Illegal drugs are a matter of national security, but the war against them cannot be won by armed forces and law enforcement agencies alone. Throwing more soldiers and police at the drug users is not just a waste of money but also can actually make the problem worse. Locking up nonviolent offenders and drug users almost always backfires, instead strengthening organized crime.

That is the message I would like to send to the world and, especially, to President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines. Trust me, I learned the hard way.

We Colombians know a thing or two about fighting drugs. Our country has long been one of the world’s primary suppliers of cocaine. With support from North American and Western European governments, we have poured billions of dollars into a relentless campaign to eradicate drugs and destroy cartels. I was personally involved in taking down the planet’s most notorious drug trafficker, Pablo Escobar, in 1993. While we managed to make Colombia a bit safer, it came at a tremendous price.

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President Duterte is repeating my mistakes

The government’s blanket ban on novel psychoactive substances, formerly legal highs, has succeeded in shutting down high street trade in the substances but has led to products such as Spice being added to the regular menu of illicit street dealers, according to an authoritative report.

The survey of the street drug market in Britain by DrugWise, an online drug information service, also says unprecedented purity levels in heroin, cocaine, crack and ecstasy, driven by competition among drug gangs, is fuelling a recent rise in drug-related deaths.

Thumbnail: Flickr CC Lance Cpl. Damany S. Coleman

Ban on former legal highs has driven trade underground – study

Harm Reduction International is currently accepting tenders from capable, local partners with the capacity and enthusiasm to co-host the next Harm Reduction International Conference, to be held in May/June of 2019.

The Harm Reduction International Conference began in 1990, and was held in Liverpool, England. The city was one of the first to open needle and syringe programmes, and attracted hundreds of visitors each year who wanted to learn about the 'Mersey Harm Reduction Model'. The success of this first conference led to its establishment as an annual event held in major cities around the world. The conference helped spread the principles behind harm reduction, share knowledge and experience and build networks of harm reduction practitioners and activists to broaden the response to HIV related to unsafe injecting practices, HCV, bacterial infections and overdose. The conference also became the primary international meeting and networking point for drug user activists and organisations. Over the past two decades, the conference has been staged in Europe, Eurasia, North and South America, Asia and Australasia, with the most recent conference being held in Montreal, Canada.

Call for tenders: Harm Reduction International Conference 2019

Children as young as 12 have been reported to be doing drug runs in London. Targeting the most vulnerable young people in society – usually looked-after children or those already known to social services – organised crime gangs are using grooming tactics to coerce, manipulate and force young children into criminality to pay off unwanted debts.

Through my ongoing research with Youth Offending Teams, who work with young people in trouble with the law, I’ve found that young people are initially given cannabis, alcohol and cigarettes as a reward for helping with gangs’ dirty work. This can encourage addiction and once addicted, gang members tally up the cost of the drugs, allowing young people to quickly accumulate large debts. Vulnerable young people are becoming trapped in a situation where committing crime is one of very few ways that they can pay off their debt to the gang.

How gangs are exploiting children to do their dirty work

Nothing is truly hidden from anyone. All one has to do is seek it out earnestly enough. Such is the case with weed. It’s only a matter of looking and you don’t even have to look that hard, in order to find it. Yes, it’s supposed to be illegal. But, the measures and the nature of the illegalities of Cannabis in our country are, interestingly, quite relative.

There used to be a time when smoking weed in India was still legal—before the implementation of the NDPS (Narcotic Drugs & Psychotropic Substances) Act of 1985 by the Rajiv Gandhi government. Post-1985, India’s cannabis legacy is all but diluted. What’s considered spiritual to sadhus is considered illegal to the masses, on the surface. Cannabis has been around for over 5000 years now. And while the plant thrives in most parts of North and South India, its consumption is illegal.

Cannabis: How legal and accessible in India it really is

Sierra Leone like most West Africa countries is deeply wrapped traditional and cultural beliefs, there are certain topics or issues that are considered taboo and forbidden to discuss, whatever is said about such issues must be accepted without question, because they considered inerrant and infallible. One of such is the issues of marijuana and its users, who are condemned by traditional, cultural and righteous bigotry. One of greatest blunder in Sierra Leone amongst the citizenry is the persistence denial or notion that “good people don't use marijuana“. This dangerous-prejudice has forced our national human right commission to conspicuously keep silent over the continuous harassment and violation of the human rights marijuana users in the country since their establishment, and the newly widely acclaimed Legal Aid Board vehemently denying to take up the matter of those languishing in our correctional centre’s and police cells across the country because alleged marijuana or other soft drug use and related matter. Marijuana is cultivated in almost every part of Sierra Leone except Bonthe District which soil texture is not suitable for it growth. It is also a lucrative business. According the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency Research Report Sierra Leone is currently the highest exported of Marijuana to the neighboring countries. 

Cannabis legalisation in Sierra Leone, what hope?

The five leading candidates in the upcoming French presidential election, who hail from across the political spectrum, offer markedly different approaches to cannabis policy.

French voters will go to the polls in April to elect a new president, as incumbent François Hollande steps down. Each of the five leading candidates has expressed their view on cannabis prohibition – an issue that hasn’t traditionally been up for debate in mainstream French politics.

France has some of the most repressive cannabis laws in the European Union according to the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA). The possession of cannabis, even for personal use, can be punished by up to 10 years in prison, or with a fine of up to €7.5 million.

What do the French Presidential candidates think about cannabis?

At a meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania, EHRN is launching its first project with the European Commission in the field of drug policy. The project, titled “Drug Policy Impact Assessment for Change in Central and Eastern Europe”, will focus on the Central and Eastern Europe region, with pilot actions in the three Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

The aim of the project is to involve various groups – from legislators and law enforcement to civil society activists – to work on drug policy evaluation mechanisms and promote transparent and evidence-based decision-making processes for national drug policies. A strategic importance is given to obtaining a national and regional consensus on changes needed to meet the targets of EU Drugs Strategy and, in general, to improve public health and human rights in the area of drug policy.

A two-day meeting, taking place on 30-31 January, is dedicated to setting country-specific goals and objectives of the project, identifying partnerships in each country as well as starting the process of creating the methodology for drug policy impact assessment in the region.

Drug policy impact assessment for change in Central and Eastern Europe

As the Tunisian parliament considers a legislative revision to the country’s notoriously strict drug law, human rights organisations are urging lawmakers to reduce penalties.

Last week, Human Rights Watch (HRW), Avocats sans Frontières, and the Tunisian League for Human Rights sent a joint letter to the Tunisian parliament calling for an end to imprisonment as a punishment for “recreational” drug use and possession.

The letter was sent as a response to the legislature’s ongoing reconsideration of Tunisia’s primary piece of drug legislation, Law 52, which has been described as “draconian” and responsible for “a disastrous toll on the lives of thousands of citizens” by Tunisia’s HRW director, Amna Guellali.

Tunisian lawmakers reconsidering “draconian” drug law

The time has come for me to step aside as executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.

This is just about the toughest decision I've ever made but it feels like the right time for me personally and also for DPA. It's almost twenty-three years since I started The Lindesmith Center and approaching seventeen years since we merged with the Drug Policy Foundation to create DPA. We've grown from little more than an idea into a remarkable advocacy organization that has built, led and defined a new political and cultural movement.

Ethan Nadelmann's farewell letter to Drug Policy Alliance staff

Officials in Seattle on Friday approved the nation’s first “safe-injection” sites for users of heroin and other illegal drugs, calling the move a drastic but necessary response to an epidemic of addiction that is claiming tens of thousands of lives each year.

The sites — which offer addicts clean needles, medical supervision and quick access to drugs that reverse the effects of an overdose — have long been popular in Europe. Now, with the U.S. death toll rising, the idea is gaining traction in a number of American cities, including Boston, New York City and Ithaca, N.Y.

While opponents say the sites promote illegal drug use, supporters say they can keep people alive and steer them toward treatment. They compare supervised injection facilities to the needle exchanges that became popular in the 1980s and 1990s as a way to stanch the spread of HIV and hepatitis C among intravenous drug users.

Awash in overdoses, Seattle creates safe sites for users to inject illegal drugs

The summit focused on two key issues in modern Irish drug policy: upcoming legislation to create a legal framework for supervised injecting facilities, and decriminalising possession of illicit drugs for personal use.

Guest of honour, Madame Ruth Dreifuss, the former President of Switzerland who was attending in her capacity as Chair of the Global Commission on Drug Policy explained the necessity of the summit:

At their inception, approaches based on prohibition were aimed at protecting public health, yet criminalisation has had the adverse effect, fuelling global epidemics such as HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C. Harm reduction measures, including the boldest of them such as safe injection facilities, combined with decriminalisation, have proven the most effective in addressing the issue while preserving people’s dignity and reducing public expenditures.

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