A panel of high-level drug policy experts on November 19th at IPI took up the question of how much progress had been made on 10-year goals enunciated in 2009, and they concluded that the results were very disappointing. The panel was addressing the subject, “The Future of Drug Policies, and the Lessons Learned,” at a policy forum co-sponsored by IPI, IDPC, and the Social Science Research Council (SSRC).

“It is difficult to credibly claim any progress, given the reality of a robust and growing illicit drug market coupled with an unprecedented rise in both drug-related harms as well as the devastating policy harms,“ said Ann Fordham, Executive Director of the International Drug Policy Consortium (IDPC). “We cannot keep doing the same thing and expecting different results, that is the definition of insanity.”

She said it was “time that the international community moves away from these damaging and unrealistic drug free goals and considers adopting more meaningful goals and targets in line with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and international human rights commitments. In formulating social and public policies, it’s fundamental to consider the impact on the lives of people and communities on public health and on human rights, both at the core of the values of the United Nations.”

Panel takes sobering read of status of international drug policies

By Jonas von Hoffmann, Raúl Bejarano Romero

Around the world, there is a steady shift towards the legalisation of marijuana. But how should governments considering such a move ensure it is done effectively, fairly and safely?

Mexico is a good test case. The Mexican Supreme Court recently ruled that the prohibition of marijuana was unconstitutional, but the new government supports legalisation, so the question no longer is if Mexico should legalise cannabis, but how.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s incoming administration has presented an initiative to regulate cannabis from seed to smoke. Legal cannabis would be accessible for recreational, medicinal and industrial uses through a commercial market, non-profit associations, so-called “cannabis clubs”, and home cultivation; all overseen by the establishment of an Instituto Mexicano de Regulación y Control del Cannabis.

But how good is this proposal, how can we tell – and is it a good model for other countries to follow? We analyse the proposal according to the “Ten Ps of marijuana legalisation”, a list of issues developed by drug policy expert Beau Kilmer that should be considered when legalising marijuana. They are: production, profit motive, promotion, prevention, policing and enforcement, penalties, potency, purity, price and permanency.

Marijuana in Mexico: How to legalise it effectively, fairly and safely

Norway has put human rights and civil society on the agenda during its Presidency of the Council of Europe's cooperation on drug policies.

Norway has held Presidency in the Council of Europe’s cooperation on drug policies - the Pompidou Group - for the past four years. The Ministerial conference in Stavanger, 27-28 November, marked the end of the Norwegian Presidency.

- We have used this Presidency to emphasise the importance of human rights as a basis for drug policies in all countries. Drug problems have had different impacts on different countries, and drug policies will therefore vary, however, human rights are unalterable, stated the Minister of Health and Care Services, Bent Høie.

During the Norwegian Presidency, the Pompidou Group prepared an expert report, describing how a country may proceed in ensuring that human rights are safeguarded in drug policies.

Norway has also put civil society on the agenda, emphasising the importance of involving civil society and individuals who use drugs in the development of policies. The Pompidou Group has prepared a policy paper on the cooperation between authorities and civil society in drug cases.

- In Norway, it is a given that user organisations and other representatives of civil society should be heard before a new policy is adopted. They also have a key role in the drug policy debate. This is not the case for all countries. I believe it is essential for Norway and the Council of Europe, which is based on the values of human rights, democracy and rule of law, to emphasise the importance of listening to those to whom this applies, says Høie.

Challenges associated with new psychoactive drugs and different methods of regulating cannabis are other topics that have been discussed during the Norwegian Presidency.

The Stavanger conference adopted the “Stavanger Declaration”, as well as a new work programme for the Pompidou Group. The work with human rights and inclusion of civil society will continue. The development of knowledge and exchange of experiences on challenges associated with new synthetic drugs is also important. This mandate must be revised, and the phrase “to combat drugs”, which has been part of the Pompidou Group’s name since its commencement in 1971, will be removed.

- I am very pleased that we have now agreed to remove the phrase “to combat drugs” from the Pompidou Group’s title. This phrase represents an outdated view of drug polices and of individuals with drug abuse problems, says Høie.

It was also decided that Portugal will take over the Presidency for the next four years.

Toward a more humane drug policy

Despite India having the largest number of heroin users in Asia according to the UN, the number of women that make up these figures is unknown. The lack of a gender breakdown, along with India’s prevailing gender stereotypes, allows for a presumption that smoking or injecting chitta, brown sugar, or number four, is largely a male pursuit.

Women who use drugs are more likely to experience violence than those who do not - two to three times more likely. HIV prevalence among people who inject drugs is 6.3% according to HIV sentinel surveillance data of National AIDS Control organisation 2016-2017, compared to the overall national rate of 0.2% for adults, and the risk of HIV increases further for women when both drug use and violence are present. In the country assessed to be the most dangerous place to be a woman, and where 63 million women and girls are ‘missing’, drug use is compounding the normative risks.

Benefits of a harm reduction approach (versus unrealistically trying to stamp out drugs) are globally recognised, including by the Government of India which does invest in services and centres. However, while these aren’t deliberately male-only sites, women struggle to get through the door.

“If she can get away from the house without being questioned or accompanied, and she can get across to the building without neighbours seeing, and she can pass through the crowd of guys in the doorway, she then has to sit in an intimidating male environment until she is seen,” says Pemu Bhutia, Senior Technical Officer at Alliance India.

The systematic abuse of India’s female opiate users

BEIJING — China vows to stem the supply of the powerful opioid fentanyl flowing into the United States. It pledges to target exports of fentanyl-related substances bound for the United States that are prohibited there, while sharing information with American law-enforcement authorities.

Such promises, echoed in the recent meeting between the countries’ presidents, ring familiar.

They first emerged in September 2016, when the Obama administration said China and the United States had agreed on “enhanced measures”meant to keep fentanyl from coming into the United States. But in its official statements or state media reports made at the time, the Chinese government never specified the steps it intended to take, and its follow-up has been patchy at best.

So when the Trump administration said on Saturday that President Xi Jinping of China had agreed to designate fentanyl as a controlled substance in “a wonderful humanitarian gesture,” analysts said there was little to cheer about.

“It’s in many ways all theater from the White House and very little serious substance,” said John Collins, executive director of the International Drug Policy Unit at the London School of Economics. “It seems to me the same story again.”

Trump says China will curtail fentanyl. The U.S. has heard that before.

Cannabis will be made legal for recreational use in Luxembourg, it has been confirmed.

During a press conference held by the three coalition parties – Democratic Party (DP), Luxembourg Socialist Workers’ Party (LSAP) and The Greens (déi gréng) – political leaders said that cannabis will be legalised.

It will also be commercially distributed, as was confirmed by deputy prime minister Etienne Schneider, speaking to Luxembourg Times.

Cannabis to be made legal for recreational use in Luxembourg

The mountains of the Mexican state of Guerrero are dotted with opium poppies, a staple crop for many local farmers. Much of their harvest ends up as heroin, which has placed them square in the middle of the violence associated with rival drug trafficking syndicates. In 2017, Guerrero saw 2,318 homicides involving narcotraffickers fighting for control of the territory. This year is well on track to exceed that number.

The violence comes despite attempts by the national army to crack down on poppy crops, root out drug cartels, and round up criminals—policies that have been widely recognized as missteps. Speaking in Mexico in September as part of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo, once a firm proponent of the war on drugs, urged contemporary lawmakers to “give the benefit of the doubt to those of us who have followed the wrong policy for so many years.” And Mexico’s incoming president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, said in his victory speech that the drug war was a “failed crime and violence strategy.”

Guerrero’s state legislature agrees. As an alternative to the policy of the last few years, lawmakers there have called on the national government to legalize the production of opium for pharmaceutical use. The State’s governor, Héctor Astudillo, has led the charge. López Obrador’s incoming interior minister, Olga Sánchez, seems to be on board, and the president-elect has said that he won’t rule it out.

The basic idea behind the plan is that decriminalization will provide an official route for farmers to produce and sell opium poppies. The legal market should cut the drug traffickers out of the picture, weaken them, and reduce conflict. There is some evidence that such measures could work. As the Council on Foreign Relations has observed, legalization of marijuana in some U.S. jurisdictions diminished cartel profits. And in Portugal, the number of overdoses from heroin was initially reduced by a whopping 85 percent after that drug was legalized. How similar rules would play out in Mexico, though, where cartel violence is extreme, is less clear. At the very least, there’s no doubt that legalizing poppy production would reduce its value to traffickers.

Mexico’s war on drugs failed

Major dark web drug suppliers have started to voluntarily ban the synthetic opioid fentanyl because it is too dangerous, the National Crime Agency has said.

They are “delisting” the high-strength painkiller, effectively classifying it alongside mass-casualty firearms and explosives as commodities that are considered too high-risk to trade. Fentanyl can be up to 100 times stronger than heroin and can easily cause accidental overdoses, particularly when mixed with heroin.

Vince O’Brien, one of the NCA’s leads on drugs, told the 

that dark web marketplace operators appeared to have made a commercial decision, because selling a drug that could lead to fatalities was more likely to prompt attention from police.

It is the first known instance of these types of operators moving to effectively ban a drug.

O’Brien said: “If they’ve got people selling very high-risk commodities then it’s going to increase the risk to them. There are marketplaces that will not accept listings for weapons and explosives – those are the ones that will not accept listings for fentanyl. Clearly, law enforcement would prioritise the supply of weapons, explosives and fentanyl over, for example, class C drugs – and that might well be why they do this.

“There are also drug users on the dark web who say on forums that they don’t think it’s right that people are selling fentanyl because it is dangerous and kills a lot of people.”

Dark web dealers voluntarily ban deadly fentanyl

Lesotho is aiming to make money from the booming medicinal marijuana industry, but the BBC's Vumani Mkhize says the southern African nation already has an unheralded illicit trade in the drug for recreational use.

Green dust swirls around Mampho Thulo as she uses her hands to scoop dried marijuana leaves from a massive heap on the floor of her home into a big linen bag.

She has been cultivating the prized crop in her scenic village of Mapoteng for as long as she can remember.

Seventy kilometres (43 miles) north-east of the capital, Maseru, her land lies in a lush valley surrounded by the mountains that the country is well known for.

It is in this breath-taking scenery that people have been illicitly growing marijuana for recreational use for decades.

Marijuana, mountains and money: How Lesotho is cashing in

An international indigenous network for drug law reform was launched yesterday at the international indigenous conference, Healing Our Spirit Worldwide – The Eighth Gathering, in Sydney, Australia.

The International Indigenous Drug Policy Network has been established by the Aboriginal Drug & Alcohol Council (SA), the New Zealand Drug Foundation and the Thunderbird Partnership Foundation of Canada to ensure the world’s indigenous peoples have a voice on international issues associated with alcohol and drugs.

“As the global push to end the war on drugs and treat substance abuse as a health issue gains momentum, it’s never been more important that indigenous communities are at the forefront of the discussion on drug law reform,” said the NZ Drug Foundation’s Māori Advocacy Advisor, Jack McDonald.

“Māori we know that punishing rather than supporting people with substance abuse issues is causing excessive harm in our communities – our people make up 43% of convictions and 58% of imprisonments due to drug related offences.

“The disproportionate impact of current punitive drug laws and enforcement is influenced by the institutional racism that all indigenous communities consistently face,” said Mr McDonald.

“The UN General Assembly held a Special Session (UNGASS) on drugs in April 2016 in New York, but the outcomes document is largely silent on the challenges facing indigenous communities,” said Aboriginal Drug & Alcohol Council (SA) Director Scott Wilson.

“As we look towards the UN’s next drug policy summit in 2019, we will be approaching other indigenous organisations and First Nations to consolidate a representative international indigenous group and lobby to reduce harms to indigenous communities from substance abuse and discriminatory drug laws,” Mr Wilson said.

International Indigenous Drug Policy Network launched in New Zealand

“It used to be that you’d be walking on your way to score, and if you’d see a policeman, you’d give them three 

 [about 10 cents], and they’d tell you to wrap your business up quickly because undercovers were about to bust the spot,” says Sasha, a 40-something heroin user from Crimea (formerly Ukraine).

In 2014, as the Ukraine crisis erupted, “little green men” started popping up across the Crimea—a Black Sea peninsula the size of Maryland dangling off the south of Ukraine. A “referendum” was held in which 95.5 percent of the population 

backed joining the territory up with Russia. In the political surprise of the century, Vladimir Putin later admitted that the mysterious strangers in green uniform were Russian troops.

Crimea’s history—and tensions reignited this week with the Russian capture of three Ukrainian naval vessels—is complicated. For all the international outrage, the 2014 change in power was 

bloodless. But for one group of people, it was life-or-death.

Once Crimea went under Russian control, the territory’s “registered drug addicts” found themselves cut off from their methadone supplies, which they’d previously got courtesy of Kiev. They were in for a nasty surprise when the new leadership bannedtheir medication, in line with the rest of Russia.

“They gave it a few days, but then the feds and the Cossacks got together and came down on the dealing spots. They broke arms, legs, everything.”

Rather than risk withdrawal, many went back to using heroin, subject to dodgy doses and harsh enforcement. Within a year, over a hundred of them had died.

Russia’s harm reductionists are once again under attack

Thailand’s parliament has almost unanimously accepted the first reading of a bill to legalise medical cannabis, but there is growing fear that foreign companies will monopolise any new marijuana industry.

On 23 November, 145 members of the National Legislative Assembly supported the bill's first reading, with one member abstaining, and none opposing. The bill intends to amend the country’s Narcotics Act, legalising cannabis as a treatment for patients. It would also legalise the medical use of kratom, a plant indigenous to Thailand which is used by some people – but not officially recognised – as a treatment for opioid withdrawal symptoms.

, many licensed groups and individuals who would be entitled to possess cannabis include government ministries, local administrative bodies, the Red Cross, the Government Pharmaceutical Organisation, and certain medical professionals. However, people who have been convicted of drug offences under current Thai law will not be permitted to have cannabis in their possession.

Several international companies have applied for Thai patents for their medical cannabis products, raising concern that - if the bill is eventually passed into law - foreign pharmaceutical companies will dominate the Thai cannabis market.

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