In late spring of 2016, a team of EHRN and DUNewsrepresentatives visited six cities in the Baltic States: Vilnius, Kaunas, Visaginas, Riga, Tallinn and Tartu. We covered about 2,000 km and met with community representatives, harm reduction program staff, high-level officials and representatives of the academic community. We wanted to obtain first-hand information about how the Baltic drug policy worked in practice. We wanted to understand how statements made by these countries’ representatives from the rostrum of the Special Session of the UN General Assembly on the world drug problem correspond to the realities of people who use drugs and NGOs that run harm reduction programs.

For example, the Minister of Health of Lithuania stated at the Special Session that his country recognized the effectiveness of harm reduction programs and was ready to promote those programs in the region. However, when we visited the town of Visaginas, situated 140 km away from Vilnius, we learned that funding for the needle exchange program was minimal and usually came with a five-month delay. If the program does not secure permanent funding before December this year, this long-existing program will have to close. An OST program in Visaginas has never opened despite the huge demand for it in the city that holds a "leading" position in the country in terms of its level of drug use.

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2000 km of Baltic drug policies: from Vilnius to Tallinn

A Brazilian minister has called for an intensification of the War on Drugs, arguing that harsher punishments will reduce drug use.

Earlier this week, Osmar Terra - who was appointed Minister of Social Development in May 2016 – claimed in a conversation with O Globo that Brazil has “never seriously waged a war on drugs”. He called for increased border control, stricter penalties for drug trafficking, and educational campaigns, to combat the country’s rising drug use.

The Brooking Institute reports that cocaine use in Brazil has "more than doubled since 2005", and attributes this to an increasingly urban and affluent population with disposable income. Terra claimed that decriminalising drug possession would set a dangerous precedent for the eventual legalisation of substances, and that without “some kind of punishment, [people who use drugs] will consume more”.

Thumbnail: Flickr CC André Gustavo Stumpf

Brazil minister claims state ‘Never waged drug war’ in face of rising imprisonment for drug offences

Last week at the UN Crime Commission, delegates and experts gathered at a side-event to discuss how to address the HIV epidemic in prisons. The panel all agreed – to achieve the target under Goal 3 of the Sustainable Development Agenda to end the HIV epidemic by 2030 – strong support (including political will and financial resources) has to urgently bededicated to addressing the disproportionatelyhigh rates of people in prison with HIV/AIDS. In my presentation, I explained that as a starting point, prisons should turn to the UN Nelson Mandela Rules and the UN Bangkok Rules on women offenders and prisoners for guidance on this issue.

Prisoners are more likely to have HIV/AIDS than someone in the community. Despite this, prisons are struggling to prevent the transmission of HIV to other prisoners and staff and fail to meet the needs of those who are HIV+. Instead they are frequently isolated and almost always stigmatised. Guidance provided in the UN Nelson Mandela Rules and the UN Bangkok Rules provides a solid starting point for prison administrations’ efforts towards the proper prevention, treatment and care of HIV/AIDS in prison, while upholding the right to dignity of those affected.

HIV/AIDS in prisons can’t be ignored if the world is to move closer to the Sustainable Development Goal 3 on Health

In a discreet corner of the Mwananyamala District Hospital grounds, in Dar es Salaam, a group of young people queue up outside a small window to get their daily fix of methadone. Others are taking refuge from the intense heat in the few shady spots available in the dusty yard behind the low building housing the methadone clinic. There are few women to be seen but that, as explained by Dr Pilly Sahid Mutoka, the Assistant Medical Officer at the clinic, is because women drug users suffer greater stigma than men and are less comfortable about declaring their drug problem.

In recent years, Dar es Salaam has seen an increase in illicit drug use, particularly heroin, as the large port city has become a pit stop for smugglers en route from Afghanistan to Europe and the rest of Africa. The heroin sold is not great quality but it is cheaply available, with one dose costing as little as one US dollar.

Pioneering methadone programme gives hope to thousands in Dar es Salaam

For over half a century there has been a global consensus that drugs should be eliminated through punishment and repression. But this "consensus" has been ripped apart at the seams. Progressively more countries realise repression and punishment have failed. It's time for change.

Join the movement at http://supportdontpunish.org/

Support Don't Punish: "A broad consensus - It's time for change"

"You can't see the house from the street. It is surrounded by a towering wall laced with barbed wire fencing, and it boasts a large, locked, metal door. Once inside, it seems peaceful. There are trees on the lawn, music playing, and rooms full of plush sofas and framed pictures of Jesus.

There, another locked door leads to a room filled with 80 drug addicts. There, the horror stories begin.

"It's been three months since I've seen my family or even gone downstairs," says one 36-year-old addict, who speaks very quietly in a corner of the room. "If they knew I was telling you these things, they'd beat me."

Mexican authorities provide very limited treatment for addicts, and almost no residential care, which means families struggling to cope rely almost exclusively on privately-run centers known colloquially as 

or annexes. The majority of the inhabitants, who are known as 

, claim they were taken against their will and face a wide range of abuses — many of them criminal."

Inside the Secretive, Abusive World of Mexico's Private Drug Rehab Centers

A state initiative focused on getting drugs into the hands of current users is receiving national attention for stopping more than 3,000 deaths.

Conner Adams was hanging out at a friend’s house on a recent Sunday when a man and a woman she didn’t know burst in the door and headed straight to the bathroom.

Minutes later, Adams heard screams and crying. The man came into the living room and hastily explained that his girlfriend had a condom inside her body stuffed with about $1,300 worth of heroin – and it wasn’t tied. She had tried to remove as much as possible in the shower, but a large amount of heroin was entering her body, and she was entering a massive overdose.

Adams ran to the bathroom, crouched next to the girl and stuck a needle in her right bicep, shooting naloxone into her veins – a drug that can snatch a person from death as they overdose on opioids such as heroin or prescription painkillers.

North Carolina reverses thousands of drug overdoses amid opioid crisis

"Look, our approach on legalising marijuana is not about creating a boutique industry or bringing in tax revenue, it's based on two very simple principles

The first one is, young people have easier access to cannabis now, in Canada, than they do in just about any other countries in the world. [Of] 29 different countries studied by the U.N., Canada was number one in terms of underage access to marijuana. And whatever you might think or studies seen about cannabis being less harmful than alcohol or even cigarettes, the fact is it is bad for the developing brain and we need to make sure that it's harder for underage Canadians to access marijuana. And that will happen under a controlled and regulated regime.

The other piece of it is there are billions upon billions of dollars flowing into the pockets of organised crime, street gangs and gun-runners, because of the illicit marijuana trade, and if we can get that out of the criminal elements and into a more regulated fashion we will reduce the amount of criminal activity that's profiting from those, and that has offshoots into so many other criminal activities. So those are my focuses on that."

Justin Trudeau may have made the best case for legal pot ever

The exclusion of non-governmental representatives from the UN High-Level Meeting on AIDS is not an isolated incident, but part of a global crackdown on civil society. To fight back, we need to understand the crucial role of NGOs in policy development.

Imagine a conference on domestic violence excluding the representatives of women's organisations, or a youth conference without involving young people. This is exactly what happened at the UN high level meeting on AIDS. Those most affected by the epidemic - that is, sex workers, drug users, LGBT+ people etc. - were systematically blocked from entering the meeting by the unholy alliance of the Russian Empire and the Organisation of Islamic Countries. Excluded groups belong to the so called "key populations", a term often used in professional jargon to signify their importance in stopping the global HIV/AIDS epidemic. Governments made a committment last year to end the epidemic by 2030, an unachievable goal without listening to the voices of the people in need of help.

This is not an isolated incident. This year, the same governments tried to exclude civil society from the process leading to the UNGASS on drugs in April, so the outcome document was negotiated behind closed doors and adopted on the first day of the meeting, even before the discussion with civil society participation could have started. The rules of the meeting were constantly changed to make attendance more difficult for NGO representatives, who often had to wait hours in long lines to get into the building. During the round-table discussion, there was an unsuccessful attempt to block an Indonesian human rights advocate from speaking up against the death penalty.

Civil society must fight global crackdown

Both the FDA and the CDC have recently taken steps to address an epidemic of opioid overdose and addiction, which is now killing some 29,000 Americans each year. But these regulatory efforts will fail unless we acknowledge that the problem is actually driven by illicit—not medical—drug use.

You’ve probably read that 80 percent of heroin users started with prescription medications—and you may have seen billboards that compare giving pain medication to children to giving them heroin. You have probably also heard and seen media stories of people with addiction who blame their problem on medical use.

But the simple reality is this: According to the large, annually repeated and representative National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 75 percent of all opioid misuse starts with people using medication that wasn’t prescribed for them—obtained from a friend, family member or dealer.

Opioid dependency is a big problem, but prescribing analgesia to patients who need them are not the cause

Almost 90 percent of Dutch municipalities support a call on the government to allow experiments with regulated cannabis cultivation, was revealed in a vote at the association of Dutch municipalities VNG’s annual conference on Wednesday.

Currently it is legal in the Netherlands to sell soft-drugs, but illegal to cultivate them on a large scale or supply them. The municipalities believe this plays into the hands of criminals. Instead they want the cultivation and sale of soft drugs like cannabis to be in the hands of permit holders. According to the municipalities, this would allow better action against illicit cannabis cultivation and sales, as well as the serious crime that often accompanies it.

According to NRC, the VNG wants to put pressure on the government with this joint call, which should carry more sway than previous calls by only a few mayors. By renewing the call now, the VNG hopes to make regulated cannabis cultivation a theme for the next parliamentary election, happening next year.

Dutch cities renew call for regulated cannabis cultivation

The Brazilian Drug Policy Platform (Plataforma Brasileira de Política de Drogas - PBPD) – which is composed of 34 institutions, groups and collectives from every walk of life – is enormously concerned with Brazil’s serious political crisis, and the first actions taken by the interim government with respect to drug policy. We refuse to abandon the few hard-won advances made over the past few years. The change effected thanks to the efforts of various social movements, and the active participation of countless specialists have undeniably shifted the tenor of drug policy debates in Brazil. That is why the signals coming from the interim government are so alarming - that it intends to continue the war on drugs – and with that, focus on strangling drug supply. This strategy has lost any legitimacy it once had, given that was never able to substantially reduce the damage resulting from the use of illegal substances. By placing an emphasis on the war on drugs, the government will aggravate the already-unacceptable level of violence in Brazil, which for more than a decade has led to the homicides of tens of thousands, and most of the dead are the most impoverished and ethnically discriminated-against group of all – young black men and women.

These young people represent the majority of the 620,000 incarcerated in Brazilian jails and prisons, and this number continues to climb year after year. More than 28% of imprisoned men have been convicted of drug trafficking, and for women, that number exceeds 60%. This useless escalation of incarceration and violence runs contrary to a growing body of scientific evidence as well as international debate driven to move forward with any number of alternative policies.

We also do not accept that policies touted for the care and treatment of people with drug problems need to prioritize hospitalization, as opposed to making use of a nascent public mental health network (Rede de Atenção Psicossocial – “RAPS”) which is part of the broader Brazilian National Health System (Sistema Único de Saúde – “SUS”). Any service financed by public funds should be based upon scientific evidence regarding its effectiveness, in addition to insuring that basic human rights are being met. Equally, harm reduction programs and the dissemination of credible data related to drugs, which have come so far over the past few years, cannot be ignored or denied, in favor of outdated, fear-driven ideas, which see abstinence as the only objective goal of any state-sponsored action.
