Peter Sarosi from Rights Reporter Foundation spoke about the crisis of harm reduction in Central and Eastern Europe at the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs intersessional meeting in Vienna on 8 November, 2018.

Good afternoon! I would like to thank you, Madame Chair, and the Civil Society Task Force, for giving me this opportunity to take stock of the drug-related crisis faced by society in my region, Central-Eastern Europe. This crisis is not caused by drug use itself. It is driven by bad drug policies, based on a faulty assumption that we can make our societies drug-free by punishing people who use drugs, instead of supporting them to stay healthy and alive.

In most of the countries of the region, the majority of injecting drug users belong to deprived and marginalised communities. It is important to understand that for them, harm reduction services, such as needle and syringe programs, are not only about reducing the negative consequences of drug use, such as infections and overdoses. For them, harm reduction is not just an extra option on the menu, not just the first step to recovery. For them, harm reduction programs offer the only opportunity to be treated as a human being – and sometimes the only chance to stay alive. During the early years of this century, thanks to international assistance from the Global Fund, Central-Eastern Europe made huge progress in building up a harm reduction system of care and support.

Rights Reporter Foundation speech at the UN about the harm reduction crisis in Central and Eastern Europe

Vienna, 2018 “Do you use drugs yourself?” – a representative of China teasingly asks me at the meeting of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs. This drug control officer who is convinced of the “effectiveness” of the death penalty for the use and storage of substances. As a result, almost 4,000 people were executed for violations related to substances in 33 jurisdictions of the world. And about 27,000 people were killed without trial in the Philippines

I have been preparing to answer that question since 2004. Dnipro, Ukraine. Kestutis Butkus came from Lithuania to the meeting with drug control having OST medicine in his pocket. It was when our doctor Leonid Vlasenko and I were creating various opportunities for friendly judges and influential police officers to look at the life of drug users from the other, unusual, side. It’s important to consider the theory that harm reduction is valuable but this argument doesn’t make law enforcement think so. The “knowledge” about psychoactive substances and drug users is rooted in our society too deeply. Even the word “methadone” itself provoked aggression among security officers. Everything changed in the moment when Kestutis put on the table what looked like a bottle of water, saying: “Here is methadone, people, it’s like any common medicine”. That was the moment when Kestutis changed the negotiation rules in the hall of the Law Academy with his simple gesture.

EHRA: Our lives – our rules

We, the undersigned civil society and global key constituency-led organizations and networks, met as members of the Community, Rights and Gender (CRG) Advisory Group for the Global Fund CRG department, in Geneva on 1-2 November 2018. During our meeting, we received an update on the shocking developments that pose a direct threat to the health, safety and wellbeing of LGBT people, sex workers and other key and vulnerable populations in Tanzania.

We therefore urgently call on the heads of the UN and the multilateral health and development organizations, collaborating under the recently launched SDG3 Action Plan, to mobilize a coordinated response to the escalating crisis of state sanctioned violence facing the communities of LGBT people, sex workers and people who use drugs in Tanzania.

In an era of rising populism and heightened political repression around the world, communities most affected by HIV, TB and malaria, including people who use drugs, sex workers, LGBT people, with specific concern for transgender people, gay men and other men who have sex with men, are experiencing an escalation in state-sanctioned violence. Trends in state sanctioned violence, including gender-based violence, are fueled by pervasive levels of stigma, discrimination, and conservative populism. It has become all too common for political demagogues to use key populations as a political wedge to subjugate, oppress, debase, and belittle its citizens.

Civil society calls for rapid international response to the human rights crisis in Tanzania

The cabinet on Tuesday approved a draft amendment to the 1979 Narcotics Act to legalise cannabis for medical and research purposes. However, all use of the drug will be kept under strict control. Government spokesman Buddhipongse Punnakanta said the amended version of the act will "level up" marijuana to a Category 2 drug from its current Category 5 status. Mr Buddhipongse said this means the draft amendment to the law will allow the use, import and export, as well as possession of marijuana exclusively for medical purposes.


Thailand: Pot approved for research, medical use

Reforming New Zealand’s “punitive” drug laws - including the decriminalisation of all drugs and introduction of a legal market for cannabis - would benefit the country by at least $450 million a year, according to a cost-benefit analysis commissioned by the Drug Foundation.

The report, produced by economist Shamubeel Eaqub from consultancy Sense Partners, says there would be a net social benefit of at least $225 million from investing an extra $150m in addiction treatment, drug education, and harm reduction interventions.

It estimates there would be a net social benefit of $34m to $83m from replacing the Misuse of Drugs Act, passed in 1975, with a new law based on a health-based approach to the issue.

Creating a legal, regulated market for the purchase of cannabis would bring $185m to $240m in new tax revenue while also saving the justice sector $6m to $13m, the report says.

The release of the report comes as the Government carries out inquiries into New Zealand’s mental health and addiction services, while also preparing for a referendum on legalising the personal use of cannabis by the next election - a commitment in the Greens’ confidence and supply agreement with Labour.

A strong economic case for drug reform in New Zealand

Today is undoubtedly a landmark moment but - as foreshadowed in earlier posts - the regime will be more restrictive than many persons in the media, and certain commentators, had claimed a few months ago. The reason is that the medicines legislation (and not just the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971) was/is bound to set the ‘pace’ in relation to Cannabis-based medicinal products (CBMPs).

The Misuse of Drugs (Amendments) (Cannabis and Licence Fees) (E.W.&S) Regulations 2018 (SI 2018 No.1055)

A useful and comprehensive statement of the current position has been published by the MHRA, “The supply, manufacture, importation and distribution of unlicensed cannabis-based products for medicinal use in humans ‘specials’”.

A letter dated 31st Oct 2018 from the DHSC and NHS England is informative but there are two statements within it that need to be treated with discretion:

“Moving cannabis based products for medicinal use to schedule 2 will mean those [products] can be prescribed medicinally where there is an unmet clinical need”

Prescribing cannabis-based medicinal products: Moving forward from the landmark

The oppression of people of colour in the name of the "war on drugs" has long been associated with mass incarceration and the overuse of stop-and-search.

Of those incarcerated for drug offences in US federal prisons, nearly 80 percent are black or Latino. In state prisons, these groups account for almost 60 percent of the prison population. Cannabis laws in the US also heavily fall on the black community, with African-Americans nearly four times more likely to be arrested for possession of the drug compared to the white population, despite using cannabis at roughly the same rate as the white population.

The issue of race and drugs is not just a problem in the United States. Around the world we see people of colour being subject to police harassment, arrest, imprisonment and even, in some countries, the use of extrajudicial killings – all under the guise of repressing the drugs trade. This is why there is a need for people of colour to come together to discuss the impact of drugs policy, policing and enforcement on themselves and their communities.

The UK needs to take a racial justice approach to drug policy

The world over, communities of people who use drugs experience endemic violence, abuse, stigmatisation, and discrimination. In the last year alone, tens of thousands of people who use drugs have died as a result of prohibition, as a result of criminalisation, and as a result of the social exclusion they suffer for nothing more than their status as drug users. All over the world, people who use drugs are incarcerated and imprisoned; they are incarcerated without due legal process in forced labour camps; they are tortured and executed; they are denied access to healthcare, service provision, and harm reduction; they are harassed and assaulted by the police. This is a time of humanitarian calamities for our communities. Huge numbers of people continue to die from avoidable opiate overdose as a result of using heroin that is contaminated or of unknown purity and strength, due to the unregulated black-market of prohibition. Overdose mortalities are rising exponentially globally. Overdose deaths are now the most prevalent cause of death of under 50s in the USA. Further to this tragic and unnecessary loss of life are the tens of thousands of drug users murdered in state-endorsed killings. Tens of thousands have been killed by the police in numerous contexts in only the last year.

INPUD: International drugs users' day 2018

Mexico’s Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that an absolute ban on recreational use of marijuana was unconstitutional, effectively leaving it to lawmakers to regulate consumption of the drug.

Announcing it had found in favor of two legal challenges filed against prohibition of recreational marijuana use, Mexico’s top court crossed the threshold needed to create jurisprudence: five similar rulings on the matter.

That creates a precedent other Mexican courts will have to follow.

“This is a historic day,” Fernando Belaunzaran, an advocate of drug reform and member of the opposition leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), said.

The Supreme Court made its first ruling to allow a group of people to grow marijuana for personal use in November 2015.

Mexico Supreme Court says ban on recreational marijuana unconstitutional

GENEVA (1 November 2018) — The UN Human Rights Committee, which monitors implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, today published a new general comment: a comprehensive text providing legal guidance on article 6, the right to life.

“The right to life is the prerequisite for the enjoyment of all other human rights,” explained Yuval Shany, Chair of the Human Rights Committee. “The general comment provides a rich and authoritative statement of the obligations deriving from the right to life, which the Committee defines as ‘the supreme right.’”

The Human Rights Committee, made up of 18 independent experts, is charged with watching over the Covenant by examining the human rights situation in each of the 172 countries that ratified it. Those countries are also referred to as States parties. In addition to reviewing the human rights situation in the States parties, the Committee also examines, discusses and writes guidance on how States parties ought to interpret and apply the Covenant on a practical level. The Human Rights Committee speaks for itself, not for the United Nations.

UN Human Rights Committee publishes new general comment on the ‘right to life’

The Zimbabwe Civil Liberties and Drug Network (ZCLDN) has this year held two capacity building workshops on promoting harm reduction in the country’s prisons. The two workshops held in August and October were attended by senior Zimbabwe Prison and Correctional Services officers and middle management officers.

The capacity building workshop was attended by senior officers from the Harare Metro province based at the Harare Central, Chikurubi Maximum, Women and Farm prisons. ZCLDN director, Wilson Box said the workshops were meant to enhance knowledge of drug and substance use among prison officers and change attitudes and values towards drug use and reduce risk behavior associated with substance use among key populations including drug users. “Prisoners are key populations and they are vulnerable to be infected by diseases. Therefore, there is need for humane treatment of prisoners including those who use drugs and we need to introduce the concept of harm reduction and drug policy reform,” Box said. The prison officers went through the process of implementing and disseminating drug use and harm reduction strategies to inmates

Zimbabwean prison officers undergo training on promoting harm reduction

Ontario’s corrections ministry says it does not track the number of opioid overdoses in its jails, even though prisoners have died and staff are routinely treating inmates for overdoses.

That has observers of the jail system wondering how the province expects to combat a major health crisis and keep people safe without a full statistical picture of the drug overdose problem.

Last May, this newspaper sent a freedom-of-information request to the Ministry of Community Safety and Correctional Services, asking how many overdoses there have been in provincial jails, and how many times staff have administered the antidote naloxone.

Five months later, the answer has arrived.

The number of overdoses and cases where naloxone is used are “not maintained in a central databank,” the ministry says in a letter.

As a result, counting up the totals would require “an extensive manual search within each inmate’s file in each provincial jail covering the specified time period.”

We also asked how many drugs seizures there were in jails during two six-month periods in 2017 and 2018. The ministry says it seized suspected drugs 206 times from May to October on 2017, and 111 times in the five months after that (with figures not available for the sixth month).

Even then, it cautions that jail staff can’t really say whether the seized materials are drugs, since this would require testing.

Ministry spokesman Brent Ross sent a statement Monday saying that “the ministry is developing a tracking system for naloxone use, which will act as an indicator of the number of overdoses taking place.” He said he can’t speculate when the tracking system will begin, “but work is ongoing.”

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