A group of former premiers, police commissioners and legal advocates have luanched a push for decriminalisation as part of a widespread reform of drug laws.

The former Labor premier of NSW, Bob Carr, and the former Liberal Victoria premier, Jeff Kennett, launched the Australia 21 report on Monday, which calls for an end to criminalisation of drug users.

The report, entitled “Can Australia respond to drugs more effectively and safely?”, makes 13 recommendations around minimising drug-related harm and the burden on the criminal justice system.

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

Former premiers and Australian police chiefs call for drug decriminalisation

The European Commission (EC) has proposed a new counter-narcotic plan for the European Union, which includes several seemingly progressive changes.

Among the new proposals is the examining of drug trafficking’s relationship with human trafficking, the implementation of evidence-based harm reduction measures, and the consideration of human rights when funding foreign regimes’ counter-narcotic activity.

The proposed EU Action Plan on Drugs 2017-2020 was published on March 15, and – if accepted for implementation – will provide the basis of the second half of an eight-year multinational endeavour, the EU Drugs Strategy for 2013-2030 (“the Strategy”).

Progressive changes in newly-proposed European Union Action Plan on Drugs

By scheduling two fentanyl precursors and a fentanyl analogue, the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) is sending a clear message that it can help protect people's health and respond to the urgent needs of states, the Chair of 60th Session of the CND, Ambassador Bente Angell-Hansen said today.

"This was a crucial decision by the Commission, and it is proof that the CND can respond quickly when a crisis involving people's lives has to be addressed," said Ms. Angell-Hansen.

Based on research in UNODC's recently released Global Smart Report, fentanyl and its analogues have contributed to more than 5,000 overdose deaths in North America since 2013. Deaths have also been recorded in European Union Member States, including Finland, Germany, Greece and the United Kingdom; and in Australia, Algeria and Morocco.

Commission on Narcotic Drugs takes decisive step to help prevent deadly fentanyl overdoses

While all eyes were on the US administration’s latest attempt to block people from six predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States, many may have missed Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ alarming remarks on the US “war on drugs.”

In a speech before law enforcement leaders Wednesday, Sessions clearly articulated his prohibitionist views on personal drug use, stating that marijuana is only “slightly less awful” than heroin and that “using drugs will destroy your life.” While briefly mentioning the importance of treatment and prevention programs, Sessions made clear that he plans to significantly ramp up federal enforcement of drug laws, and that he opposes the experiments that many states have started with legalization and regulation of marijuana.

We know from experience that this approach and has done little to reduce problematic drug use, which has remained high for decades. Instead, it has done tremendous harm, resulting in massive numbers of people being locked up or deported for low-level offenses in the US.

A return to the failed ‘War on Drugs’ in the US?

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has vowed to continue his “war on drugs” in spite of growing calls for an investigation into his role in it.

On March 6, the Philippine government lifted its suspension on police anti-drug operations. The suspension had been imposed in January following revelations that anti-drug police had kidnapped and killed a South Korean businessman.

Philippine National Police Director-General Ronald dela Rosa has christened this new phase of the drug war Project Double Barrel Alpha, Reloaded, and has said it will be “less bloody, if not bloodless” than that of the previous eight months.

Rodrigo Duterte relaunches Philippine drug war despite calls for investigation

Ricardo Hegedus raised his voice so he could be heard over the clanging of tea-packaging machines. “Coca is a marvellous gift of nature, offering a moderate stimulant like coffee – but full of vitamins and minerals,” he said.

Hegedus, the manager of Windsor – Bolivia’s largest coca leaf tea producer – pointed to stacked boxes of teabags and said: “We have dreamt of exporting coca tea for the 26 years I have worked here.”

That vision of an expanding international market for legal coca products – such as flour, tea and ointments – is shared widely in Bolivia, and it was the driving force for a recent law signed this month by president Evo Morales that jacks up the 12,000 hectares (29,640 acres) legally recognized in a 1988 law to 22,000 hectares.

Bolivia sees coca as a way to perk up its economy – but all everyone else sees is cocaine

With fatal drug overdoses at alarming levels in New York City, particularly from opiates like heroin, Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday vowed to reverse the tide and reduce the number of deaths by 35 percent over five years through a combination of outreach, treatment and law enforcement.

The plan, alluded to in Mr. de Blasio’s state of the city address last month, would see the city spend as much as $38 million a year on a broad array of services, including expanded methadone and buprenorphine treatment for addicts; a focus at city hospitals on dealing with addiction and overdoses; aggressive prosecution of illicit opioid distributors and heroin dealers; and the distribution of medication to reverse heroin overdoses to all 23,000 city patrol officers.

The announcement, at Lincoln Hospital in the Mott Haven neighborhood in the Bronx, comes as illicit and prescription opioids are driving a surge in fatal overdoses in New York City, and it follows efforts around the country to address an epidemic that the Drug Enforcement Administration last year said kills more people than firearms.

As drug deaths soar, New York City Mayor offers plan to cut toll

Coca production in Colombia has surged to levels unseen in two decades of U.S. eradication efforts, according to a new White House report.

Cultivation of the plant used to make cocaine rose 18% last year from 2015, with officials in the Andean nation estimating 188,000 hectares (465,000 acres) of Colombian land now contained coca crops.

The soaring coca production comes as Colombia begins implementing a peace accord that calls on the country’s biggest rebel movement to renounce drug trafficking and work with the government to replace coca plants with alternative crops.

Colombia's coca production soars to highest level in two decades, US says

To enter the unsanitary, violent, and inhumane cells of Brazil’s prisons is to step into a cruel netherworld where neither Brazilian nor international law seem to apply. For nearly 37,000 women behind bars, there is added anguish.

Brazil should make much greater use of alternatives to prison, especially for pregnant women and women with children, as provided by law. It should also stop snaring women in its disastrous “war on drugs” by decriminalizing drug use. Finally, the government should bring prison conditions in the relatively small number of female lockups into compliance with international standards and its own laws.

Brazil’s illegal treatment of women in prison

Human Rights Watch said on Thursday that President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines may have committed crimes against humanity by inciting killings during his bloody antidrug campaign.

Thousands of people have been killed by the police or by vigilantes since Mr. Duterte became president in June, and rights groups say the police may have ordered the extrajudicial killings of drug dealers and users, a charge that officials have denied.

In a report released on Thursday, Human Rights Watch examined 32 deaths from October to January, all involving the Philippine National Police. Police reports asserted that officers had committed the killings in self-defense, but witnesses characterized them as “coldblooded murders of unarmed drug suspects in custody,” the rights group’s study said.

Duterte may be guilty of crimes against humanity say Human Rights Watch

The report of the Working Group for the Medical Use of Cannabis delivered to the Health Minister, Mr. Xanthos, was published yesterday, Wednesday 22.02.2017. We are very pleased with this development, as in a recent letter Diogenis together with other Civil Society organizations requested official information regarding the progress of the Working Group’s tasks.

The Working Group for the Medical Use of Cannabis has been established by the decision of the Minister of Health on 18.07.2016 with the following main purposes:

to study the existing legislative framework and

to formulate evidence based proposals concerning the regulatory framework and the necessary legislative changes to allow medical use of preparations containing cannabinoids

Greece: Positive report from the Working Group for the Medical Use of Cannabis

 – On the eve of the 34th session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, we have learned with deep concern of the arrest of Senator Leila de Lima, on charges linked to alleged corruption involving inmates incarcerated for drug trafficking.

Senator de Lima, a former Justice Secretary of the Philippines, has been an outspoken advocate for the dignity of her fellow citizens. She has strongly opposed the extrajudicial killings taking place within the frame of the war on drugs launched by the current administration, using the legal instruments at her disposal as an elected representative.

We are hopeful that the presumption of innocence will be upheld and that Senator de Lima will soon be released from pre-trial detention. We look forward to welcoming her at the sessions of the Human Rights Council and at the International Forum on Human Rights, which she is due to attend in March in Geneva, Switzerland.

The Global Commission on Drug Policy takes this opportunity to reiterate its message to the President of the Philippines that his war on drugs is misguided and unwinnable and comes at an unbearable cost to the people and their communities.

The use of proportionate sentences for small players in the drug market, relying on intelligence and infiltration to track senior traffickers and criminals, and implementing prevention and harm reduction measures to support people who use drugs, are more effective and far less costly responses to drugs, and uphold the rule of law and the dignity and human rights of all citizens.

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

News