, and believe that their mobile safe consumption site is a vital way to meet people who use drugs “where they’re at.”

The van is stocked with all the supplies needed to inject safely. Inside are two stations with a table and chair for injecting drugs and a private space where people can meet with staff. Hepatitis C and HIV testing and a “

” are available to everyone in the community where the van parks.

Inside Portugal’s first mobile safe consumption site

Amidst media furore over illicit drug use, Tory leadership favourite Boris Johnson dodged questions today over past drug use, whilst the wheels of Michael Gove’s campaign for the premiership are careering to a halt. Eight of the eleven candidates have admitted to some form of drug consumption, from Hunt’s cannabis infused lassi, to Rory Stewart’s opium smoking in Iran.

Quite rightly, Gove has been taken to task for advocating policies which saw teachers banned from their profession for taking class A drugs while he was education secretary and for upholding a justice system which incarcerates people for up to seven years for the very behaviour he previously engaged in. Despite the political elite’s refusal to deviate from the party line that 

prohibition is essential to create a ‘drug free world’,

 the evidence from around the world is clear - more people now produce, sell and consume illicit drugs than ever before.

Undoubtedly, the scandal has shone light on the hypocrisy of the so called ‘war on drugs’ in the United Kingdom, particularly, the highly racialised and class based dimensions of its application. It is clear this is not a war on illicit substances, but on racialised and working class people.

Yet the scope of drug policy discourse rarely turns to the people whose livelihoods depend on the production of plants which go on to be consumed by the political elite as illicit drugs. Indeed only Rory Stewart made passing reference to this when he referred to the communities he smoked with in Iran, saying “the family may have been so poor that they put very little opium into the pipe.”

Despite the dominant narrative of the drugs trade painting a picture of assumed wealth, violence and organised crime, the majority of people involved tend to be poor and otherwise marginalised due to their race, gender, indigenous status and/or lack of formal land rights. The global commitment to prohibit drugs at all costs means that rural and indigenous communities involved in the cultivation of prohibited plants such as cannabis, coca leaf and opium poppy are routinely targets for repression and suffer from discrimination, stigmatisation, criminalisation, imprisonment, and the destruction of their livelihoods.

Ending the ‘war on drugs’ requires justice for the impoverished communities who grow them

In the long-running television drama “Breaking Bad,” viewers watched the moral devolution of Walter White, a cancer-stricken high school chemistry teacher who tried to provide for the financial future of his family by cooking methamphetamine. He changed from a good man caught in a bad situation into a sociopathic offender who ruled over a crystal meth empire.

Walter White represents the sort of drug offender who justifies serious punishment. He earned enormous amounts of money by producing and distributing vast amounts of harmful drugs.

U.S. drug laws are designed as if every offender was a dedicated criminal like Walter White, treating the possession or sale of even small quantities of illegal drugs as a serious crime requiring serious punishment.

I have studied the war on drugs for a number of years. Last December, my colleagues and I published a study on U.S. drug arrests, showing that roughly two out of every three arrests by state and local law enforcement target small-time offenders who are carrying less than a gram of illegal drugs.

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