Colombia’s Constitutional Court met today to discuss the government’s plans to reinstate aerial spraying of coca, the plant used to make cocaine, using aircraft and the herbicide glyphosate. President Iván Duque was the first to address the high court; he asked the justices to “modulate” their past rulings to allow more spraying.

The U.S. government supported this “fumigation” program between the early 1990s and 2015, when the Colombian government, under then-President Juan Manuel Santos, suspended it. During those nearly 25 years, U.S. contractor pilots and Colombian police sprayed glyphosate onto 4,420,000 acres of Colombian territory (1,790,000 hectares, an area larger than Connecticut but smaller than New Jersey). Colombia was the only country that allowed aerial spraying of glyphosate for counter-drug purposes.

The Santos government suspended the program in 2015, after a World Health Organization literature review found that glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide RoundUp, is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” In 2017, Colombia’s Constitutional Court placed important restrictions on any future use of glyphosate from aircraft, but did not ban the practice. Since 2013, coca cultivation has increased sharply in Colombia; in 2017, more than 119,500 families made a living off of the crop, up from 61,700 four years earlier. Under pressure from the Obama and Trump administrations, the Colombian government has committed to reducing the nation’s acreage by half by 2023.

Restarting aerial fumigation of drug crops in Colombia is a mistake

The decision comes after PITCH embarked on a year of advocacy to convince the Ministry of Health of the need for the clinic.

“We first put forward the proposal for the clinic during a PEPFAR regional planning meeting in Johannesburg in March last year,” says Gracias Atwiine, PITCH country focal point in Uganda.

“The Ministry of Health claimed drug use was not a big issue in Uganda, also that it was a sensitive, multisectoral issue that needed the Ministry to work with other departments such as the Ministry of Internal Affairs, so they are not misinterpreted as promoters of drug use in Uganda. The Minister of Health [Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng] also said that she had not seen any size estimation report [on the number of people who inject drugs] to warrant or justify such a clinic.”

Uganda approves first-ever OST clinic

The Robert Carr Fund (RCF) wants to hear from you to help shape its future. 

The RCF is undertaking an exercise to develop a strategic plan for 2020-2024. It invites you to complete a brief survey to share your opinions and experiences related to the work that RCF has done since its launch in 2012, and the direction in which it should move during its 2020-2024 strategy period.

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This survey will take about 20 minutes to complete. The survey is open until April 12th. Responses are anonymous. If you have any problems accessing the survey, please contact the consultant team that is managing this process: RCFstrategy@apmghealth.com

Robert Carr Fund stakeholder survey for strategic planning

Drug consumption rooms (DCRs) are expected to be introduced in Iceland, as MPs and the Minister of Health have backed calls for an amendment to the national drug law.

Svandís Svavarsdóttir, the health minister, told Parliament on March 21 that her government would like to amend existing drug legislation so that DCRs could legally open and operate in the country.

A DCR in Iceland, she said, would be a “legally protected environment where eighteen-year-olds and older can consume [illegal drugs] under the supervision of healthcare professionals. Where care is taken to ensure full hygiene, safety, and infection control.”

DCRs prevent deadly overdoses from taking place, as healthcare professionals oversee people’s drug use and are therefore able to administer naloxone – a medication that reverses opioid overdoses – when necessary. Among the nine European countries operating DCRs, there has never been a fatal overdose within a facility.

DCRs also provide sterile equipment and safer environments for drug use, thereby reducing the spread of blood-borne diseases for service users, as well as reducing antisocial behaviour associated with public drug use – including the discarding of drug litter, and public intoxication.

Iceland expected to introduce drug consumption rooms

It would be hard to dispute that the War on Drugs, instigated by President Nixon in 1971, has deliberately targeted lower-income communities and communities of color. Nixon’s own counsel and domestic affairs advisor, John Ehrlichman, confessed in 1994 that the War on Drugs was designed as an assault on “the antiwar left and black people.”

Ever since, we have been able to see the crippling impact of this sinister and deceptive strategy on these communities. We can see it simply by visiting any prison or jailhouse—or by viewing the demographics of incarcerated populations.

But what is not talked about enough is the drug war’s effects on parents in these communities. It has long been strategically intertwined with the child protective system in such a way that it can be sold to stakeholders under the guise of “saving the children.”

If you take the time to spend a day in any family court, what you will see is disturbing: Benches full of parents of color and little black and brown children in despair.

See, what is not talked about in the same breath as mass incarceration are the rates at which families of color are being torn apart. More meaningful to me than statistics is the real suffering of these families that I have often witnessed.

We need more focus on how the drug war attacks parents of color

The U.S. opioid epidemic is being driven by an unprecedented surge in deaths from fentanyl and other synthetic opiates. Fentanyl's powerful effects are long-lasting, and even tiny amounts of the drug can lead to an overdose. Antidotes, such as naloxone, do not last long enough in the body to fully counter the drug, requiring repeated injections. Now, scientists report that they are developing single-dose, longer-lasting opioid antidotes using polymer nanoparticles.

The researchers will present their results today at the American Chemical Society (ACS) Spring 2019 National Meeting & Exposition.

"We became interested in this problem while trying to make non-addictive pain medications," Saadyah Averick, Ph.D., says. "In that course of research, we realized the limitations of current opioid antidotes."

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, opioids, such as heroin, oxycodone and fentanyl, were implicated in more than 47,000 deaths from overdose in 2017. These drugs all bind to the mu opioid receptor (MOR) in the brain, which is the body's natural pleasure receptor, explains Averick, a scientist at Allegheny Health Network Research Institute. "The drugs bind, turn on the receptor and stimulate a euphoric feeling. The synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl, turn this on really, really well," he says.

And their effects are long-lasting. Fentanyl, which is much stronger than morphine, another opioid, can be absorbed into fat tissue, which protects it from being metabolized right away. It is then slowly released from this tissue, causing effects for several hours. Naloxone, an MOR antagonist and antidote, only stays in the system for about 30 minutes to an hour, however. Because of this mismatch, repeated doses are required to help the patient recover. But not all patients want to undergo the entire treatment course, and they can end up succumbing to an overdose after the naloxone is metabolized.

To overcome this challenge, Averick and his colleagues developed a drug delivery system intended to ensure that a steady, sufficient dose of antagonist is delivered over 24 hours. The researchers reacted naloxone, which has a multi-ringed chemical structure, with polylactic acid (PLA), thus creating a naloxone polymer. They then prepared covalent nanoparticles (CNPs) by adding this polymer to a solution of polyvinyl alcohol. They used a variety of analytical methods to purify and analyze the resulting particles, which are 300 nanometers in diameter.

Next-generation single-dose antidotes for opioid overdoses

The CDPE has conducted an international cross comparison of illegal drug policies to create an online tool – the 

 – to demonstrate the alignment and gaps between the metrics that countries use to assess the success of their drug policy and the actual drug policy-related outcomes they experience.

Globally, supply side strategies to reduce the scale of the illegal drug market have been prioritized by policymakers seeking to reduce drug-related harms. This has led to the development of a narrow set of indicators that are largely process-oriented – that is, they do not capture the real world impact of drug policies – to determine the effectiveness of drug policies. These include: the number of hectares of illegal drug crops eradicated by counternarcotics operations, the number and quantity of illegal drug seizures per year, and the number of people who use or traffic drugs that are arrested or in custody. However, a large body of evidence demonstrates the relative ineffectiveness of these approaches in managing the problems associated with drugs. In fact, research has shown that such policies have contributed extensively to producing a range of harms to the health and safety of individuals and communities affected by these policies.

Recently, a number of countries have sought to implement drug policies that focus on the health and safety of communities. To support this reorientation, a broader set of outcome indicators – those that measure the impact of drug policies on individuals and communities in the real world – are also required. To support this reorientation, the CDPE has proposed the adoption of the following domains for evaluations of drug policy: Health, Peace and Security, Development, and Human Rights. These domains enable a more comprehensive assessment of the impact of drug policies on a range of outcomes relevant to communities. They are also in alignment with many of the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

There remains a range of approaches countries use to evaluate domestic drug policies. The 

 allows users to comparatively assess how countries determine policy success or failure in this regard, while also providing access to United Nations datasets on country-level drug policy-related outcomes. We intend for this tool to help users identify evaluative approaches that support effective drug policies.

Drug policy metrics map

The film tells a story about the anti-drug law enforcement practice, prison conditions in the penitentiary institutions of Belarus, and everyday life challenges that former prisoners and people who use drugs face. To convey to the viewer the origins of stereotypes, numerous clips from the anti-drug videos of the USSR, Russia, and Belarus are used in the film.

“Criminalisation of people who use drugs, impossibility to defend oneself in the court, and forced labor in punitive camps are direct manifestations of the authoritarian regime. The society does not respect the right of people to their own bodies, their freedom of choice. State propaganda, anti-scientific information, and stereotypes distort people’s notion about reality. Drugs users are called “narcomaniacs” and treated worse than murderers.

Uniformity of views of the state and society on this issue leads to mass uncontrolled violence on an incomparable scale. People who use drugs are an extremely vulnerable group in such a situation. Innocent people are convicted for years of isolation in inhumane conditions. We have to stop it as soon as possible”, Piotr Markiełaŭ, one of the creators of the film, says.

Narcotisation and authoritarianism: A film about the drug war in Belarus

Global drug policy, born out of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, has been plagued by the harmful “Vienna Consensus.” This bureaucratic apparatus that governs the application of global drug laws from this city is limited by inertia, and resists recognizing the urgent need to replace substance prohibition with more intelligent and efficient policies. However, this consensus, thankfully, is showing signs of rupture.

The 52 countries that are part of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND)—the organ that governs drug treaties—and hundreds of civil society actors gathered once more in Vienna on March 14th and 15th for the Ministerial segment of the 62nd session. In 2019, the the action plan with the objective of achieving a “world free of drugs” turned 10 years old. From the start of this program to the present, the world has not only failed spectacularly, as demonstrated by a shadow report presented by the International Drug Policy Consortium, but has furthermore caused substantial damage in its effort to achieve an unrealistic goal.

It doesn’t help that these negotiations are always held in Vienna. Unlike other multilateral negotiation spaces of the United Nations, such as climate change or the trafficking of endangered species, whose Conference of the Parties changes location every meeting and includes all of the States who have signed the treaty, the substance control regime meets every year in the same city, with only the countries from the CND. This factor limits the participation of many countries, both because it is impossible for them to be in Vienna, and because of the disarticulation with other spaces that are fundamental parts of other debates on human rights and sustainable development, such as Geneva and New York.

The Vienna Consensus is broken, and we’re not going to fix it

President Maithripala Sirisena on Sunday said he had fixed a date to execute convicted drug traffickers, reiterating his earlier announcement on restoring the death penalty in Sri Lanka.

He was speaking at an event on drug prevention, attended by religious heads representing different faiths, and underscored his resolve to eradicate the problem of illegal drug trafficking, braving “any challenge” that might come his way, a press statement issued by the President’s Media Division said. “A schedule is ready,” he said. Amid what officials call “a heightening drug menace”, President Sirisena announced in February that the death penalty would be restored to combat the problem.

Sri Lanka has a four decade-long moratorium on capital punishment and his controversial decision lifting that has drawn considerable criticism from international rights watchdogs and local civil society. Further, authorities advertised for the job of a hangman and received over 100 applications, according to a Reuters report early March.

‘Date fixed to execute drug offenders’, says President of Sri Lanka

The Philippine Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the release of police documents on thousands of killings of suspects in the president's anti-drug crackdown, in a ruling that human rights groups said could shed light on allegations of extrajudicial killings.

Supreme Court spokesman Brian Keith Hosaka said the court ordered the government solicitor-general to provide the police reports to two rights groups which had sought them. The 15-member court, whose justices are meeting in northern Baguio city, has yet to rule on a separate petition to declare President Rodrigo Duterte's anti-drug campaign unconstitutional.

Solicitor-General Jose Calida had earlier agreed to release the voluminous police documents to the court but rejected the requests of the two groups, the Free Legal Assistance Group and the Center for International Law, arguing that such a move would undermine law enforcement and national security.

"It's a big step forward for transparency and accountability,'' said Jose Manuel "Chel'' Diokno, who heads the Free Legal Assistance Group.

Philippine Supreme Court orders release of drug war evidence

Statement delivered at the 62nd CND Session under agenda item 11. Follow-up to the special session of the General Assembly on the world drug problem held in 2016, including the seven thematic areas of the outcome document of the special session | Delivered by Ann Fordham, Executive Director, IDPC

Madam Chair, Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Thank you for giving me the floor. I am making this statement on behalf of the International Drug Policy Consortium – a global network of more than 180 NGOs that come together to promote drug policies based on human rights, human security, social inclusion and public health. The majority of our members are working at the national level and many are representatives of the most affected communities.

The 2016 UNGASS Outcome Document represents a forward-looking framework that provides a strong basis for the coming decade, especially given it 7-themed broad structure.

We have previously noted the important progress in the UNGASS Outcome document, which includes a greater focus on implementing health and development orientated drug control in full compliance with human rights obligations, including the principle of proportionality. In particular, the thematic chapter on improving access to controlled medicines for medical purposes is especially critical. The mention of specific life-saving harm reduction interventions such as needle and syringe programmes and medication assisted treatment for opioid dependence as well as the provision of naloxone to reduce preventable deaths from overdose additionally represents significant progress. The emphasis in the UNGASS Outcome document on aligning drug control objectives with the Sustainable Development Goals is also key given the global commitment to “Leave no one behind”.

We also welcomed the emphasis on improved UN system-wide coherence on drug policy and better cooperation between the relevant UN entities. Towards this end we welcome both the UN common position developed under the auspices of the Chief Executive Board for Coordination at the request of the Secretary General and adopted through extensive consultation among over 30 UN entities as well as the policy document, of the UN system coordination Task Team on the Implementation of the UN System Common Position on drug-related matters presented last week called “What we have learned over the last ten years: A summary of knowledge acquired and produced by the UN system on drug-related matters”. Mechanisms for collaboration, coordination and information sharing between UN entities is essential for progress. In this regard, the Strategic Advisory Group to the UN on HIV and Drug Use which brings together UN entities, donor governments together with civil society, community representatives and the Global Fund to Fight HIV, TB and Malaria represents an innovative initiative to progress and improve the HIV response for people who inject drugs.

In terms of the operational implementation of the UNGASS outcome document, much work remains to be done, although we recognise that several countries have already made some progress in this regard.

In the ministerial declaration adopted last week, member states noted “with concern persistent and emerging challenges related to the world drug problem” including a robust and diversifying illicit drug market, the dire lack of availability of internationally controlled substances for medical and scientific purposes, including for the relief of pain and palliative care, and that drug treatment and health services continue to fall short of meeting needs, and deaths related to drug use have increased; and that the rate of transmission of HIV, the hepatitis C virus and other blood-borne diseases associated with drug use remains high in many countries.

The inconvenient truth is that unless there is a significant shift and genuine re-orientation of drug policies, in ten years’ time, these persistent and emerging challenges will only have grown and become even more intractable.

The policy brief from the UN Task Team makes this point in no uncertain terms:

‘Punitive drug policies continue to be used in some communities, despite being ineffective in reducing drug trafficking or in addressing non-medical drug use and supply, and continue to undermine the human rights and well-being of persons who use drugs, as well as of their families and communities.’

The global community cannot afford another decade of failure to meet the stated goals of achieving “a drug-free society.” As IDPC highlighted in our ‘Shadow Report’ released ahead of last week’s ministerial segment, in which we conducted a comprehensive analysis of the last decade of drug control, the pursuit of such goals are not ‘aspirational’. The pursuit of such goals is devastating for communities worldwide and has resulted in devastating and widespread violations of human rights that have been highlighted by many speakers here at this CND and by the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, as well as four Special Procedure Mandate Holders of the Human Rights Council in the past few days.

However, as last week’s ministerial declaration commits member states to striving towards ‘all aspirational goals’ this means that member states can choose to prioritise the goals included in the UNGASS Outcome Document and the SDGs, which are explicitly mentioned in the UNGASS outcome document. Towards this end for the “single track” approach, member states should ensure that future discussions on drug policy are framed under the 7-themes of the UNGASS.

In closing, we strongly recommend ending punitive approaches towards vulnerable groups and individuals – as is recommended in the UN common position, the task team brief and by the latest UNAIDS report ‘Health, rights and drugs: harm reduction, decriminalization and zero discrimination for people who use drugs’.

Ending punitive approaches towards those most vulnerable will require that global drug control going forward puts people and communities at the centre, and seeks to improve their living conditions, address their situations of vulnerability and protect their human rights, in line with the SDG vision of ‘leaving no one behind’. For the coming decade this is critical as many lives depend on it.

Thank you for your consideration and your continued commitment to the meaningful participation of civil society.

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