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.

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

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.

The Global Commission expresses concern over the arrest of Senator De Lima in the Philippines

HOPS – Healthy Options Project Skopje’s Center for Education, Documentation and Research and Coalition “Sexual and Health Rights of Marginalized Communities” 

announce call for articles for 9th issue of theDrugs – Policies and Practices magazine

.

Drugs – Policies and Practices promotes topics about drugs, drug use, drug treatment, 

sex work and drugs, HIV/AIDS and drugs, Hepatitis B and C and drugs, Tuberculosis and drugs, rights of the marginalized groups/communities, gender perspectives, free access to public information, researches, policies, advocacy, civil society, activism, social work, social policy, health, through the drugs perspectives

.

Drugs – Policies and Practices target audience are people who use drugs, people on drug addiction treatment, experts for drug use and drug treatment issues and all for people with interest for these topics. It is published both in Macedonian (printed and online) and in English (online).

Drugs – Policies and Practices accepts articles, translated articles, news, promotions, columns/essays, pictures with socially enlightening content, campaigns related to D-PP topics. It is space for affirmation of personal opinions and opinions of institutions and organizations who work on such issues. If you have an opinion to declare, news to announce and to boost your campaign, please, contact Vanja Dimitrievski,

.

The main topic for the 9th issue of the magazine is 

Financial support for harm reduction programs

. Despite the main topic, we welcome all other articles related to afore mentioned topics.


Dead line for this call is March 15, 2017

. Editorial Board will do the selection of received articles and other materials. Selection criteria are:

Expertise (knowledge and experience for described topics)

For more information, please, contact Vanja Dimitrievski, 


For more information about text formatting, please, read the 


The previous issues of Drugs – Policies and Practices are available at: 

Healthy Options Project Skopje: article call for Drugs – Policies and Practices magazine

A narrow majority of MPs on Tuesday backed new legislation which would regulate marijuana cultivation under government control.

The vote, by 77 to 72, would allow cannabis cafe owners to buy their produce from licenced growers who produce the marijuana in a closed system.

The bill, drawn up by D66 MP Vera Bergkamp, was backed by Labour, GroenLinks, the Socialists and pro-animal PvdD as well as all the splinter parties. The VVD, PVV and three Christian parties in parliament voted against.

Dutch parliamentarians vote in favour of regulated cannabis cultivation

More drug and alcohol addicts could be forced into treatment programmes as the result of a recent law change, which has raised questions about whether rehabilitation centres will be able to cope.

The Substance Addiction Act became law last week. It simplifies the process for police, health services and loved ones to force those locked in a cycle of substance abuse into compulsory treatment.

But Wellington addiction clinician Roger Brooking said is was unclear whether the health sector could cope with a spike in rehab patients given there were only four approved centres across the country, and those centres were already full.

New Zealand: New law could force more people with drug and alcohol dependencies into compulsory rehabilitation

Illegal-drug users in Maryland could partake in recreational use under a bill that would create legal, sanitary illicit-drug use facilities in the state.

The bill, proposed by Delegate Dan Morhaim, D-Baltimore County, would create an overdose-prevention and safer drug-consumption program allowing drug users to legally ingest their narcotics under supervision of trained professionals and staff, in clean facilities.

“Let me be real clear, I’m not for substance abuse. It’s a bad thing,” said Morhaim, a board-certified physician with years working in emergency care. “I’ve seen the ravages, but we’ve been doing this for 50 years, and tried all these things. And after 50 years, there’s not one data point that is better.”

USA: Illicit drug use OK in ‘safe’ site under Maryland bill

In 2014, 51% of new HIV infections in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA) were among people who use drugs (PWUD).

The need for affordable sterile equipment and condoms is clear. What is also important is – a favourable environment to ensure that those in need have access to prevention and treatment services. An EHRN project implemented with the Eurasian Network of People who Use Drugs (ENPUD) and other partners aims at ensuring this through practical activities, which involve community representatives. Its overall goal is to lower the HIV transmission among people who use drugs by promoting harm reduction, human rights and supportive policy environments.

The project covers eight EHRN members’ countries: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and Russia. The project complements the existing Street Lawyers program in some of the countries.

This video showcases the outreach work of "street lawyers", who provide legal advice to people who use drugs to protect against, and document, human rights violations in Eurasia. 

The three-year project is financed by the Robert Carr civil society Networks Fund.

News