Police tactics may disrupt drug supplies, but they cause more crime and even contribute to the use of children as a go-between in county lines, undermining Peel’s principles, says former Detective Sergeant and Chair of LEAP UK Neil Woods who argues it’s time for drugs laws to be reformed.

Skewed approach: UK drugs policy is undermining Peel’s principles of policing

Asia is characterised by some of the world’s harshest approaches to combating illicit use of drugs, an almost entirely one-dimensional security approach as opposed to a more integrated humane, political, social and security approach. The victims are mainly the urban and rural poor at the end of the chain, not the well-armed drug barons with the means to protect themselves. Have draconian measures such as extrajudicial killings, the death penalty for drug offences, compulsory detention for people who use drugs and, in some cases, corporal punishment meted out by caning, achieved the stated goal of reducing drug demand and supply in the region? Can countries in Asia claim progress is being made towards the goal of a “drug-free” region? These are important questions that governments must answer as the 10-year global drug strategy adopted at the United Nations in 2009 comes to its end. In March, governments are set to meet at a high-level UN meeting in Vienna to review progress made over the past decade and define future directions for global drug policy.

From the Philippines to Indonesia and Afghanistan, Asia's brutal drug policies have failed

Katie Tulley suffers from an incurable bladder disorder so painful that it feels “like tearing skin off your arm and pouring acid on it, 24/7,” she said. On scans, the organ looks like an open sore.

Ms. Tulley, a 37-year-old Louisianan who used to work with autistic children, manages her pain with a fentanyl patch. The opioid gives her a few precious hours out of bed to help her parents, do online volunteer work and occasionally leave home for something other than a medical visit. “I don’t get a euphoric feeling,” she said, noting that she has lowered her dose to avoid feeling woozy and impaired.

Now, because of legal concerns about overdose risk, her doctors have considered stopping her medication, even though she has never misused it. And so, when she recently discovered a suspicious lump in her belly, she found herself hoping it was cancer. “I shouldn’t ‘want’ cancer,” she said. “But at this point it’s the only way to be treated” for her pain.

As many as 18 million patients rely on opioids to treat long-term pain that is intractable but not necessarily associated with terminal illness. In 2016, seeking to curb opioid misuse, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention introduced guidelines outlining a maximum safe dosage and strongly urging doctors to avoid prescribing for chronic pain unless death is imminent. The guidelines were supposed to be voluntary and apply only to chronic pain patients seeing general practitioners. Instead, they have been widely seen by doctors as mandatory.

As a result, thousands of pain medication recipients have had their doses reduced or eliminated. But this attempt to save people from addiction is leaving many patients in perpetual pain — and thus inadvertently ruining, or even ending, lives.

A Veterans Health Administration study found alarming rates of suicidal acts “following discontinuation of opioid therapy.” Human Rights Watch recently released a report detailing the struggles of chronic pain patients in the United States to find relief and care as a result of government efforts to reduce prescriptions.

When the cure is worse than the disease

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy outlined on Thursday its top priorities for combating illicit drug abuse and distribution in the United States in the office's first National Drug Control Strategy.

The release of the report comes the same day that the drug control office's first permanent director since the Obama administration, Jim Carroll, was sworn-in by Vice President Mike Pence."Our No. 1 goal is to save American lives, and this comprehensive plan reaffirms President Trump's commitment to addressing the opioid crisis aggressively and in partnership with our partners across the nation," Carroll said in a statement regarding the strategy's release.

White House priorities opioid abuse in first national drug control strategy

By Michael Safi in Delhi and Amantha Perera

Sri Lanka will begin hanging convicted drug dealers within the next three months, its president has announced, ending a 43-year moratorium on executions as part of a crackdown inspired by the Philippines’ brutal war on drugs.

Maithripala Sirisena has been praising Rodrigo Duterte’s violent campaign against the drugs trade as an “example to the world” and flagged the possible return of the death penalty for drug dealers last July.

Sri Lanka to begin hangings within months, ending 43-year stay on executions

The process conducted in 2018 by the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) to assess the implementation of the “joint commitment to effectively addressing and countering the world drug problem”, adopted after the UN General Assembly Special Session on drugs in 2016, has been an important opportunity for States and other stakeholders to evaluate and critically assess the impact drug policies have had on human rights.

Governments have an important opportunity during the 2019 High-level Ministerial Segment and the CND regular session to ensure that the next decade in international drug policy is strongly grounded in human rights principles to ensure that drug control efforts are effectively designed to protect people and do not result in further harm.

Amnesty International is calling on all UN Member States to ensure that the Ministerial Declaration adopted at the conclusion of the High-level Ministerial Segment contains strong language to ensure that human rights will be respected and protected during the design and implementation of drug policies and that States’ obligations under international human rights law are upheld in all drug-related matters.

Amnesty International recommendations to states on steps to ensure human rights in drug policy

Global health experts at the United Nations are recommending that marijuana and its key components be formally rescheduled under international drug treaties.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is calling for whole-plant marijuana, as well as cannabis resin, to be removed from Schedule IV—the most restrictive category of a 1961 drug convention signed by countries from around the world.

The body also wants delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and its isomers to be completely removed from a separate 1971 drug treaty and instead added to Schedule I of the 1961 convention, according to a WHO document that has not yet been formally released but was circulated by cannabis reform advocates.

Marijuana and cannabis resin would also remain in Schedule I of the 1961 treaty—they are currently dual-designated in Schedules I and IV, with IV being reserved for those substances that are seen as particularly harmful with limited medical benefits. (That's different from the U.S. federal system, under which Schedule I is where the supposedly most dangerous and restricted drugs—like marijuana, heroin and LSD—are classified.)

World Health Organization recommends reclassifying marijuana under international treaties

By Vanda Felbab-Brown and Bradley S. Porter.

Since its 1979 revolution, Iran has developed a reputation as having some of the world’s harshest drug penalties and as an opponent of efforts to reform global drug policy. Overall, however, Iran’s drug policies have been highly varied, with some policy experimentation taking place even after the revolution. And certainly long before it, Iran experimented—perhaps more than any other country—with a wide range of policies to respond to widespread drug use and poppy cultivation, alternating between permissive and very harsh policies.

What is perhaps most surprising is how little the Iranian revolution actually changed drug policies in Iran. And while the revolution did have pronounced effects on international drug markets, they were, once again, actually less than meets the eye. Importantly, for example, poppy production was bound to go up in Afghanistan regardless.

Out with the old, in with the old: Iran’s revolution, drug policies, and global drug markets

By Lian Buan, Rambo Talabong, and Jodesz Gavilan

MANILA, Philippines – The memory of the night Manny

 was killed remains vivid in the mind of his mother Lita

His lifeless body slumped on the ground with a pool of blood slowly spreading on the ground, turned the gray concrete darker in color.

It was 10 pm, a few minutes before the vegetables he was supposed to sell were due to arrive. But Manny did not live long enough for the next day’s marketing chores as a man shot him at close range, piercing bullets into his cheek and neck, killing him instantly.

Just like the perpetrators of several thousand other extrajudicial killings, the suspect was wearing a bonnet, rendering him unidentifiable to possible witnesses. It didn’t help that the act was committed at night and in a place where foot traffic is scarce after the sun sets.

The absence of a lead that could point to the gunman’s identity remains one of the biggest hindrances to Lita’s pursuit of justice for her son – even if she wants to file a complaint so badly, seek redress before a court, and have judgment rendered on the perpetrator of the killing. (READ: Powering through a crisis: Defending human rights under Duterte)

“

Hindi ko alam kung sino ang kakasuhan ko kasi unang-una, walang nakakilala at takot rin kami kasi noong namatay siya, may nagmanman sa amin

Pero kung mabibigyan ng pagkakataon, kahit saan ilalaban ko at kahit mamatay ako basta magkaroon ng katarungan ang anak ko

,” Lita added.

(I don’t know who I will charge in court because first of all, no one saw or recognized him. And we’re also afraid because after he was killed, we felt we were under surveillance. But if given the opportunity, I’ll file a complaint and fight anywhere, even if I die as long as I give justice to my son.)

Until justice is served, the death of her son – which she likened to losing a limb – will continue to feel like a festering wound.

Duterte government allows 'drug war' deaths to go unsolved

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.

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