President Rodrigo Duterte has pushed for the legal age of criminal responsibility in the Philippines to be lowered to just 12, leading to fears children will be increasingly targeted in his violent war on drugs.

Duterte has led the campaign for children to be held culpable as adults for crimes after claiming that drug lords were using children as mules for their illegal trade and that these juveniles were getting away “scot-free”.

The president had originally wanted the age to be dropped to nine, but agreed to 12 after pushback from politicians and campaigners. The current threshold is 15.

The proposed legislation, which is going through the House of Representatives with the Senate also considering a similar bill, could result in children being arrested and detained in the already overcrowded and dangerous adult detention centres.

Rodrigo Duterte seeks to cut age of criminal responsibility to 12 as part of drug war

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka's president pledged to end the country's 43-year moratorium on capital punishment and execute condemned drug traffickers amid alarm over drug-related crimes.

The statement on the government's website said President Maithripala Sirisena would order the executions soon but did not say how the prisoners would be executed. Sri Lanka last executed a prisoner in 1976. At the time, prisoners were hanged.

Sirisena's announcement came after he visited the Philippines in January and praised President Rodrigo Duterte's drug crackdown as "an example to the world." Thousands of suspects have been killed in the crackdown that he launched after taking office in 2016, and rights groups have denounced the killings as extrajudicial executions.

The government said Sirisena believes reinstating executions is justified because he says other countries execute prisoners for drug crimes. It said he announced his decision Wednesday in a southern part of the island nation where large amounts of illegal drugs have been discovered.

Citing drug crime, Sri Lanka plans 1st executions since 1976

In her blog “America’s Opioid Epidemic: A Rights-Based Approach”, Juliet Sorensen argues that the United States must commit “resources to proven interventions and the highest attainable standard of care” to turnaround an overdose crisis that is killing tens of thousands of Americans every year. While we agree with Sorensen’s call for more funds, we would argue that a measure that does not require resources—indeed, that would free them up—should be a core element of a rights-based approach to this crisis: decriminalizing drug possession for personal use.

Although the public discourse increasingly treats drug use as a public health issue, legally it continues to constitute a criminal offense in all of the United States. Indeed, law enforcement agencies enforce these criminal statutes with vigor: a joint American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch report published in 2016 found that every 25 seconds someone is arrested in the United States simply for possessing a drug for their personal use. Additionally, more than one in nine arrests made by state law enforcement is for drug possession, amounting to a total of 1.25 million arrests each year.

From a human rights perspective, criminalization of drug use per se is inherently problematic as it infringes on people’s right to autonomy and privacy for private behavior. While the government has good reason to discourage drug use given the health and other harms it can cause, the imposition of criminal sanctions is a disproportionate measure when that private behavior causes no harm to others. It is thus inconsistent with human rights norms.

Rights-based approach to overdose epidemic must include decriminalisation

Brazil’s new president, Jair Bolsonaro, fulfilled a campaign promise to tackle the country’s epidemic of violence — by signing a temporary decree Tuesday that makes it easier for Brazilians to buy guns.

“I signed this decree, created by many upstanding people, so that at this first moment, upstanding citizens can have peace inside their homes,” Bolsonaro said at the signing ceremony in the country’s capital, Brasília.

Bolsonaro, a former Army captain, was sworn in as president on Jan. 1, after rising in popularity last year on a fiercely nationalist, hardline law-and-order platform to reduce the country's murder rate — which ranks the highest in the world — and the booming illegal drug trade that fuels it.

But his plan to give "guns to good people," is likely to backfire. Gang members responsible for some of the worst violence in Brazil’s major cities told VICE News that the president's new policy of fighting crime by putting more guns on the streets will only lead to more bloodshed. So too will his plans to ramp up the military’s role in the drug war by giving security forces more power to shoot and kill armed criminals.

Brazil’s drug gangs are prepared to go to war with Bolsonaro

Mexico’s murder rate broke a new record in 2018 as the country’s drug war dragged on and criminal groups fought for control of an increasingly diversified range of illegal activities.

Figures released this week by the country’s public safety secretariat show that 28,816 homicide case files were opened in 2018, a 15% increase over the previous year.

In recent years, violence has exploded in previously peaceful areas of the country such as Quintana Roo state, which registered 763 homicides in 2018 – double the 2017 figure.

Conflict in Quintana Roo – home of the Caribbean resort cities of the “Mexican Riviera” – has been attributed to a struggle for smuggling routes and local drug markets, but in other regions, violence has been driven by other illegal markets.

Mexico's murder rate broke new record in 2018 as drug war drags on

Myo Min knows all too well about the negative effects of excessive drug use. He started using methamphetamines more than a decade ago after being pressured to try it by some friends, and quickly graduated to heroin.

Since then, he has seen it all: sleepless nights, failing health, fights with his family, paranoia, and tragedy. Several years ago, a close friend became so paranoid from using drugs that he jumped from the fourth floor of a building to his death.

Despite all of this, Myo Min hasn’t managed to get himself completely clean.

“It is much easier now to buy yaba compared to before,” he said, referring to Thai word for the cheap methamphetamine pill. “I sometimes use yaba now, although not as much as before. Now I think I have things more under control.”

Myo Min’s experience is not unique in Myanmar, where health workers say that drug use is becoming increasingly common in many communities across the country.

Why Myanmar can’t shake its drug problem

The lower house of the Philippines Congress has approved a bill to legalise medical cannabis consumption and production, which has the support of hard-line President Rodrigo Duterte.

On 29 January, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the final reading of House Bill 6517 - the Philippine Compassionate Medical Cannabis Act - which would permit patients to use medical cannabis if they are diagnosed with certain debilitating conditions and prescribed the drug by a licensed doctor. Qualifying medical conditions include cancer, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, PTSD, and being HIV-positive.

Doctors will only be able to issue prescriptions for medical cannabis if they are individually authorised to do so by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA), state media says. The bill would also create specialised facilities tasked with acquiring and dispensing medical cannabis.

The bill would allow for the domestic cultivation of cannabis. The bill states that the Dangerous Drugs Board shall "identify specific areas allowable for the cultivation of cannabis [... that] shall only be permitted in a closed, locked facility" that is a sufficient distance from schools.

The bill would create an advisory committee to devise and implement regulations, and would permit several research institutions – including the University of the Philippines’ National Institute of Health – to investigate uses of medical cannabis.

Philippines House of Representatives approves medical cannabis use, production

People in Bangladesh now face execution for a range of non-violent drug offences.

The Narcotics Control Act 2018, which came into effect on 27 December, mandates either the death penalty or life imprisonment for anyone convicted of committing a range of drug offences. Such crimes include trading or producing over 25 grams of heroin or cocaine, and trading or producing over 200 grams of methamphetamine (colloquially known as "yaba"), 

 reports. Trading or producing less than 200 grams of methamphetamine, or less than 25 grams of cocaine or heroin, will now be punished by between two and 10 years imprisonment.

, "when any person is sentenced to death, the sentence shall direct that he be hanged by the neck till he is dead".

According to Harm Reduction International, the last known death sentence for a drug offence in Bangladesh was in 2009. That now looks set to change.

Bangladesh to begin hanging people for non-violent drug offences

Bill Barr, President Donald Trump’s nominee for US attorney general, told the Senate on Tuesday he would not bust marijuana businesses that abide by state legalization laws.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate to upset those interests,” Barr told the Senate Judiciary Committee in a confirmation hearing, citing a policy of tolerance toward marijuana established under the Obama administration.

A 2013 memo by former deputy attorney general James Cole placed a low priority on licensed businesses that stuck to a set of guidelines — like stopping pot from crossing state lines, funding cartels, or falling into the hands of minors — in states with legalization laws.

US Attorney General nominee says he’s “not going after” marijuana in states where it’s legal

By University of Michigan | Medical Xpress

Researchers know that lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals are more likely than heterosexuals to use alcohol, tobacco or other drugs, but until now they didn't know to what degree.

New research out of the University of Michigan provides that context by examining the severity of alcohol, tobacco and other drug abuse reported by lesbian, gay and bisexual individuals, and people who aren't sure how they identify.

The study confirms that substance use disorders are more prevalent—and more severe—among sexual minorities in the United States, said lead researcher Carol Boyd, U-M professor of nursing.

"Our findings provide strong evidence that a higher proportion of sexual minority individuals, particularly bisexual individuals and those who are not sure of their sexual identities, have severe alcohol and tobacco use disorders, and those who are 'not sure' also have a higher proportion of severe drug use disorders," said Boyd, who's also the director of the Center for Drugs, Alcohol, Smoking and Health.

Sexual minorities more likely to suffer severe substance use disorders

As cannabis reform sweeps the Caribbean, Trinidad and Tobago has announced it will hold public consultations on the matter, prior to decriminalising the drug for personal use in June 2019.

In late December, Prime Minister Keith Rowley announced that cannabis would be decriminalised across the Caribbean nation by mid-2019, but that the government had no plans to legalise the drug.

“We expect that by May to June of 2019, the decriminalisation would have been effected", he told journalists. “There is a big difference between decriminalisation and legalisation of marijuana. We have committed to decriminalisation. What we are working on now is the method by which and what that represents in terms of the use”.

However, a recent statement from the Attorney General hinted that legalisation may indeed be on the cards, as authorities consult with public stakeholders to configure the most appropriate form of cannabis reform.

Trinidad and Tobago to decriminalise cannabis, consider legalisation

High Wire is Maia Szalavitz's reported opinion column on drugs and drug policy.

Stories about cannabis are like catnip, so it was only matter of time before someone with an aura of credibility decided to capitalize on the growing consensus in favor of legalization with an extreme contrarian perspective. And what could better troll the legalizers than arguing, in essence, that Reefer Madness is real—and pot really does cause insanity, murder, and mayhem?

Enter former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson, whose new book Tell Your Children: The Truth about Marijuana, Mental Illness and Violence, attempts to do just that. Its main title is literally taken from the original name for that much-mocked 1936 film.