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.

Most US drug arrests involve a gram or less

A survey of music festival revellers indicates first time ecstasy users would be the most cautious about taking the drugs if pill testing was carried out at the events.

In contrast, festival-goers who had already used ecstasy would only be more cautious if the ecstasy was found to contain a toxic contaminant, not if the test showed a high dose, or if the test was inconclusive.

Participants in the study also said they would be willing to pay an average $12 to fund pill testing services.

The issue of drug testing at festivals came up several times during the past summer. Back in October Green MP Chloe Swarbrick called for safety testing of drugs to be legalised ahead of the summer festival season.

It was clear recreational drug use at festivals was not going to stop no matter how hardline the approach, she said.

"This has resulted in unnecessary tragedy, with unknown users ingesting unknown substances, at times costing emergency health sector resources, at worst costing lives."

Drug testing had taken place at some Kiwi festivals but in something of a legal grey area, as the Misuse of Drugs Act makes it illegal to knowingly permit drug use in any premises.

Study conducted in New Zealand suggests first timers most cautious after pill tests at music festival

By Ju Nyeong Park, Susan G. Sherman, Saba Rouhani, Kenneth B. Morales, Michelle McKenzie, Sean T. Allen, Brandon D.L. Marshall, and Traci C. Green.

A large majority of people who use heroin and fentanyl would be willing to use safe consumption spaces where they could obtain sterile syringes and have medical support in case of overdose, suggests a study led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

, the researchers surveyed 326 users of heroin, fentanyl and illicit opioid pills in Baltimore, Boston and Providence, cities hard-hit by America's ongoing opioid overdose epidemic. About 77 percent of participants reported a willingness to use safe consumption spaces--sanctioned locations which have been set up and evaluated in other countries such as Canada and Australia but not yet in the U.S. Willingness to use safe consumption spaces was even higher, at 84 percent, among people who relied on public spaces such as streets, parks and abandoned buildings to use drugs.

The results indicated that 84 percent of the Boston participants, 78 percent of the Baltimore participants and 68 percent of the Providence participants were willing to use a safe consumption space--the overall rate coming in at 77 percent.

"On the whole, we found a strong willingness to use safe consumption spaces. This is important because often the voices of people who use drugs are not always included in policy debates or in the implementation of public health interventions," says study lead author Ju Nyeong Park, PhD, MHS, an assistant scientist in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society at the Bloomberg School.

Safe consumption spaces, also called safe injection facilities and overdose prevention sites, represent a "harm-reduction" approach to the public health and social problems stemming from drug addiction.

In the U.S., safe consumption spaces would be welcomed by high-risk opioid users

‘J,’ a 28 year old single mother of six, agreed to carry drugs into a Costa Rican prison in exchange for money to feed her family.

“If I didn’t provide for my children, they would have died of hunger. It’s the easy money that always conquers you, because you never think about the consequences in the moment. You only think of what you’re going to bring home and give to them,” she said.

She changed her mind at the last moment and gave the drugs to prison guards instead. She was arrested, tried, and sentenced to more than five years in prison.

Sadly, J’s experience is far from an isolated incident. For the past several decades, many governments have waged an increasingly punitive—and futile—war on drugs. Punitive approaches to the drug trade are often based on ideology, not evidence; ultimately, they have not significantly reduced the drug trade. In the words of the late UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan; “Drugs have destroyed many lives, but wrongheaded governmental policies have destroyed many more. I think it’s obvious that after 40 years of war on drugs, it has not worked.”

The consequences are deep and far-ranging: more violence, more human rights abuses, and an erosion of public health. The people most affected are the ones who are already the most marginalized: rural inhabitants, indigenous peoples, racial minorities, young people and women.

Some women living in poverty become involved in the drug trade because gender discrimination limits their opportunities for education and jobs.

Many are employed on the lowest rungs of the drug trade, transporting or selling small quantities; but they often carry the greatest risk, and suffer the worst consequences, including severe criminal penalties, as those with greater involvement.

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