Prime Minister Hun Sen has authorized a six-month extension of the government’s anti-drug campaign, an anti-drug authority official said on Thursday.

As of on Thursday, more than 10,000 people had been arrested for drug-related crimes since January 1, surpassing the approximately 9,800 people arrested for those crimes in all of last year.

As in other nations, Cambodia’s war on drugs was “likely to result in countless harms,” said Marie Nougier, senior research and communications officer at the International Drug Policy Consortium, in an email.

“Since January, this has already resulted in a surge in people being incarcerated for drug offences” in Cambodia, leading to overcrowded prisons and health concerns, Ms. Nougier said.

Keep up-to-date with drug policy developments by subscribing to the IDPC Monthly Alert.

Cambodian government to continue drug crackdown with nearly $1M budget

As New Zealand’s general election draws closer, some of the parliamentary candidates have been discussing drug policy; while they may disagree with each other about what needs to be done, many believe that change is necessary.

The 2017 Parliamentary Drug Policy Symposium was convened in early July by the NZ Drug Foundation to fuel debate on the subject, and to allow the public to gain greater insight into the potential future of the country’s drug policy in the run-up to September’s general election. As Ross Bell, executive director of the NZ Drug Foundation, described in a recent op-ed, “even though we convict thousands of people each year for using drugs, we still have some of the highest use rates in the world”. The failure of New Zealand’s war on drugs seems to be increasingly understood.

A 2016 poll commissioned by the NZ Drug Foundation revealed that almost two thirds of the country’s population supported either the decriminalisation or legalisation of cannabis for personal use. Ross Bell notes that "this poll shows that it doesn't matter what party people back, there is consistent support to move away from the criminal justice approach to drugs.”

New Zealand politicians talk drug law reform as election approaches

At the 25th International Harm Reduction Conference, Mainline organised a packed side event called ‘Future Proofing Harm Reduction’, together with AFEW, AidsFonds, INPUD and others. The rationale behind the side event was the need we see to promote harm reduction as a broad approach- not just as a set of HIV-related interventions.

The event showed that organisations need to start thinking creatively about how to embed harm reduction in other themes besides HIV prevention. A new narrative is needed, and novel approaches are sought in order to ensure harm reduction stays future-proof. Because without a harm reduction approach that safeguards people’s human rights, that enables access to male and female users equally and that ensures a continuum of care for people who use drugs, governments won’t be able to achieve their targets under the sustainable development goals (SDG’s).

Future proofing harm reduction in Montreal

It was peak Jeff Sessions, the moment that showed exactly what the country is getting under President Donald Trump’s attorney general: Ignoring decades of scientific evidence, Sessions praised an anti-drug program — DARE — straight out of the 1980s “tough on crime” playbook.

Speaking at a DARE conference, Sessions said, “DARE is, I think, the best remembered anti-drug program today. In recent years, people have not paid much attention to that message, but they are ready to hear it again. … We know it worked before, and we can make it work again.”

DARE was largely based on one idea: If you tell kids about how bad drugs are, they will be so scared that they will not use them. The program leveraged this to try to teach kids how to say no to drugs.

Jeff Sessions’s praise of DARE shows he just can’t quit the 1980s

The Dáil committee’s report warned that, were the Bill to pass into law, it may also have the effect of decriminalising cannabis use for recreational users. It argues that there is still a shortage of scientific peer-reviewed evidence on the safety and effectiveness of cannabinoid treatments for medical conditions, despite initial encouraging medicinal possibilities.

The report by the Oireachtas committee said the Bill has major legal issues and the proposed framework to allow patients access cannabis for medical reasons is “too loose to effectively guard against leakage of supply to recreational users, [and] overuse by patients”. The health committee report outlines that it is “concerned that the Bill proposes to remove cannabis from the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977”, which the report warns may have the effect of decriminalising cannabis use for all users. The committee’s scrutiny report argues there is still a shortage of scientific peer-reviewed evidence on the safety and effectiveness of cannabinoid treatments for medical conditions, despite initial encouraging medicinal possibilities.

People Before Profit TD Gino Kenny said that families were becoming medical refugees, going to Holland for treatment. “What happened yesterday is a shambles.”

Ireland: Cannabis Bill rejection a ‘shambles’, says People Before Profit TD

Doctors and health authorities warned of the “devastating” impact of the new cuts on the future health and wellbeing of the nation after the King’s Fund revealed a total of £85m is set to be carved out of local authority allocations for public health. Its latest like-for-like analysis showed that councils in England will spend £2.52bn on public health services in 2017-18 compared to £2.6bn the previous year and once inflation is factored in, will be more than 5 per cent lower in 2017-18 than it was in 2013-14.

Thorrun Govind, a pharmacist at a chemists in Bolton, said the planned cuts are “not good for the country” and would result in greater pressure on front-line NHS services as fewer diseases and harmful behaviours are prevented. Ms Govind said that as well as “supporting and promoting healthy lifestyles”, pharmacies provide vital face-to-face care to people who misuse drugs. “They have somewhere they can trust, we can help support them. They’ll come in for needles a couple of times and we’ll say: ‘Have you thought about coming in for treatment?’” she told 

. There are around 87,000 people who regularly inject drugs in the UK, according to the NHS. Pharmacies have run needle exchange services since the late 1980s amid fears of HIV spreading among drug users.

UK Government's public health cuts 'will leave needles in the streets', warn pharmacists

Johns Hopkins scientists report that data collected over five years by volunteers who tested pills free of charge at music festivals and raves across the United States suggest that at least some recreational users of drugs may choose not to take them if tests show the pills are adulterated or fake.

"People would be safest not taking any street drugs at all, but if free, no-fault testing can reduce deaths and other catastrophic consequences, it may be a service worth having," says Matthew W. Johnson, Ph.D., associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "Our results suggest that some people will reject taking a pill to get high if it doesn't contain what they thought it did, or has harmful additives."

Johnson says his team's research highlights the potential public health value of reducing the risks of drug use, and says the development of additional ways to assess more dangerous street drugs, such as fentanyl and carfentanil, might offer a means of reducing the growing epidemic of fatalities associated with them.

On-site ecstasy pill-testing services may reduce user risks at concerts and raves

Ann Fordham and Fiona Measham spoke at Through the Maze this week, about reforming global drug laws and why Portugal is a role model.

How to deal with drugs

New Zealand once led the world in social change, but we’ve really slipped behind when it comes to tackling our drug problem. We once again need to bring together the determination and smarts that led to suffragettes winning the vote for women in 1893 and the demand for gay marriage gave way to legalisation in 2013. Now is the time to update our obsolete dug law.

The Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 is over 40 years old. It doesn’t work and it is causing long term harm to New Zealanders. It sets out harsh criminal penalties for possession and use of drugs in an attempt to stop people taking them. It doesn’t work, and we need to urgently do something differently.

While many of our politicians bury their heads in the sand, our drug laws are hurting the people they are supposed to protect. Meanwhile we continue to neglect the investment in prevention and treatment that users need.

Our politicians won’t do it, so the Drug Foundation did: A model drug law for New Zealand

Penalties for the possession of drugs in the US state of Oregon are set to be significantly reduced, as legislators in the state approved two bills focused on criminal justice reform.

On Thursday July 6, Oregon’s Senate passed House Bill 2355 (HB-2355) and House Bill 3078 (HB-3079), which had both already been approved by the state’s House of Representatives one day earlier.

Among its stipulations, HB-2355 reduces the crime classification of unlawful possession of controlled substances in the Schedule I and Schedule II categories to a maximum sentence of one year’s imprisonment, a $6,250 fine, or both. Selling drugs, and possessing drugs with the intent to sell, continue to be felonies.

Until now, possession of Schedule I drugs – such as MDMA and heroin, and Schedule II drugs – such as methamphetamine and cocaine, have been classed as felonies. These offences were punishable by up to 10 or five years in prison, respectively. HB-2355 redefines these offences as misdemeanours.

Oregon aims to defelonise methamphetamine, heroin, and MDMA possession

Human rights advocates globally have been raising the alarm over diminishing civil society space, as an increasing number of governments are curbing dissent through the silencing of opposing voices, eliminating them from the public sphere. A recent report, 

 issued by rights-monitoring groups, highlights how states have found support in religious intergovernmental bodies and religious-affiliated civil society actors. The report found that, in the last two decades, these “anti-rights” groups have formed strategic alliances and have co-opted human rights language to pursue a regressive agenda. Global policymaking spaces have become battle sites resulting in regressive, weakened UN resolutions.

Government constricting of the civil society space is most evident regarding freedom of expression, a recent example being Vietnam. Human Rights Watch recently documented attacks by “thugs” against rights bloggers and activists there. The attackers appear to be operating under the direction of, or with support from, government authorities. The report documented 36 such attacks that took place between January 2015 and April 2017. Given the Vietnamese government’s highly controlled state media, activists had turned to online platforms to express their concerns, but faced violent physical attacks as a result. The report calls on donor governments to request the Vietnamese government end attacks on rights activists.

In its pursuit to silence critics, Vietnam finds friends among its neighbors. The government of Thailand is reportedly exploring software that would allow the ruling military junta to monitor the online activity of its citizens. Thailand already has multiple laws under which rights activists and journalists have been harassed, arrested, and imprisoned. The government is attempting to push a cyber security bill, which has been criticized by experts who say it allows the government to grant unchecked access to its citizens’ privacy.

An analysis of drug policies in Asia

Figures obtained by Scotland on Sunday show officers handed out a total of 5,827 Recorded Police Warnings (RPWs) in 2016/17, equivalent to roughly a fifth of all drug possession charges.
The scheme, which was introduced in January last year, is used for a range of minor offences which would previously have been reported to prosecutors and would have led to a non-court disposal or no further action being taken. However, critics have described RPWs as a “soft touch”, with the inclusion of cannabis possession particularly controversial.
“It might be the first time that person has been in trouble. I don’t think it’s appropriate that that person, if it’s been a minor piece of offending where there’s no harm to a victim, could then carry a criminal conviction for years in their life which may affect their employment possibilities, their education, their travel. If they are dealt with proportionately and fairly by Police Scotland and the justice system, then there’s perhaps a chance they won’t offend again and they can get on with their life.”

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