There are no signs of any slowdown in the continuous stream of legal highs with more than 100 new psychoactive substances reported in 2015, according to a report by Europol and the EU’s drug agency.

The official strategic analysis on the state of the EU drugs market says the number of legal highs being monitored has reached 560 – more than twice the number of the more traditional drugs banned under the international drug control treaties.

The European police and drug experts say as the “low risk, high profit” trade in legal highs has grown so have the harms involved including acute, sometimes fatal, poisonings. The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) has issued 34 urgent public health alerts over the past two years.

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

No slowdown in legal highs flooding Europe, say drug watchdogs

In the rolling hills of South Africa’s Pondoland, 

 – marijuana, known locally as “dagga” – has been grown for as long as people can remember, in part because they have few other options to earn an income.

Consider the arid village of Mkumbi, where about 100 families live in grass-thatched huts with neither electricity nor access to clean water. With little to live on, villagers here grow marijuana, one of few crops that somehow manages to flourish in this dry environment. They are subsistence farmers trying to feed their families. The crop, which is collected by middlemen, is destined for South Africa’s urban markets.

As in most of the world, marijuana is illegal in South Africa. For years, police have taken aggressive measures in communities across Pondoland to dissuade them from cultivating the crop. Mkumbi residents describe how police break down the doors of their homes, make arrests, and beat them. In the last decade, the South Africa Police Service has taken to indiscriminate spraying of the cannabis fields from helicopters using glyphosate – the same substance that Colombia recently banned after a World Health Organization (WHO) report linked it to cancer in humans.

Farmers the losers in South Africa’s war on marijuana

Just after midnight on March 22 in Vienna, the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) adopted the Outcome Document to be presented to UN member states who will attend the General Assembly on the World Drug Problem (UNGASS) scheduled for April 19-21 in New York City.

This article summarises the main points of the Outcome Document and the CND session relating to controlled medicines.

The document contains a set of well worded recommendations to assist countries in improving access to controlled essential medicines for “the relief of pain and suffering.”

Since the CND works by consensus rather than by vote, member states with different points of view about an issue have to work together to draft language that suits the interests of all.

A lot of discussion took place over the language in the controlled medicines section of the outcome document, according to member state colleagues who were in the room and reported back (only member states can attend the “informal” sessions where language is crafted and agreed upon).

Highlighting lack of access to controlled medicines in the preparations for UNGASS 2016

By Vanda Felbab-Brown and Bradley S. Porter

In a new Brookings Cafeteria podcast (audio below), Senior Fellow Vanda Felbab-Brown discusses the upcoming Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly on the World Drug Problem (UNGASS 2016), to take place April 19 to 21.

U.N. member states will convene to reassess global drug policies. Some countries, particularly within Latin America and Western Europe, see the existing policies as ineffective and counterproductive. Others, particularly in East Asia and the Middle East (as well as Russia), staunchly support them. As a result of changing domestic policies, including state-level marijuana legalization, the United States is no longer interested in playing the role of the world's toughest drug cop.

For the past 30 years, global drug policy has focused primarily on criminalizing drug trafficking, disrupting drug markets and supply, seizing drug shipments, and imprisoning users. During this period, Latin America has experienced staggering levels of drug-related criminal violence, while counterdrug policies have often proved politically destabilizing. Facing eradication of their crops without alternative livelihoods in place, coca, marijuana, and poppy farmers have often felt alienated from their governments.

In East Asia, there is as much drug trafficking and production as in Latin America—but violent criminality is very low. Coupled with very different historical memories, there is thus not the same impetus for drug policy reform. Several Middle Eastern countries find themselves contending with drug addiction. But as drug trafficking there is becoming increasingly intermeshed with terrorism, the Middle East, too, is disinterested in reform.

Global consensus and dissensus on drug policy

The Irish Haemophilia Society (IHS) has called on the next government to expand access to the current treatment programme.

An estimated 30,000 people have Hepatitis C but only seriously ill patients are eligible for treatment.

The IHS wants an expansion of access to the current treatment programme which gives chronically ill patients access to drugs including Sovaldi, which costs approximately €45,000 for a 12-week programme.

Call to expand Hepatitis C treatment programme in Ireland

A policy of prohibition has put the drugs trade in the hands of criminals and led to suffering for millions. Now there are hopes a special United Nations session will see reform

The year 2008 was momentous. Lehman Brothers collapsed, Radovan Karadžić was arrested, Russian troops massed on the Georgian border, and Barack Obama beat John McCain to the White House.

But 2008 was also significant for something that didn’t happen. It was the year that the world didn’t eliminate the illicit drugs problem. This quixotic goal had been set a decade earlier at a United Nations general assembly special session when, under the vainglorious slogan “We can do it”, the supranational body pledged that, by 2008, the world would be “drug free”.

Now, as the UN prepares to host another special session on drugs in New York this month, the failure of the 1998 assembly to realise the goal is recorded in the vast amounts of money, resources, time and blood that have been expended in pursuing the apparently impossible.

, a new book of essays from some of the leading critics of drugs laws, spells out in chilling detail, pursuing such an ambition has cost taxpayers around the world $100bn (£70.5bn) a year, roughly the same amount spent on foreign aid.

The UN’s war on drugs is a failure. Is it time for a different approach?

How do you care for a patient in pain? It’s a deceptively complicated question—one that garners vastly different responses depending on where you are in the world. In some places, pain is poorly understood, and medicines to relieve pain are unavailable or stigmatized.

Dr. M.R. Rajagopal is the founder and chairman of Pallium India, a palliative care organization emphasizing compassionate care and working to ensure patients are offered adequate treatment for their pain. Dr. Rajagopal has dedicated decades to ensuring quality of life for his patients and is a committed advocate for better access to controlled medicines—particularly morphine, an affordable and effective, yet highly stigmatized, treatment.

In 80 percent of the world, political, regulatory, and social barriers—often related to the UN’s International Drug Control Conventions—mean that patients do not receive medication for pain relief. “This is a global issue,” Dr. Rajagopal says. “It really hurts in developing countries.”

A push for balanced drug policy is transforming pain relief in india

15 March 2016 - Alternatives to conviction or punishment, where appropriate, can be pursued by countries under the international drug control conventions, the head of UNODC, Yury Fedotov, stressed today at a side event on the margins of the 59th session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND).

Mr. Fedotov highlighted the need to consider alternatives to imprisonment as a means of "helping to address prison overcrowding, and potentially prevent the recruitment of vulnerable individuals in detention by criminals and terrorists."

The discussions ahead of the UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS 2016), to be held in April this year, he said, showed that the three international drug control conventions are driven by a concern for the health and welfare of humankind. He noted that a balanced approach necessitated applying the principle of proportionality to drug-related offences and offenders.

"Disproportionate responses do not serve the cause of justice, nor help to uphold the rule of law. In this regard, the application of the death penalty to drug-related offences has never been in the letter or the spirit of the conventions," underscored Mr. Fedotov.

People suffering from drug use disorders also need comprehensive health and social services that are voluntary, rights-based, accessible, effective and affordable. This required, Mr. Fedotov said, justice, health and social service actors to work together in close coordination.

Thumbnail: Commission on narcotic drugs - UNIS Vienna

UNODC: Disproportionate responses to drug related offences do not serve justice

Автор блога: Даша Матюшина, Советник по реформированию политики

Вернувшись с 59-ой сессии Комиссии ООН по наркотическим средствам (КНС) больше недели назад, я все никак не могла собраться с мыслями и решить, что именно написать о КНС в рассылку ЕССВ. И ведь много интересного было на КНС – наша региональная сессия, прекрасная речь Славы Селларса на пленарной сессии,выступление Оли Пономаревой на сессии по проблемам женшин, употребляюших наркотики, и кулуарные обсуждения итогового документа UNGASS. Но чем поделиться в формате короткого блога? Что такового важного о процессах формирования международной наркополитики я узнала в Вене, и о чем непременно стоит знать тем, кто в Вене не был?

Расстановка сил все та же, что и 13 лет назад, когда я впервые приехала на КНС – Евросоюз за снижение вреда, Россия – против, США в целом «за», но отказываются снижение вреда называть снижением вреда. В прошлом году мы были счастливы услышать сильное выступление Латвии, бывшей тогда председателем Совета ЕС, в поддержку снижения вреда и необходимости соблюдении прав человека в контексте наркополитики. В этом году порадовала речь Чехии на пленарном заседании КНС, в которой четко изложено влияние снижения вреда на страновом уровне: тот факт, что в Чехии «очень низкие социальные и экономические издержки, связанные с употребление нелегальных наркотиков», правительство объясняет не тем, что Чехия – страна, «свободная от наркотиков», а целенаправленным внедрением программ снижения вреда. В выступлении Словении все разложено по полочкам – цитирую: «необходимо подчеркнуть, что опиатная заместительная терапия является самой изученной и успешной программой лечения [наркозависимости]»; цель декриминализации хранения небольшого хранения наркотиков, которую Словения провела еще в 1999 году, в том, чтобы «поощрить лечение» зависимости. Упомянуто снижение вреда и в пленарном выступлении Польши.

От стран региона, не входящих в ЕС, мы слов поддержки в адрес снижения вреда на пленарной сессии не услышали. Что, в общем, не удивительно в случае России и Узбекистана. Новый глава Агентства по контролю за наркотиками Таджикистана Шерхон Салимзода ограничился упоминанием усиления работы по«снижению … негативного влияния [наркотиков] на безопасность здоровья населения» как результата реализации национальной антинаркотической стратегии.

Оставайтесьвкурсесобытийнаркополитики, подписавшисьна

Thumbnail: Website of the Eurasian Harm Reduction Network

Большая наркополитика: успеть за 30 секунд

By Dasha Matiushina, Policy Reform Advisor

Since my return from the 59th session of the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) over a week ago, I haven’t been able to collect my thoughts and decide what exactly I should write about the CND for the EHRN mailing list. However many interesting things happened at the CND – our regional session,Slava Sellars’ great speech at the plenary session, Olya Ponomaryova’s speech at the session on the issues of women who use drugs and behind-the-scenes discussions of the UNGASS outcome document – how can those things be shared in a short blog format? What were the important things I learned in Vienna about the processes of forming the international drug policy? And what should those who weren’t there definitely be made aware of?

The balance of power is the same as 13 years ago when I first came to the CND – the EU supports harm reduction, Russia is against it, the USA supports it in principle but refuses to call it harm reduction. Last year we were happy to hear a strong statement by Latvia (then helding Presidency of the Council of the EU) in support of harm reduction and the need to protect human rights in the drug policy context. This year the Czech Republic’s statement at the plenary session made us happy; it clearly described the impact harm reduction has at the country level: the government explains that the Czech Republic experiences “extremely low social and economic costs related to the use of illegal drugs” because it’s a “drug-free” country but because it focuses on introducing harm reduction programs. Slovenia’s statement is also very clear; here’s a quote: “It’s necessary to emphasize that opiate substitution therapy is the best-studied and the most successful treatment program [for drug dependency]”; the goal of decriminalizing possession of small amounts of drugs in Slovenia back in 1999 is to “encourage” drug treatment. Poland’s statement also mentions harm reduction.

As for non-EU member countries from our region, at the plenary session we didn’t hear them utter words of support for harm reduction. Which isn’t surprising when we talk about Russia and Uzbekistan. The new head of the Drug Control Agency of Tajikistan Sherkhon Salimzoda limited himself to mentioning the intensification of the work to “reduce… the negative impact of [drugs] on people’s health safety” as a result of implementing the national drug strategy.

Global drug policy: In 30 seconds or less

The Global Drug Policy Program and Release are proud to invite applications to the 

2016 Asia & Africa Advocacy Fellowship Program on Drug Policy Reform

. Fellows will be hosted by and at Release in London, the UK’s center of expertise on drugs and drugs law. This program supports those working in sectors related to drug policy in order to increase their understanding of international drug policy reform issues, improve their advocacy skills, and enhance their capacity in working with the media on drug policy. The fellowship seeks to increase the capacity of emerging and new leaders in drug policy reform, including people not necessarily working full-time on drug-related issues.

The objectives of the fellowship include the following:

increase their knowledge of global drug policy reform issues on a region-by-region approach

increase their understanding of the international drug control system and conflicts with other United Nations priorities

have a greater awareness of the drug policy reform landscape and key figures within that movement

establish links with those working in drug policy, particularly in the UK

build and develop their communications skills, including for media interviews, press releases, press databases, public speaking

have an understanding of the tools for debate, so that they can confidently challenge anti-reform positions

improve their confidence as drug policy advocates both through participation in the program and through ongoing support from the host organization

Successful candidates will have a track-record of public engagement in the issues of drug policy reform or another relevant field (e.g., public health) at the local, national, or international levels.

Applications are welcome from those working across numerous fields related to drug policy. Previous fellows have worked in drug policy NGOs, at law enforcement agencies, in national governments, in health care facilities, and at universities, among other organizations. Please note that before receiving the fellowship, finalists will be asked to present a letter from their employer agreeing to their two-week participation in the course.

The purpose of this program is to promote the capacities of both new advocates and individuals who are emerging leaders in drug policy reform. Starting in 2016, employees of organizations currently receiving support from the Open Society Foundations are eligible to apply for the fellowship.

Asia & Africa advocacy fellowship program on drug policy reform

The mountains meet the Indian Ocean on the Wild Coast. At Ebulawu, south of Port St Johns, green-topped peaks undulate up towards sheer drops into the blue maelstrom below, where waves crash against cliffs of white, grey and red.

Vines hang heavy on centuries-old trees. The vegetation's lush hypnotism is a reminder that this is psychotropic territory in every sense. The descent into the ravines takes us down paths darkened by impenetrable tree canopies.

Forests give way to clearings, which give way to squares of crops - and back again. Navigating down the steep inclines, one is soon walking in fields of marijuana, where stalks are star-spangled with leaves and crystalline flowering buds. Some plants are shoulder high, others are stunted by drought.

Ebulawu is one of the heartlands of Pondoland marijuana. These are fields of green.

 cultivated at Ebulawu have been famous for generations. Locals, tourists, visiting fishermen and dealers have been buying, smoking and selling the marijuana for decades. Some locals barter their crops for anything from food to appliances. Customers come from as far away as Pretoria and Cape Town to buy bulk for resale.

"My grandfather planted before me, I remember he planted three or four mountains away from here," says Michael*, 62, pointing northward. "My father didn't plant at all. I didn't either, until I came back from the mines in 1989."

Michael had been working as a miner in Welkom when he was retrenched. He says one day his benefit pay-outs stopped - with no explanation. To supplement an income from catching and selling fish to tourists - and to support his nine children - Michael began growing marijuana.

Employment in the area is limited to cleaning the cottages that white tourists and anglers have built on land obtained on long-lease from local chiefs, sometimes in exchange for alcohol and a feast for the village. Or selling the abundant harvest of fish, mussels and shellfish to tourists - the going rate for a whole steenbras the length of one's forearm, says Michael, is about R50.

There are no other jobs in this lush paradise. Men will go to the mines if they can, committing themselves to the penury of hard migrant labour, only seeing their families two or three times a year. Women will tend the fields growing mealies, spinach, cabbage and vegetables for subsistence. Money for clothes, school uniforms and books or cellphone airtime comes from social grants, seafood sales - and marijuana.

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